Here’s what Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg meant by being ‘understood’

The gloves are off. 

Mark Zuckerberg says he knows his positions are likely to “piss off a lot of people.”

Two days after a company earnings call in which he stated that his goal for the next decade “isn’t to be liked, but to be understood,” the Facebook CEO attempted to explain just what he meant. 

Speaking at the Silicon Slopes Tech Summit, an annual conference in Utah, Zuckerberg railed against censorship, saying he “feels like the list of things you are not allowed to say socially keeps on growing.”

I just… I’ve tried to change our approach more recently. And I went out, and in Georgetown last year, I gave this speech around our principles around free expression. And, you know, that’s just one of the areas that I really feel like is under attack right now. 

You know, increasingly, we’re getting called to censor a lot of different kinds of content that makes me really uncomfortable. I think it kind of feels like the list of things that you are not allowed to say socially keeps on growing. And I’m not really okay with that. I mean, clearly, there are definitely a lot of bad things that we need to go do our job and help get rid of: terrorism, child exploitation, incitement to violence. Things that are going to cause imminent physical harm. And we invest a ton in this … But at some point, I just felt like, all right, we got to stand up and say, no, we’re going to stand for free expression. 

And yeah, we’re going to take down the content that’s really harmful, but the line needs to be held at some point. And, I think that this is just, I think it’s unfortunate that this is such a controversial thing. And when I got started in 2004, it wasn’t. It wasn’t a thing that people were pushing back on that much. And I think that there probably are a lot of people who agree with the principles on this and want companies to take more of a stand and make that case.

Zuckerberg’s comments are the latest sign that the embattled CEO, who is currently facing an antitrust investigation into his company, plans to change his tone in how he deals with critics.

“I think it’s gonna piss off a lot of people too,” he said. “But, you know, frankly, the old approach is pissing off a lot of people, too. So let’s try something different.”