Randi Zuckerberg: Fast Facts You Need to Know
Randi Zuckerberg is stepping up to defend her brother Mark after he inadvertently began a debate about Holocaust deniers. In an interview with Recode, the Facebook founder said that those who deny the Holocaust would not be censored on the social media platform.
He stated that as a member of the Jewish community, he finds such comments personally offensive. “But at the end of the day, I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong. I don’t think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong, but I think… It’s hard to impugn intent and to understand the intent.”
Mark later clarified that he was not defending Holocaust deniers. But the incident sparked a conversation about first amendment rights online.
His sister Randi weighed in on the issue. While not a household name like her brother, 36-year-old Randi may have played an even larger role in shaping how we use social media today. As the Director of Market Development for Facebook, she helped transform Facebook as a destination for political discussion. Randi has an educated understanding of how people think, having earned a psychology degree from Harvard. Her net worth is estimated at $200 million.
Here’s what you need to know.
1. Randi Zuckerberg Argues That Simply Trying to Ignore Hateful or Offensive Content Does Not Fix the Problem
Thank you @LaurieSegallCNN for the opportunity to share my thoughts. As someone with a strong Jewish identity, while also admiring my brother’s leadership & respecting the challenges of running a platform, I am grateful for the opportunity to weigh in. https://t.co/cKatEBFKJW
— Randi Zuckerberg (@randizuckerberg) July 20, 2018
Randi Zuckerberg issued a written statement to CNN Money following Mark’s Recode interview. (You can read the transcript of his interview here). Randi defended his statements, but used the controversy to address the larger issue. Essentially, she argues that censoring certain content online only allows people to ignore the issue at hand and would not fix anything. Randi stressed that restricting posts from Holocaust deniers would not change those people’s opinions about it.
In her statement, she wrote, “As a leader in the Jewish community, and someone who has worked at the ground floor of social media, I felt a responsibility to weigh in. I am appalled and heartbroken by the fact that there are still people who deny the Holocaust… Banning Holocaust deniers from social media will not make them go away. Those bent on lying, sowing misunderstanding, and breeding hate will never be truly silenced. Let this remind us why we need our Jewish institutions more now than ever.”
Randi also touched on first amendment rights. Facebook enabled people to project their voices and opinions to the masses. Randi acknowledges that sometimes that means hateful messaging also has access to this megaphone.
“Unfortunately, when we give a voice to everyone, we give it to people who use that voice for good and to people who abuse that voice. Speak to a million people and you’ll get a million different definitions of who fits into which of those categories. Organizations doing impactful work now have more powerful tools than ever before, yet the nasty dark underbelly that exists right beneath the surface has access to those exact same tools. While it can be appalling to see what some people say, I don’t think living in a sterile, Stepford-like online community where we simply press the delete button on the ugly reality of how people feel is helpful either.”
2. Randi Zuckerberg Used the Debate to Advocate for Legislation Making Holocaust Denial a Crime, Rather Than Leaving It to Tech Companies to Police Such Content
In Germany, it’s a crime to deny the Holocaust happened. Offenders can be punished with up to five years behind bars. Social media sites in Germany can also face heavy fines for failing to remove anti-Semitic content.
The Justice Minister for Berlin, Katarina Barley, weighed in following Mark Zuckerberg’s remark that Facebook would not remove Holocaust denials from the site. She stressed that Facebook must adhere to German laws on this issue. “There must be no place for anti-Semitism. This includes verbal and physical attacks on Jews as well as the denial of Holocaust.” German Foreign minister Heiko Mass agrees, tweeting, “Nobody should defend anyone who denies the Holocaust.”
Randi Zuckerberg took a different approach in her address of the issue. She makes the argument that lawmakers should be making the big decisions about how to respond to Holocaust deniers– not Facebook.
“I don’t want to live in a world where Holocaust deniers are given a voice and I think we absolutely need to be having a debate at a national level on whether they deserve a place on any platform at all. At the same time, I also don’t want to live in a world where tech companies get to decide who has the right to speech and get to police content in a way that is different from what our legal system dictates…
As much as I disagree with Holocaust deniers having a voice at all, the reality is that it is not currently considered a crime in the United States, and if we want our social networks to remove this hateful speech and follow the lead of many countries in Europe who denounce it as criminal, we need to expand the conversation more broadly and legislate at a national level… Rather than rally against technology, let’s recognize that this hate exists, that it’s not going anywhere, and use our anger as a rallying cry to call for legislation to make Holocaust denial a crime, while supporting the organizations, leaders, and institutions working tirelessly on behalf of six million Jews and their families around the world so that we never, ever forget.”
3. Randi Played a Monumental Role in Shaping Facebook as a Destination for Political Discussion
Randi Zuckerberg worked with her brother for six years as the Director of Market Development for Facebook. She was the driving force behind shaping the social media platform as a destination for political discussion and information. She is the creator of Facebook Live, and organized Facebook’s coverage of the 2008 primaries and presidential inauguration, in addition to serving as a correspondent for ABC News.
In 2010, Randi helped spearhead the partnership with ABC to livestream election coverage on Facebook. It marked the first time a major TV network had teamed up directly with a social media platform to deliver content to viewers. Part of the deal was to encourage interaction between viewers and the TV hosts, by soliciting questions online. In 2018, this is nothing unusual. TV hosts respond to Facebook questions and comments all the time. But just a decade ago, this was still brand new territory for traditional news outlets.
Randi Zuckerberg also played a major role in a town hall with President Obama in 2011. In her book “Dot Complicated,” Randi describes getting a phone call from the White House communications office. They were interested in streaming a conversation with the president on Facebook Live, which Randi also had a hand in creating. Mark Zuckerberg moderated the town hall, and Randi was nominated for an Emmy award.
In her book, Randi discusses just how big of a deal she realized this moment was: “This was no idle PR stunt. The president was coming as part of his nationwide tour to make his case for a new economic policy- a strategy for cutting the deficit while maintaining investment in growth. For Facebook, this was a defining moment. The president had every distribution channel available to him to communicate to the country. But out of every website, every TV channel, every radio station at his disposal, he had chosen Facebook as the best way to speak directly to the nation.”
Randi chose to resign from Facebook a few months after the presidential town hall. She decided to begin her own firm called RtoZ Media, which would help companies expand their social media presence. Randi also serves as the CEO of Zuckerberg Media.
4. Randi Zuckerberg Stresses the Importance of Spending Time Offline
From Berlin to book selling with this babe! @randizuckerberg pic.twitter.com/WKFMeYGliM
— Nicole Lapin (@NicoleLapin) July 18, 2018
Randi helped mold social media into what it is today. Billions of people use Facebook to share ideas, connect with others across the world, and yes, oftentimes spew controversial or hateful messages. Randi reflected back on her experience with Facebook and published a book about how to navigate the online world. Dot Complicated: Untangling Our Wired Lives, published in 2013, is described as part memoir, part how-to guide.
In the intro to the book, Randi writes about how the internet and social media has sucked people into their screens so much, that they run the risk of alienating their real-world friends and family. “I’ve seen the world radically shift from a place where connecting online with others was so new, so novel, so special, and where being reachable on a mobile device felt almost magical… to a world where we’re now so connected online, so reachable and so comfortable interacting with others from behind a screen, we often forget to look up and enjoy the world around us.
We have such powerful technology at our fingertips. but we need to make sure our attachment to being online doesn’t get in the way of our lives and relationships offline. we need to find balance between being connected to millions of people around the world and being present with the people we love, standing right next to us.”
Randi expanded on this venture by creating a Dot Complicated lifestyle blog. In the “about” section, she explains that we are living in a “Wild West” environment when it comes to social media. “Social norms and etiquette are changing constantly as we get used to life with smartphones, 24/7 access to one another, and more emails than one person could ever humanly respond to. Things have definitely gotten more fun and efficient (there’s seriously an app for everything!), but also much more complicated. Here at Dot Complicated, we sort through the noise to help find the “new normal.”
She also uses the site to promote her radio show of the same name, which airs on Sirius XM. Randi doesn’t limit herself when it comes to topics, either. A recent episode discussed the definition of “self-made,” following Forbes’ article on Kylie Jennifer being the youngest self-made billionaire. Other topics of discussion include: social media’s impact on modern parenting, immigration apps that help people check their status, how Brexit will affect the tech world, where did emojis come from, and the etiquette of tipping in the rideshare economy.
Most recently, Randi has also published another book focusing on life beyond the internet. The book is called Pick There: You Can Have it All (Just Not Every Day). She writes that she doesn’t believe it’s possible to always have a well-balanced life. You’ll have weeks where work will demand more of your time. There are days when a family commitment will prompt you to step away from your desk for several hours. There are weeks you won’t get much sleep! Randi’s solution for all this is to accept that as a human being, with only 24 hours in the day, you can’t do it all every. The trick is to be selective in what you focus on each day.
5. Randi Zuckerberg’s Long List of Accomplishments Includes “Broadway Star”
In 2014, Randi Zuckerberg achieved a lifelong dream by appearing on Broadway in the hit musical Rock of Ages. This also put her in the history books, for being the very first tech executive to appear on a Broadway stage. The 2-week stint was part of a special “social networking” promotion for the show. She explained her love of theater to Playbill: “Theatregoing is one of the few sacred activities where audiences truly unplug and enjoy the moment with the live entertainment right in front of them.”
In an interview with Forbes in 2017, Randi said that her theater background prepared her for life as a businesswoman and entrepreneur. The lessons learned included: how to handle rejection, the importance of asking for things you want (like a promotion or a raise) and that certain failures could actually be lucky breaks.
Randi told the magazine, “I count not getting into Harvard’s music major as one of my luckiest failures in life, because if I hadn’t majored in psychology, then I wouldn’t have gone to work at an ad agency and started to develop some expertise in digital marketing. And if it wasn’t for that, then [my brother Mark wouldn’t have needed me] at Facebook. A lot of things in my life that seemed like failure or rejection at the time wound up being the things that I thank my luckiest stars for.”
