The Business Ethics Blog

I’m serious. Is Mark Zuckerberg aiming to be the hereditary sovereign of the Kingdom of Facebook?

Amid all the ballyhoo about the Facebook IPO, concerns have arisen about the ownership structure — and, hence, governance structure — structure that the company’s plan implies. As Matt Yglesias recently outlined, the current plan implies considerable continuing power for Zuckerberg. Given the number of Class B shares he owns, along with proxies he controls, Zuckerberg effectively has “57 percent of the voting rights over the company.” In addition, his control will be transferred to whomever inherits his fortune.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? A couple of points, both having to do with how Zuckerberg will use his power.

One is that, interestingly, Zuckerberg has (in a letter to investors) disavowed a focus on profits:

“Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.

And we think this is a good way to build something. These days I think more and more people want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximizing profits….”

Some will rejoice at this. But of course, when a company says it’s going to aim at things beyond profits, there’s no particular reason to think that they’ll aim instead at goals you approve of. Facebook is a powerful company, grounded on a potent technology. Whomever controls it has the power to do a lot of good, or a lot of evil. And as I’ve pointed out before, Zuckerberg holds some dangerous views about, for instance, things like privacy.

Some of the comments under Yglesias’s piece have suggested that Yglesias exaggerates just how unique Facebook is in this regard. Other companies have been controlled by powerful central figures. Fair enough, but Facebook isn’t your average company. In a very real way, Facebook is becoming part of the infrastructure of modern life. In its role, it is more like a public utility than a private company. That puts the company — and its leader — in a very different position than, say, Ford or Exxon. Facebook really is more like a nation, and so he who controls it really is more like a political leader. This casts a very different light on how we evaluate not just the man, but the processes that are in place to guide his judgment.