It’s time for Mark Zuckerberg to resign from Meta | Joan Donovan
A Guardian opinion piece by academic Joan Donovan argues that Mark Zuckerberg should resign as Meta's chief executive, following the company's settlement of up to $18bn (£14bn) with dozens of US states over allegations that Instagram and Facebook harmed children through addictive design. Donovan contends Zuckerberg is the constant thread running through years of costly controversies at Meta, and that genuine commitment to user safety would require the board to push him out and restructure the company to prioritise safety over profit.
The settlement follows a campaign begun by journalists and researchers in 2016 examining how platform design fuelled disinformation around Brexit and the US presidential election, and it imposes new restrictions on teen accounts, including a two-hour daily limit, no access between midnight and 6am, no notifications during school hours, mandatory parental account linking and stricter age verification. Donovan, who testified to Congress in 2020 comparing misinformation to "secondhand smoke" and has drawn parallels with historic tobacco regulation, argues these measures fail to tackle harmful content such as drugs, sex and gambling material still being algorithmically recommended, and cites Meta's record of costly settlements over privacy breaches, teen mental health harms, and its role in amplifying hate speech against Rohingya Muslims and medical misinformation.
- Meta reached an up to $18bn settlement over child safety failures
- Writer says Zuckerberg should resign as Meta's CEO
- New teen account limits set, but harmful content rules remain weak
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Meta, the company behind Instagram and Facebook, has agreed a settlement worth up to $18bn with dozens of US states over claims that its platforms were designed to be addictive and harmful to children. The deal introduces new limits on teenage accounts, such as daily time caps and restricted access at night, alongside stricter rules on age checks and parental oversight.
Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in 2004 and remains Meta's chief executive, overseeing the company through years of controversies, including data privacy scandals, concerns over disinformation during events like the Brexit referendum and US elections, and criticism over the platforms' role in amplifying hate speech and misinformation in various parts of the world. He has also faced questioning from US lawmakers about the effects of social media on young users' mental health.
The debate over Meta's practices matters because the company's platforms are used by billions of people worldwide, giving decisions made by its leadership significant influence over public discourse, child safety and the spread of information online. Questions about who should be held responsible for these issues, and how much change is needed, remain a live and contested topic.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Advocates of Donovan's position argue that accountability has to attach to the person, not just the company, when the same leader has presided over a decade of costly failures spanning privacy breaches, teen mental health harms and the amplification of hate speech and misinformation. They contend that Zuckerberg's near-total control over Meta through his voting shares means the board cannot meaningfully discipline the company's culture while he remains in charge, so real reform of an engagement-driven business model requires new leadership. On this view, a settlement that restricts notification times and screen limits treats symptoms while leaving the underlying algorithmic promotion of harmful content untouched, and only a change at the top can credibly signal that user safety, not engagement, is the priority.
The case against
Those who reject the call for resignation argue that the settlement itself, with its concrete restrictions on teen accounts, screen time and parental oversight, demonstrates that external accountability mechanisms such as regulators and courts are working as intended, without needing to remove an individual executive. They would say that social media's harms are a systemic, industry-wide challenge rather than one traceable solely to a single leader, and that Zuckerberg has continued to invest in safety features and institutional knowledge that could aid further reform. They may also caution that using public pressure to force out a founder-CEO over regulatory settlements sets a difficult precedent, and that Meta's dual-class structure was designed precisely to allow leadership to make long-term safety and product decisions without being destabilised by short-term reactive pressure.