- Mark Zuckerberg shared a family photo with his daughters’ faces hidden by emojis.
- Annoyed commenters accused the Meta CEO of hypocrisy due to his company’s data scandals.
- In May, his company was fined a record $1.3 billion for breaking EU privacy laws.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg provoked accusations of hypocrisy from users on his platforms by censoring his childrens’ faces in a family photo.
Zuckerberg celebrated July 4 with his wife, Priscilla Chan, and their three daughters, before sharing a picture on Instagram and Facebook, both of which are owned by Meta.
In the photo, the faces of Maxima and August Chan Zuckerberg, aged 7 and 5, are unidentifiable, being hidden behind Samsung’s smiling and sunglasses emojis. Aurelia — who was born in March this year — is emoji-free.
It is a common practice among parents to obscure the faces of their children in social media posts for privacy reasons.
Zuckerberg’s choice to protect the identities of his children, however, irritated some commentators.
On Instagram, one user got 2,800 likes commenting under Zuckerberg’s post: “Even Zuck doesn’t trust his platforms to put his kids faces up.”
“Personally he doesn’t like to share his family photos, however, he has created a platform solely dedicated to revealing the intimate details of people’s lives to the entire world,” said one of the top Facebook comments with 2,900 likes. “Truly a masterful display of irony!”
Much of the ire focused on accusing Zuckerberg of hypocrisy, since Meta has been embroiled in controversies relating to its users’ data.
For example, Meta agreed a $725 million settlement last December related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, wherein the political consulting firm was able to access the data of millions of users without their consent.
And in May it was fined a record-breaking $1.3 billion after transferring Europeans’ data to the US, which the European Union said was not sufficiently protected from spy agencies. Meta said it planned to appeal the ruling.
“Happy July 4th! Lots to be grateful for this year,” Zuckerberg captioned his post. “As the big girls get older, I love talking to them about why America is so great.”
Meta did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
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