What's next for Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg?

Can the charm offensive work? Maybe, says Jason Reifler, professor of political science at the University of Exeter. "Facebook has done some very positive things. [They’ve] involved fact-checkers to downrate things it flags as false or to downrate sources in their algorithm if they have a persistent pattern of factual inaccuracy. The biggest thing Facebook has done to stop the spread of fake news is they’ve tried to de-emphasise all political news in their algorithms."

Reifler also tells me, however, that while we’re right to be concerned about fake news, it’s important to put it into perspective: "In the data that we’ve looked at, over half of all fake news consumption comes from 10 per cent of the population with the most conservative online media diets overall. In the paper we’re working on right now, we show very little evidence that fake news affected turnout in the 2016 presidential election or that it affected voter choice." In fact, Reifler says that "more people are exposed to false and misleading claims directly from politicians covered by regular media sources than they are directly from fake news."

If true, how can Zuckerberg capitalise on this? The PR game can be a brutal one. In his New Yorker interview, he talks of his interest in Ancient Rome and in particular Augustus Caesar, saying: "Basically, through a really harsh approach, he established 200 years of world peace." The titbit has made headlines, with critics pointing to parallels between Zuckerberg’s man-crush and his company’s ambitions. No wonder, as Osnos writes, Zuckerberg ‘does not enjoy interviews’.

Last April, a stern-faced, suited Zuckerberg sat down to testify before Congress after the Cambridge Analytica scandal. As well as his description of Facebook as ‘an idealistic and optimistic company’, he regaled them with examples of how the social network was a force for good. The #MeToo movement had been organised, at least in part, on Facebook, he said; people raised more than $20 million (£15m) for Hurricane Harvey relief efforts; and more than 70 million small businesses used it to create jobs. He told them that within a decade the platform would have the artificial intelligence tools to identify hate speech before it is posted; that Facebook’s biggest mistake was not ensuring the tools it made were used for good.

Ultimately, though, his remarks did not go over well. Questions came that, for whatever reason, Zuckerberg didn’t feel he could answer. How many fake accounts have been removed? "I’m happy to have my team follow up with you," he said. Were Facebook employees involved with Cambridge Analytica’s help for Donald Trump? "I can certainly have my team get back to you." On more than 40 occasions he said his team would follow up with legislators. By the end of the hearings, Zuckerberg’s uncomfortable, robotic performance led to the inevitable memes comparing him to Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, or claiming that he was, in fact, reptilian. Even the Spanish-language press didn’t let him off the hook. "Es Mark Zuckerberg un robot?" La Raza asked.

Holding a controlling stake in the company, it is unthinkable Zuckerberg would ever leave Facebook but shareholders have been advocating for the company to spilt the roles of chairman and chief executive, both of which Zuckerberg currently holds. There have also been calls that he resign, notably from the financial columnist Felix Salmon in Wired. Asked by The Atlantic’s Robinson Meyer in April if he intended to go, Zuckerberg pointed to his origin story as proof of his commitment. "We’ve also worked on a lot of hard problems over the last 14 years building Facebook. I mean, it started in a dorm room and now it’s this unprecedented community in scale and I’m very confident that we’re going to be able to work through these issues."

The thing to bear in mind is that Zuckerberg, despite his nerdiness, and as most who have met him will happily testify, is actually fairly likeable. Syracuse University’s Jennifer Stromer-Galley says while we might be intrigued by the man behind the company, ordinary users just aren’t, and as long as the features and tools Facebook provides give them benefits, they’ll keep using it. "Zuckerberg’s persona is still 'earnest college boy'. And it allows him to get away with things.

"Mark Zuckerberg is not going to hire prostitutes, he doesn’t seem racist or sexist — his number two is a woman (Sheryl Sandberg). He’s just never given the public that kind of fodder. All we have to go on are these breaches, and the Cambridge Analytica scandal feels more like a Facebook company problem rather than a Mark Zuckerberg problem."

Monica Stephens, an expert in social media and politics at the University at Buffalo in New York, agrees: "He’s a stable, responsible chief executive. He hires the best engineers, data scientists, attorneys. He understands the needs of his company and prioritises those. Compared with Elon Musk, who comes across as this nerdy-cum-party boy, Zuckerberg seems much more responsible, much more steady."

That said, Facebook could use more social scientists, Stephens says. "Every university has been gutted of their social science programmes in favour of promoting engineering and data science, so nobody has stepped back to ask: what is the impact of companies like Facebook? How are they impacting democracy? How are they impacting our lives, our attention span, our dinner conversations, our ability to interact with other people?"

Peter Thiel, a venture capitalist and early Facebook investor, tells the story of the day in 2006 that Zuckerberg turned down a $1 billion offer for Facebook from Yahoo. Zuckerberg apparently told Thiel: "I don’t know what I could do with the money… I’d just start another social networking site. I kind of like the one I already have."

Perhaps in some ways, Zuckerberg is still that Harvard whizz kid glued to a computer screen enjoying the thing he has created. He doesn’t know how to do anything else other than Facebook. Yet it has become unwieldy. Whether it’s too unwieldy for Zuckerberg to rein in, time will tell, but one thing we can be sure of is that Zuckerberg will be sticking around to find out.