Inside, the atmosphere is not much more welcoming. Indeed, it feels downright hostile. In the large hall, women and men are holding up signs – silent, in mourning and protest. On them are pictures of girls and boys, 12, 13, 14, 15 years old. Harassed, sexually abused, mistreated on social networks on the internet. Many of the children have died from the consequences. And the man primarily to blame is said to be the one sitting in a blue suit in the front row: Mark Zuckerberg, 39 years old at the time. His usually radiant boyish face is expressionless.

The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 52/2025 (December 18th, 2025) of DER SPIEGEL.

The founder and CEO of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, presides over some 75,000 employees. Over 3 billion users worldwide are registered with one of his services, more than one in three people on the planet. The company most recently generated $165 billion annually. The profit margins are dizzying: almost 40 percent.

Forbes estimates Zuckerberg's private fortune today at $222 billion, making him one of the richest people in the world. For the parents here in the hall, though, he is one of the most dangerous.

The Meta boss is not sitting alone in the witness stand. The U.S. Senate committee has also summoned representatives of other companies, from TikTok, X and Discord.

On the schedule is a hearing. But it becomes an indictment. Above all against Zuckerberg, whose networks are the largest and most lucrative.

In defense of his empire, Zuckerberg and social media companies literally walk over children's corpses, Senator Lindsey Graham believes: "They are destroying lives, threatening democracy itself," thunders the Republican from South Carolina. "I know you don’t mean it to be so, but you have blood on your hands." Online child sexual exploitation, seconds Democrat Dick Durbin from Illinois, is "a crisis in America," caused by networks like Zuckerberg's. Josh Hawley, Republican from Missouri, even offers the Meta boss an opportunity to say he’s sorry: "Would you like to apologize for what you’ve done to these good people?”

For all the suffering and misery. Actually, for his life's work.

Bild vergrößern Mark Zuckerberg at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in January 2024.

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham

Zuckerberg had previously denied any connection between the use of social networks and the mental health of young people, saying that science had "no evidence” of any link. That, as would later emerge, was a lie. Zuckerberg, as would later emerge, was fully aware of a link. Indeed, according to U.S. media reports, had himself commissioned studies on the issue and then chose not to publish their devastating results.

Before the Senate committee, however, he exudes understanding, compassion, remorse. He rises from his seat, places his hands in front of his stomach, turns to the families, says: "I'm sorry. Everything that you all have gone through. It’s terrible. No one should have to go through the things that your families have suffered.”

Meta has invested $20 billion in the security of its platforms since 2016, he says, and 40,000 employees review problematic content and fish users out of the network. He insists he will not stop fighting and investing money to protect children on the internet.

He has said similar things so many times before, apologizing countless times for oversights, mistakes, misjudgments. For data leaks at Facebook, for hate speech and violence against teenagers, for Russian propaganda and the scandal surrounding the cooperation with the British market research firm Cambridge Analytica, in which up to 87 million Facebook profiles were used in an attempt to influence the U.S. election.

Zuckerberg has continually promised improvement. And afterward, he has always grown wealthier. More powerful. And his business has continually grown even more questionable.

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In fact, as internal documents show, at the time of the questioning, 100,000 minors were being harassed daily on Meta's platforms, and the company knew about it. In emails to company management, employees complained that there was much more that Zuckerberg could do and that more money could be invested. But the boss spent years ignoring such complaints.

Zuckerberg, indeed, is a man of two faces.

Mark Zuckerberg with his wife Priscilla Chan at a prize ceremony in April 2025.

On the one hand, he plays the father of three who reads to his little daughters in the evening. A man who fights for good, through whose services the people were given a voice during the Arab Spring and dictators were toppled. An executive who admits mistakes and eliminates them. An owner who has transformed his company into a model of diversity, equality and liberalism – just to be on the right side of history.

On the other hand, he is a cold technocrat. The programmer with nerves of steel who simply "further developed" the idea for Facebook from his classmates. Who spies on his own users. Who largely abolished fact-checkers, thus provoking a flood of fake news.

Books, portraits and even a feature film examine these two Zuckerbergs. And the world has been puzzling for years over which version of this man will ultimately prevail: Jekyll or Hyde. The good-natured cuddly type in a hoodie or the ruthless, power-hungry mogul who subordinates everything to his own success.

Almost one year into Donald Trump's second term, the answer seems clear. Trump’s MAGA takeover of America hasn’t just changed the U.S. It has also changed the Facebook boss. Nice Mark, it seems, is no longer needed in an America where selfishness and ruthlessness are considered the highest virtues. Nice Mark can go.

What's interesting is how quickly Zuckerberg has shed that role. How smoothly he has adapted to the new power structures. It raises the question: Is the new, hard Mark the core of his character? One he has kept hidden for years for strategic reasons? Or is this transformation also just another about-face?

It’s 10 days before Trump's inauguration and Zuckerberg is seated in the studio of right-wing podcaster Joe Rogan, a MAGA hero who has often attracted attention with misogynistic remarks and anti-Semitic comments. Zuckerberg and Rogan chat for three hours.

Bild vergrößern Podcaster Joe Rogan.

Zuckerberg gets right to it. The Meta CEO enthusiastically talks about the "masculine energy" he intends to inject into his company. The corporate world has spent years trying to rid itself of supposedly toxic masculinity, he says, and has overshot the mark in the process. "Having a culture that celebrates aggression has advantages." He grew up with three sisters, has three daughters. "I'm surrounded by girls and women," says Zuckerberg. "Masculine energy. I think it is good.” It sounds like a coming-out.

When he started martial arts a while ago, Zuckerberg continues, he felt for the first time what masculine energy means. Hanging out with his male friends and hitting each other a bit: "I don’t know. It’s good.” The Meta boss engages in Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) and jujutsu at least four times a week and he is enthusiastic about the energy, the power and the violence. Indeed, he wants to see such qualities in his company and has specifically appointed MMA star Dana White to Meta's board of directors.

Bild vergrößern MMA fighter Merab Dvalishvili with Mark Zuckerberg.

Bild vergrößern Zuckerberg together with MMA manager Dana White.

What does he think of weapons, Rogan wants to know. Zuckerberg says that he sets up bowling pins and shoots them with a pistol. He also hunts the "invasive pigs” on his ranch in Hawaii with his daughters and is teaching his girls, aged eight and 10, to use firearms. "We have this land. We take care of it. Just like you mow the grass, we need to make sure that these populations (of feral pigs) are in check.” He himself, the billionaire confides to the visibly impressed Rogan, prefers bow hunting.

Zuckerberg seems almost liberated. Gone are the days of the softie, that's how he seems to feel about it. Gone is the public fight for a better world, a better social network. Gone is the drivel about equality, diversity, inclusion, that's how it looks. Even the foundation work – through which he and his wife Priscilla Chan wanted to cure childhood diseases, build up Africa and make education more accessible – has been significantly curtailed.

Instead, we have "MAGA Meta." With bow and arrow, power, combat. The new, hard-nosed Mark.

He has had enough of eternal apologies, Zuckerberg said in a podcast in the summer of 2024. They were all part of a "political miscalculation," "a 20-year mistake." He said that he had too often and too quickly accepted the views of others, only to then realize that he simply needed to understand his company’s place in the world and in history, correctly. "I don’t apologize anymore."

Finally he can fulfill the role of digital emperor without a guilty conscience. "Aut Zuck aut Nihil," Zuck or nothing. This variant of the Roman bon mot that is said to have served Julius Caesar as a motto, Zuckerberg had printed on T-shirts. Historians regard the Roman ruler as cruel. For Zuckerberg, he has been a hero since childhood.

Caesar's no less brutal successor Augustus even serves as his idol. Zuckerberg named his daughters Maxima, August and Aurelia. The billionaire is so impressed by the "strategic leadership" and "consolidation of power" of the first Roman emperor that he sometimes ends meetings with his battle cry "Domination."

Caesar and Augustus shaped an era. Zuckerberg would almost certainly like to do the same. His era? That of artificial intelligence (AI).

With AI, Zuckerberg believes, the world is embarking on a new epoch. One in which the old internet, with Google search and Facebook posts, will be replaced by an everyday life in which people put down their phones and wear buttons in their ears or Meta glasses on their noses.

Fake and fact blur in this place that Zuckerberg envisions as the "next era" of his social network. Digital exchange and physical social experiences become one, and what users perceive in this future world will be determined less and less by friends or acquaintances, and more and more by AI algorithms.

Meta intends to spend $600 billion by 2028 on the necessary infrastructure alone – about as much as Germany’s federal budget for one year. According to Zuckerberg, up to half of all content on Facebook or Instagram is already AI-controlled or AI-generated – and increasing. The next five years, he believes, "will be the most exciting period in our history" – with him at the helm, as sole, unassailable leader.

A new gateway to the world, or to hell. And standing in front of it, as guardian and cashier, is Mark Zuckerberg, whose company will not only have the data to connect everyone with everything, but it will also deliver the content with its own AI and regulate access with its own glasses and lenses.

To ensure the success of this vision, he has been buying AI companies like other people buy groceries. He has been assembling salary packages of over $100 million for developers and constructing multi-billion-dollar high-performance data centers to the detriment of local residents worldwide. He has even shaken up Silicon Valley by recruiting half a dozen top talents from Apple and sought to order high-performance AI chips worth billions from his arch-rival Google.

Bild vergrößern Billionaire Peter Thiel

Zuckerberg isn’t the only one in AI fever, so too is the entire tech elite – sometimes with rather odd theses. Silicon Valley thought leader and Palantir founder Peter Thiel believes that the technology means civilization is facing the return of the Antichrist. Ex-Trump friend and Tesla boss Elon Musk considers Mars the only way out for humanity. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman even sees himself as the last hope: If his company isn’t the first to invent an AI superior to humans, he believes, the planet is doomed.

Zuckerberg counters this dystopian babble with an almost sober calculation. For him, the race for AI is neither about the downfall of civilization nor about its salvation. "For him it's simply about power and money. About himself," says a startup founder to whom the Meta boss recently unsuccessfully offered several billion dollars for his AI company. "Does that make him better than Peter, Elon and Sam? Maybe also more dangerous." He has never encountered anyone who pursues his goals "so unerringly and relentlessly."

Zuckerberg himself declined an invitation to speak with DER SPIEGEL. In general, Meta is willing to do little more than demonstrate its latest technical achievements. But others talk, including former and current employees, friends, neighbors, competitors. They are all helpful to forming an understanding: What does this man want?

Biographer Steven Levy prefers to emphasize the hero. Zuckerberg would stop at nothing, even if it has never been done before, he notes. The Facebook founder has an almost crazy self-confidence, he says, and believes that his company must remain dominant because he believes it is good for the world.

Zuckerberg's former mentor Roger McNamee, one of the first Facebook investors, recognizes the same unbridled will in his former protégé, but comes to a completely different conclusion: Zuckerberg, he says, is "a threat to what is left of democracy in the U.S."

In the Palo Alto neighborhood of Crescent Park, Michael Kieschnick walks down Hamilton Avenue on a sunny Thursday morning, cheerfully greeting Zuckerberg's security people. They know each other well. The Kieschnicks have lived here for 30 years, the last 14 of them next door to the Zuckerberg family. Until they moved in, he says, it had been a quiet area, a trusting community where the children would play in every yard. "Since then, a lot has changed – for the worse."

Bild vergrößern Mark Zuckerberg's neighbor Michale Kieschnick

Michael Kieschnick, Zuckerberg's neighbor

The Meta CEO has bought at least 11 houses here, all using specially created shell companies and often for double or triple market value. He has spent a total of more than $110 million on the purchases – before then tearing down the structures and creating space for guest houses, a security headquarters, a children's playhouse and a 650-square-meter bunker-like basement. The "billionaire bat cave," as the neighbors joke.

Where once there were open driveways and inviting front yards, today there are four, five-meter-high hedges. Gates, secured with cameras and codes, shield off the rich neighbors. Meta's security man even told him that the garden fence that had separated his property from Zuckerberg's main house for decades does not meet "Facebook's security standards," says Kieschnick. "When I asked if he saw me as a threat, he asked back if I doubted the measures. Most people initially feel that way – wherever they take over a neighborhood." That, Kieschnick scoffs, is no wonder. Because what is happening here, as he sees it, is a "takeover."

Yet Zuckerberg had sounded quite different at the beginning, says Kieschnick. He had, Kieschnick says, promised to be a good neighbor and said, for example, that he would never buy and tear down the house next to Kieschnick's. Only to do exactly that a little later.

He says he can understand that people with Zuckerberg's bank account want space and quiet. But he still has to abide by rules and laws, says Kieschnick. Zuckerberg was only able to tear down all the old homes because he only reported two projects at a time to the authorities and they turned a blind eye. The private school that the Zuckerbergs operated for a dozen children in one of their villas for years was also tolerated until it became too much for neighbors and they complained to the city.

Bild vergrößern Zuckerberg's property in Palo Alto.

The Zuckerbergs insist that they consistently complied with the law. "Mark, Priscilla and their children have lived in Palo Alto for more than a decade," says a family spokesperson. They appreciate being "members of the community" and have "taken a number of measures that go beyond local requirements to avoid disturbances in the neighborhood."

Does Kieschnick recognize the efforts? Or does Zuckerberg the neighbor behave exactly like Zuckerberg the entrepreneur? He has thought a lot about it, says Kieschnick. He says the Meta CEO seems rather uncompromising to him. As someone who is focused on "absolute control" of his empire. "Here in the neighborhood too."

Control. Perhaps also protection. Anyone who has stood at the top of the world's most loved and most hated company for 20 years understandably becomes cautious over time. Possibly even excessively so.

But can you blame him? Isn't a multibillionaire allowed to build a nice, safe home for himself, for his family? Does Zuckerberg's new, hard shell perhaps simply protect the soft core in the end?

Sitting in the back room of a convention center in front of a cup of coffee is a man who knows and describes the Zuckerberg of the early days. And his description is precisely that: of an empathetic caretaker. Some sort of tech conference is being held outside. Inside, the man talks about student parties, about Facebook's first employees and the wild days of Palo Alto, when employees pooled their $600 monthly housing allowance to rent huge estates with pools and billiard rooms.

Mark, says the man who was close to Zuckerberg's side in these first years, was always in the middle of it, "Party Animal No. One." And a nice guy. Once a colleague's car broke down on the Interstate between Palo Alto and San Francisco and he posted it on Facebook. "Many colleagues responded: 'Cool, just drove past you' and such things. But Mark wrote: 'Where are you exactly? Do you need help?'"

That, says the manager, is how the founder wanted to see the "spirit of the company" back then. A big college clique, friends for life. "Mark wanted exactly that for Facebook. And for the internet. He saw how Google was seeking to commercialize the web with its search engine – and he hoped to counter it with a good version, with Facebook."

Whether he has lived up to this claim over the years? One should not believe all the dirty inside-Meta anecdotes, says the Zuckerberg friend. Many "fairy tales and stories" have been told to sell books.

What is true, the friend says, is that Zuckerberg is withdrawing. There are only a few people who can get to him these days, to whom he grants access. But those in his inner circle, the friend says, experience Zuckerberg as he has always been.

That tech manager, for example, who was laid up for weeks during the Christmas season and despite a well-filled bank account, was unable to get an appointment with a specialist. "When Mark heard about it, he made phone calls until the woman could see a specialist at Zuckerberg Hospital in San Francisco the next day. On Christmas Eve." It was not something that was expected of him, the friend says, but that, too, is a side of Mark. "He takes care of those he loves."

Bild vergrößern Zuckerberg at a gala in October 2025.

A friend of Zuckerberg's

The richer, more successful and, especially, more controversial Mark has become, the tech-manager friend says, the more he has turned his gaze inward. First, he made himself scarce, then shielded himself and finally isolated himself. "That way you get hurt less."

The corresponding retreat is located 4,000 kilometers from Zuckerberg's main residence in the green hills of the Hawaiian island of Kauai. It is well off the beaten track, accessible only via a winding, red sandy path leading off the highway.

Who should disturb him here? Whom should he disturb here? There are hardly any neighbors. No disputes either. Provided you don't provoke them.

On an oppressively hot October Sunday, Jeff Lindner drops into a wicker chair on his porch and looks down at the Pacific. A paradise, he murmurs. But access to the sea, says Lindner, is hardly possible anymore. There are new walls and fences, and everywhere Zuckerberg's guards get in your way. Yet the beach in Hawaii belongs to everyone by law. "But that apparently doesn't apply to my neighbor."

Bild vergrößern Zuckerberg's neighbor Jeff Lindner in the backyard of one of his properties.

Jeff Lindner, Zuckerberg's neighbor on Kauai

Zuckerberg has invested over $100 million here so far, the billionaire's estate measures almost 1,000 hectares. And he is constantly buying additional land. As far as the tax authorities are concerned, Zuckerberg mainly raises cattle here. In fact, though, behind the two-meter-high walls of volcanic rock that surround the area, there are not only several guest and tree houses, but also a 460-square-meter underground bunker complete with an explosion-proof metal door. Just in case.

It is a hotel-like complex, for which Zuckerberg had much of the former agricultural land rezoned, according to Lindner – by circumventing and stretching all kinds of local regulations, he says. With significant consequences. Because Zuckerberg's ranch stands on sacred ground, says Lindner. There are old burial and ceremonial sites to which indigenous people are guaranteed access by law. But Zuckerberg has denied them such access, says Lindner, instead buying them off with money and complicated contracts.

The billionaire's project has also caused property values in the area to spike, Lindner complains – in some cases by 700 percent compared to the year 2000. And with it the property tax. For the farmer, this means an average additional burden of $300,000 per year. That, says Lindner, is more than he can afford, which is why he is now fighting in court for the future of his property. "We have to protect this paradise from being sold out."

The Zuckerbergs deny such accusations. They grant access to the beach, they say, and also to the burial sites of the indigenous people on request. Lindner's property tax increase is difficult to understand, they say, adding that for owner-occupied homes, tax increases on Kauai are capped.

And hasn't the Zuckerberg family foundation done much good on Kauai? Several million dollars for flood relief and schools, for medical help during the coronavirus pandemic or a training center for doctors to address the shortage of medical personnel?

Zuckerberg nevertheless has the reputation of being a "neocolonialist." A reputation that stems in part from to the unsavory stories that are in circulation. In 2019, for example, a 70-year-old security guard on Zuckerberg's farm died trying to climb a cliff during heavy rains to be relieved from his shift. The usual pick-up and drop-off service on the ranch had been suspended because the tires of the vehicles intended for the purpose were apparently not designed for driving through the mud. So the guard was found much too late, leaning against a tree, holding his chest. Hours later he succumbed to his heart attack – a story that can be read in court documents that have been made available to DER SPIEGEL.

When Zuckerberg's security man visited the family a little later, he conveyed "condolences from Mark and Priscilla." And then offered money. $7,500.

The family declined with thanks, sued the billionaire and reached a settlement. Silence was agreed upon regarding the amount. "Zuckerberg could have prevented this death," says their lawyer Michael Stern. "But an appropriate compensation was the least they could have done. Not alms."

The new, hardened Mark can also be felt at Meta. In the summer, the company acquired almost half of the start-up Scale AI for $14 billion. Its founder Alexandr Wang was subsequently appointed as Meta's new super AI chief. The 28-year-old, one of the youngest self-made billionaires in the world, has a reputation as a culture warrior and drill sergeant.

At Scale AI, he introduced in early 2024 an explicit counter-design to the practice of diversity, inclusion and equality that had been practiced in Silicon Valley until then. Long before Trump condemned the idea of strength through diversity as a concept for losers and weaklings. In January, Wang traveled to Trump's inauguration and subsequently encouraged the president by letter in his "AI war" with China.

For Zuckerberg, Wang is a key figure in the transformation of the company. His team, working name "TBD" for "to be determined," has taken up quarters directly next to Zuckerberg's office – surrounded by sequoia trees and glass walls, according to reports. Shielded from the rest of the company, Zuckerberg's elite force is working on a superintelligence superior to humans. The Meta boss has poached at least 50 top talents from Apple, OpenAI and Google for this purpose. In some cases, he is paying them $100 million or more per year – and he keeps close tabs on progress.

Other AI departments, meanwhile, have been radically downsized. In October, Wang announced the elimination of 600 jobs, with many of those losses coming in those teams that deal with the security and integrity of AI products. Radical cuts have also been made in data protection for users. In Wang’s vision, AI algorithms will ensure the future safety of Meta products.

Zuckerberg's previous head of AI, the world-renowned Frenchman Yann LeCun, who always fought for technological openness, will be leaving the company at the end of the year. Shortly after Trump's election, Meta chief lobbyist Nick Clegg, the former head of the British Liberal Democrats, had already been forced out. He was replaced by Joel Kaplan, a MAGA supporter who had successfully pushed through changes to Facebook's algorithm to promote right-wing websites like Breitbart.

Does he do all this out of conviction or because he is simply unscrupulously surfing the zeitgeist? Hard to say. But if the old internet really is coming to an end and we are witnessing the dawn of a new epoch, why not shove morality aside and embrace it?

It may not be about which Zuckerberg is the real one. But about which Zuckerberg is currently the right one.

Which avatar gives him the best opportunity to implement his idea of the future? An idea that is only properly understood when you enter Lobby No. 8 at Meta headquarters, pass through the glass gate, go up one floor and land in a room with a living room atmosphere. Here on a table, neatly sorted by release date, lie Meta's visions of the future. Smart glasses that Zuckerberg has developed in collaboration with Oakley and Ray-Ban, equipped with speakers and cameras, a display in the lens and a chip in the frame.

The newest device in the series is a prototype that should only be ready for market in a few years. Somewhat heavier than the others, but packed with technology. A hologram display can show three apps simultaneously. The whole thing is controlled by the wearer's eye movements. The built-in AI recognizes objects and people, can create a recipe from the supplies when looking into the kitchen cupboard, should soon be able to summarize the last Facebook posts, emails or conversations that you exchanged with the person you are currently looking at through the glasses.

Zuckerberg is betting a lot on these glasses. For him, they are as revolutionary as Apple's iPhone once was. What billions of people still do today via the display of their smartphones, they will soon be able to do with Meta's smart glasses. No other device than his would be necessary anymore. No other apps. And, of course, no other networks.

All Zuckerberg. Nothing else.

Bild schließen Mark Zuckerberg at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in January 2024.

Bild schließen Podcaster Joe Rogan.

Bild schließen MMA fighter Merab Dvalishvili with Mark Zuckerberg.

Bild schließen Zuckerberg together with MMA manager Dana White.

Bild schließen Billionaire Peter Thiel

Bild schließen Mark Zuckerberg's neighbor Michale Kieschnick

Bild schließen Zuckerberg's property in Palo Alto.

Bild schließen Zuckerberg at a gala in October 2025.

Bild schließen Zuckerberg's neighbor Jeff Lindner in the backyard of one of his properties.