Mark Zuckerberg Profile Bravely Positions Him Exactly as He’d Like to be Seen

Mark Zuckerberg has always been obsessed with the Roman Empire. Now, according to an extremely in-depth profile of Meta’s CEO in the founder-friendly outlet Colossus , he’s a modern-day Augustus overseeing the largest empire the world has ever seen, just without physical land and borders. Just don’t ask Colossus or Zuck how it all ends.

The details of Colossus’ Zuckerberg deep dive are unquestionably impressive. It includes conversations with Zuck’s parents, Karen and Ed, his mixed martial arts coach, rival executives, and Zuckerberg himself. It includes some incredible stories—Zuckerberg’s parents didn’t think Mark would be the high achiever of their family, but he showed signs of coding proficiency at a young age, building a communications system for his dad’s dental office in Atari BASIC.

Modern-day Zuck has different challenges. The profile catches him in his MMA training, sparring with (read: getting his ass kicked by) reigning 149-pound NCAA wrestling champion Aden Valencia and former UFC title contender Merab Dvalishvili. His coach theorizes that the fighting is a way to fill a void in his life that makes him “a better human being.”

Fun as it may be to imagine Zuckerberg getting punched in the face, voluntarily or not (and in the profile, he gets the wind knocked out of him while Dvalishvili tries to demonstrate a move to him), the crux of the piece seems to be that he takes these hits and gets right back up.

You see, Meta is Rome, and Zuckerberg is Augustus. Except actually, Zuckerberg has it harder, if you think about it. That’s because, according to Colossus, he faces challenges that August never did: “stock prices, litigation, tell-all ‘whistleblower’ memoirs, and the international free flow of online ridicule.”

None of these are things Colossus seems interested in interrogating, beyond gesturing at it dismissively. Whistleblower gets scare quotes on its first reference, a signal of dismissal. The second time it’s raised, it’s to say another whistleblower got a book deal (read: they’re just looking for attention). Nearly all criticisms of Meta, of Zuckerberg, are just loud people trying to flout a great leader.

Zuckerberg has to contend with these things not because they are legitimate, but because he just cares so much. Colossus notes that Zuckerberg is hyper-aware of the so-called “dictator’s dilemma,” the idea that leaders never truly know what is happening outside their sphere of knowledge because the people around them intentionally insulate them from potentially negative information. To address that, he constantly prods direct reports and subordinates for information. It also suggests that he willingly accepts “personal blame in public for the mistakes of others” because he understands that he is the company in the eyes of the public.

It can’t really muster any examples of that phenomenon, though. It makes a glancing acknowledgement of Zuckerberg’s “unforgivable sins” like sharing private user information without permission or trying to comply with Chinese government censorship during an effort to expand in the country.