GoKawiilPhoto: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Mark Zuckerberg and his fellow tech billionaires have a reputation for being unfeeling supervillain weirdos who, net-net, have made society a worse place than they found it. That reputation probably has to do with stuff like mistreating workers, attempting to destroy democracy, taking a jackhammer to the federal government, and causing psychological harm to children. Oh, and in the case of Zuckerberg, leaving a bunch of stranded passengers on a ship in Alaskan waters high and dry, despite the fact that his superyacht was nearby and could have helped.
Yes, the Alaska Beacon reports that Zuckerberg’s $300 million, 387-foot ship, Launchpad, did not respond to requests for assistance after a skiff ran out of fuel last week. Instead, a boat called Wilderness Legacy answered the call for help; as it did, the cruise’s captain apparently let passengers know that Zuckerberg’s boat had been closer to the stranded vessel but “refused” to spring to action, according to a report from a passenger. “There was near unanimous booing when the captain announced this,” software developer Michael Love wrote on Bluesky, adding, “Frankly, if I was Mark Zuckerberg I would be absolutely ecstatic at a chance to do something helpful for someone in need and maybe get some good PR out of it.” Per the Alaska Beacon, “Vessel tracking services in the area back up” the account, showing “the $300 million, 387-foot yacht Launchpad slowing to a halt outside Farragut Bay as the UnCruise Adventures ship Wilderness Legacy steams around and past the Launchpad, stops at the apparent site of the skiff, then tows it into sheltered Farragut Bay.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for the Meta founder said that “Mark and his family were not on board at the time of the incident,” the superyacht was using a different radio channel, and the skiff was not in distress. “By the time the crew reviewed the Coast Guard contact on a different radio channel from the one they were operating on, the assist was already underway,” the spokesperson said. “We’re grateful all parties are safe.”
While an unfortunate look, this is, of course, far from the worst thing Zuckerberg (or someone working for him) has ever been accused of by many orders of magnitude. Last week, a judge fined Meta $567 million for the psychological harm Facebook and Instagram cause children, which came on top of a $375 million civil penalty imposed by jurors in March after concluding Meta knowingly harmed the mental health of minors and covered up its knowledge of child sexual exploitation across its platforms. So the boat thing is pretty much a drop in the bucket.
A Meta spokesperson told ABC News the company would appeal the ruling and that it works “hard to keep people safe on our platforms and [has] been transparent about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors and harmful content.”
In other Zuckerberg news, the Meta CEO published a 6,500-word defense of artificial intelligence on Monday in which he declared “it is surprising that the discourse from many developing AI is so filled with doom” — an interesting take given, among other things, the chatbots telling people how to “buy raw genetic material, turn it into deadly weapons and deploy them in public spaces.” Nevertheless, Zuckerberg says he is “optimistic that the coming decades will be some of the most amazing in history.”