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Mark Zuckerberg Exposes Pakistan: “They Tried to Sentence Me to Death”
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently disclosed that a Pakistani national once attempted to have him sentenced to death for blasphemy over a post they found objectionable. The revelation came during an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast aired last month.
Zuckerberg was discussing various global laws that Meta, as a tech company, does not necessarily align with when he shared this incident as an example. He recounted how an individual in Pakistan took legal action against him after discovering a Facebook post containing a depiction of the Prophet Muhammad, which was deemed blasphemous.
“There was a point at which someone was trying to get me sentenced to death in Pakistan because they believed that a drawing of the Prophet Muhammad on Facebook was blasphemous in their culture. They sued me and initiated criminal proceedings,” Zuckerberg explained.
Though he was not overly concerned about the case, he admitted it was unsettling. “I don’t know exactly what happened with it because I have no plans of going to Pakistan. So I wasn’t too worried, but it was still a bit disconcerting,” he added.
Government Pressure on Tech Executives
Zuckerberg also touched upon a growing challenge for tech company leaders—the increasing number of governments threatening legal action or imprisonment if companies do not comply with their demands.
“I think it’s a really strange precedent to set,” he said. “We operate in many different countries, and now some governments are issuing Interpol notices to have executives arrested just because they don’t comply with their regulations. That’s not a great approach.”
Content Moderation and Free Speech Challenges
The Meta chief highlighted the difficulties in moderating content across platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, particularly in regions where cultural values differ significantly from Meta’s principles of free expression.
“There are places around the world that have values conflicting with our stance on free speech. They want us to ban far more content than we believe is necessary. The idea that governments can use imprisonment as leverage to enforce their standards is a concerning amount of power,” he noted.
Zuckerberg suggested that the U.S. government may need to step in to support American tech companies operating in such challenging environments, ensuring that they are not unfairly targeted or pressured by foreign governments.