Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a Fourth of July family photo on Instagram with wife Priscilla Chan and their three young daughters — but stirred outrage for concealing two of the girls’ faces with emojis.
Zuckerberg, who has been touting the launch of his “Twitter killer” app Threads, is seen in the photo wearing a US flag-themed cowboy hat while standing next to Chan, who is holding their infant daughter, Aurelia, in her hands.
While Aurelia’s face is not covered, her older sisters — Maxima, 7, and August, 5 — have their faces obscured.
Chan gave birth to Aurelia in March.
“Happy July 4th!” the Facebook co-founder wrote to his more than 11.7 million followers on the app owned by his company, Meta.
“Lots to be grateful for this year,” he wrote in the caption.
“As the big girls get older, I love talking to them about why America is so great.”
“Looking forward to discussing with little Aurelia soon too.”
Instagram users criticized Zuckerberg for insisting on privacy for his children even as his company has been accused of monetizing user data that has led to personal information becoming public.
“Even Zuck doesn’t trust his platforms to put his kids faces up,” one Instagram user commented.
Another Instagram user wrote: “Take notes. The founder of Meta doesn’t want his daughter’s faces posted to social media.”
A commenter on Facebook wrote: “Personally he doesn’t like to share his family photos, however, he has created a platform solely dedicated to revealing the intimate details of people’s lives to the entire world.”
“Truly a masterful display of irony!” the commenter added.
The Post has sought comment from Meta.
In May, the Federal Trade Commission accused Facebook of misleading parents and failing to protect the privacy of children using its Messenger Kids app.
Last year, the company agreed to pay $725 million to settle a lawsuit alleging Facebook allowed millions of its users’ personal information to be fed to Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump’s victorious presidential campaign in 2016.
In 2020, the FTC hit Facebook with a record $5 billion fine for privacy violations and mishandling user data.
Facebook has also acknowledged giving big tech companies like Amazon and Yahoo extensive access to users’ personal data as well as collecting call and text logs from phones running Google’s Android system in 2015.
With Post Wires
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
