Zuckerberg: Facebook Has a New Mission.
WALKER: Facebook could be making big changes. Its CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the social media giant is taking on a new mission that goes beyond connecting people.</s>VAUSE: he explained it all to our Laura Segall in this CNN exclusive.</s>LAURIE SEGALL, CNN SENIOR TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT: It's an incredibly big deal that Facebook is completely overhauling its mission and has a new mission. So what is the new mission of Facebook?</s>ZUCKERBERG: So our new mission is to bring the world closer together. And for the last decade, our mission has been to make the world more open and connected. And we've been really focused on these ideas, helping to connect people, especially with their friends and family, and we're going to keep doing them. We're not done with that mission yet. But now I just feel like we have a responsibility to do more in the world. When you look at the world today, giving people a voice and helping people connect are good and they've made the world better in a lot of ways but our society is still very divided and that means that people need to work proactively to help bring people closer to together. It's not enough to help us simply connect. We need to work to bring the world closer to together.</s>SEGALL: And you've always had such an interesting utopian view of things and it seems like this mission now, looking forward, is something a little bit like fakebook's grown up.</s>ZUCKERBERG: When I look at the greatest opportunities and challenges for our generation, things like stopping climate change, ending disease, stopping climate change, those are things he no one group or country can do by themselves. So we have to build a world where people can come together to take on these big meaningful efforts. That change won't happen top-down. There's no one in the world that can snap their fingers and make that happen. We need to empower things like church groups and neighborhood groups and groups of people who love dogs and new moms and dads. Those are the groups that bring people together. And once people are coming together in these smaller groups, that grows, and it ends up with much bigger changes in the world.</s>SEGALL: So how exactly do you do that?</s>ZUCKERBERG: If what you're trying to do is run a group that has thousands of people, you need tools to help manage that. That's what we're announcing today. We have 300 people who have built the strongest communities on Facebook. A woman here, named Lola, started the secret group called Female In (ph). She started it. She describes it as a no judgment support group for women to talk about whatever issues matter the most to them, whether it's issues in their marriage, their job or health or anything. And what she's found is that people come and start talking about basic issues, but then it actually has given people an outlet for really important things too. And now they come and talk about domestic violence, and within minutes, she says people get thousands of messages of support, offers of places to stay, and help with child care. She didn't start off try to build a community that was going to change the culture around domestic violence, but when you give people a way to connect, that's the kind of thing this can lead to. So that's what we want to try to unlock in the world. Our view is, if we can build those tools and give more people like Lola in the world the power to build those communities, it's going to be a better place.</s>SEGALL: Take me inside Mark Zuckerberg's head to the moment you decided to change fakebook's core mission. Was there an event that happened or a moment you said we got to change something?</s>ZUCKERBERG: Well, for most of the last 10 years this idea that the world should be more connected was not very controversial but now I think there are starting to be people who question whether that is good. There's been this evolution where for me and a lot of the people I work with at Facebook, we feel like giving people a voice is a really important thing to do but it's not enough to give people a voice, you have to build common ground so that way people can move forward together and aren't sharing a lot of different opinions. You have to help reconcile that so people can come together as well. That's a lot of the responsibility we feel now, and the mission that we want to take on for the next 10 years of the company.</s>SEGALL: We keep hearing we've never been more divided, more polarized. Was it the political climate that led to this awakening?</s>ZUCKERBERG: I think it's the feeling that simply connecting the world is not enough. You have to do proactive work to bring people together. You need to do work to help build enough common ground so we can make progress as a society together. You want to help people stay connect would the people they know and care about and make it so people get access to new people and new perspectives, too. We're going to do everything we were before, to connect friends and family and help people share, but now we also want to help people build communities and other ways they can connect and help people bond and come together and spread tolerance and a lot of the values I think we all want to see in the world.</s>SEGALL: How do you do that, because technology, to a degree, is always promised to help us discover and help us learn? There's also the question of, does it make us more insular? Is information being hijacked and spread? As you making the community of Facebook, these communities, how do you make sure they remain a place for authenticity and real discourse?</s>ZUCKERBERG: People are connecting over something they have in common and there's lot of research that shows if you want to engage on issues that you disagree on, things that society is divided on, the first thing you need do is connect over your common humanity. It could be we both have families or we both like a TV show together or the Chicago Cubs or whatever it is. So bringing people together and creating these communities is a lot of what we can do to help create more civil and productive debate of the bigger issues as well.</s>SEGALL: What have you learned from the spread of information or what have you learned to make sure that people can really connect?</s>ZUCKERBERG: I mean, the biggest thing that I've learned as I've travelled around is that great communities have great leaders who are engaged and feel an ownership of taking care of the people in their groups. One of the things we can do is empower leaders and all these folks who want to start communities around the world to do this.</s>SEGALL: You spent a good amount of time traveling around the country, at the dinner table with people in Ohio, going to factories. Are we as divided as it seems?</s>ZUCKERBERG: On some political issues, I think we are. But on more things than are usually covered, we are not. People have lot of the same interests. A lot of people like the same sports teams and bond over the same things in their neighborhoods. We all want the same things for our families and the people we care about. And one of the things that has been inspiring to me is I've seen people I might disagree with but you really come away with a feeling that people genuinely do care about helping and caring for other people. And that gives me a lot of faith.</s>SEGALL: Facebook is nearing two billion users. So how do you insure for the next billion that Facebook is a good place for democracy?</s>ZUCKERBERG: We want to give everyone in the world a voice to express what matters to them and bring people to together to solve important challenges. One of the things we need do is help connect the other half of the world to the Internet and you and I probably take that for granted. But for a lot of people in a lot of parts of the world, just having access to share your opinion or send a message to your partner or your friend or learn what the prices are for products at the market. Those are important things that a lot of people don't have an equal opportunity and access to do. There are lot of things we can do to solve this. We're building technology like solar powered planes to beam down Internet access or in the middle of a rain forest. We're working on new business models to do this. This remains one of the things that I'm most excited about for the next decade and beyond, just unlocking access to the Internet for the next three or four billion people. If we can do that, all these folks who, today, don't have the tools to start businesses or create new tools, they'll now be able to make our lives better, too. And that's going to be a very powerful thing.</s>VAUSE: He has very grand plans and a big vision.</s>WALKER: And yeah, he's doing well for himself with those visions.</s>VAUSE: Absolutely. We will finish now with our top story, the tale of the tapes.</s>WALKER: And the president's admission there are no recordings of his conversations with the FBI director, and that has his critics and supporters all fired up. Here's our Jeanne Moos.</s>JEANNE MOOS, CNN ANTIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Tapes? What tapes? As President Trump shrugs this one off, Twitter reaction ranged from a laid back, "Oh," to, "Are you kidding? You literally threatened Comey with tapes and now you say you don't have them?" "The man's mind games are exhausting," tweeted someone else. Sorry Mr. Comey.</s>COMEY: Lordy, I hope there are tapes.</s>MOOS: The actual Trump tapes, according to this tweet, "are duct, scotch and masking, all misspelled." The president's supporters fired back. "Trump did what was necessary to make Lyin' Jim Comey speak the truth." Tweeted another defender, "Lordy, POTUS just bluffed one of the most powerful men in the world, and it paid off. Imagine playing poker against Trump." Actually, he revealed his hand early.</s>UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Are there tapes, sir?</s>TRUMP: Oh, you're going to be disappointed when you hear the answer. Don't worry.</s>MOOS: Maybe disappointed isn't the right word.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I mean, this is nutty.</s>MOOS: You've got to keep your eyes on the magician's hands at all times. "I never believed there were tapes but now Trump says there weren't any, I'm not so sure."</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Donald Trump is a national version of Candy Crush, wasting our time whether we like it or not.</s>MOOS: Some Trump critics took the president admitting the obvious in stride. "It's OK. He'll take care of it." Referring to special counsel, Robert Mueller. After the president tweeted, "I did not make and do not have any such recordings," one critic used a previous Trump tweet to reply, "What a load of covfefe." Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York.</s>TRUMP: P, P, P. Yes?</s>VAUSE: Covfefe, indeed. You've been watching CNN NEWSROOM, live from Los Angeles. I'm John Vause.</s>WALKER: And I'm Amara Walker. It's getting late. I can't even say my name. The news continues to Natalie Allen right after this.</s>VAUSE: This is your last night.</s>WALKER: It's been lovely.</s>VAUSE: You're heading back.</s>WALKER: Yes. Back to Atlanta.</s>VAUSE: OK. Safe travels.</s>WALKER: Thank you.