Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a message for Donald Trump: Stop dividing people.
Kicking off the company's annual F8 developer conference, Zuckerberg outlined Facebook's mission more articulately than he ever has, saying the social network stands for "connecting every person. Giving every person a voice." He paired the vision with a broader call for inclusion and openness, indirectly subtweeting the likes of Trump for "building walls, and distancing people they label as others."
SEE ALSO:How to watch Mark Zuckerberg's keynote at the Facebook F8 conference"It takes courage to choose hope over fear," Zuckerberg said. "You have to be optimistic to think that you can change the world."
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In public statements, Zuckerberg previously was content to simply say Facebook's mission was "to make the world more open and connected." In recent years, however, he's been more vocal about how Facebook's mission can improve the lives of various people in the world, particularly with Internet.org and the company's recent projects like AI-assisted access for the blind.
F8 is Facebook's annual developer conference. Although it's developer-focused, the company uses it as a platform to showcase larger projects like drones, chatbots for Messenger, and 360-degree video. At this year's F8, Zuckerberg outlined Facebook's roadmap for the next 10 years, a vision of the future where virtual reality and artificial intelligence factor highly.
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You can listen to Zuckerberg's speech below. His begins his outline of Facebook's mission at about the 2-minute mark.
Here's transcript of the beginning of Zuckerberg's speech:
We stand for connecting every person -- for a global community, for bringing people together, for giving all people a voice, for a free flow of ideas and culture across nations. And this idea of connecting the world has gotten stronger over the last century. You can now travel almost anywhere in the world in less than a day. Countries trade more openly and cooperate more easily than ever.
And the Internet has enabled all of us to access and share more ideas and information than ever before. We've gone from a world of isolated communities to one global community, and we are all better off for it.
But now, as I look around and as I travel around the world, I'm starting to see people and nations turning inward -- against this idea of a connected world and a global community. I hear fearful voices calling for building walls and distancing people they label as "others." For blocking free expression, for slowing immigration, reducing trade, and, in some cases around the world, even cutting access to the Internet.
It takes courage to choose hope over fear -- to say that we can build something and make it better than it has ever been before. You have to be optimistic to think that you can change the world. And people will always call you naïve, but it's this hope, and this optimism that is behind every important step forward.
Our lives are connected. And whether we're welcoming a refugee fleeing war or an immigrant seeking new opportunity, whether we're coming together to fight global disease like Ebola or to address climate change, I hope that we have the courage to see that the path forward is to bring people together, not push people apart -- to connect more, not less.
We are one global community: The mother in India who wants to work so her family can have a better life, the father in the US that wants a cleaner planet for his children, the daughter in Sierra Leone who just needs basic healthcare and education so she can stay safe and reach her full potential, and that young boy in Syria who is doing the best he can with the cards he's been dealt to find a good path forward in the world.
And we, sitting here today, are part of this community too. And if the world starts to turn inwards, then our community will just have to work even harder to bring people together. And that's why I think the work we are all doing is so important. Because we can actually give more people a voice. Instead of building walls, we can help people build bridges. And instead of dividing people, we can help bring people together.
We do it one connection at a time, one innovation at a time, day after day after day. And that's why I think the work we're all doing together is more important now than it's ever been before.
BONUS: Turns out maybe Donald Trump could turn off the Internet if elected
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