Facebook’s new mission statement: ‘bring the world closer’

Facebook is no longer just about "connecting the world". Its chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has written a new mission statement: to "give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together".

Zuckerberg has been rethinking Facebook’s role, reacting to the rise of isolationism and nationalism, and the decline of membership in local community groups around the world.

"Our mission of connecting people, that was not supposed to be controversial," Zuckerberg said in an interview with Bloomberg. "So now the question is, why is that a controversial thing, and how do you rebuild that?"

New community tools

The new mission statement was unveiled at Facebook's first Communities Summit in Chicago on Tuesday. The event was designed to teach 300 moderators to use Facebook's new community tools.

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Zuckerberg announced several new tools to Facebook’s Groups service. The features are aimed at giving moderators, the unpaid organisers of groups on Facebook, more power to police groups from spam and hate speech. Facebook aims to have 1 billion people involved in “meaningful groups”.