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How do you ruffle the feathers of Facebook’s billionaire co-founder and CEO? Assume he’s always scheming ways to make more money.
Mark Zuckerberg hosted a public Q&A session with Facebook users in Bogotá, Colombia, on Wednesday (you can watch it below). Zuckerberg took questions on everything from his knowledge of Colombian culture (not very high) to Internet.org and his plan to bring Internet access to everyone in the world.
Included among his answers were two instances where Zuckerberg voiced some frustration.
“One of the things that makes me sad when I read it is when people interpret our actions through the lens of, ‘oh they’re just trying to do that to make money,'” he said, pointing specifically to Internet.org as an example. People have accused Facebook of trying to bring Internet access to the masses simply because it will bring more people to Facebook.
“If what I cared about was making more money, I’d take the people who are working on Internet.org … and have them go work on our ads product,” he said.
In the same vein, Zuckerberg also addressed the company’s philosophy when it comes to operating in countries with free speech issues or oppressive governments. Sometimes Facebook plays nice with these countries by removing posts that violate their laws, choosing to censor users versus getting banned from the country.
Those decisions are made to keep Facebook up for as many people as possible as a communication tool, Zuckerberg said, not because Facebook simply wants to make more money. He said the unfair assumption is that Facebook only cares about operating in as many countries as possible.
“There are plenty of countries that we’re not in, and our business is doing just fine,” said Zuckerberg. “Believe me, we’re good.”
Given that Zuckerberg leads a publicly traded company that reports to shareholders each month, you could understand why people assume (hope?) that Facebook’s decisions are driven by the bottom line. Apparently, that’s not always the case.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
