Genuine question: Did Zuckerberg badmouth India? If so, I missed it. I thought he was just trying to distance himself from Andreessen's tweet. If so, I don't see how this is an instance of a ""Sorry for badmouthing x, I'm a huge fan of x" apology.
Zuck didn't, but his post is FB firefighting. When a company's most high-profile investor and board member starts a fire, the CEO puts it out. Whether or not you want to call it an apology is immaterial to the substance of my point: that kind of language comes across as incredibly insincere and patronizing.
Hmm. I think I see what you're getting at. It sounds like you're saying that you're put off by the tone of the apology itself, and not so much the quick reversal, which is what I had thought you were focusing on. Is that right? If so, how do you think it could have been improved? I personally found the comment (or apology, or whatever we should be calling it) pretty sincere sounding.
(By the way: I had forgotten that Andreessen was a board member and large investor. Thanks for reminding me.)
Just ditch the "I'm such a fan of India's amazing culture and people" bit. No you bloody well aren't. Has Mark Zuckerberg ever publicly written or said anything praising India's culture or people that wasn't part of facebook PR? He might like India, he might admire its culture and its people, but it's ever so slightly suspicious that the only time he mentions this fact is when he's doing damage control.
It reads like it was written by a crisis management team, and it probably was. Apologies are most effective when they both are and are perceived as being sincere. It's fine to say pmarca stuck his foot in his mouth, it's fine to say that his expressed views are not those of facebook, and it's fine to say that facebook sincerely believes that offering a limited version of the Internet to poor people, for free, will be a great emancipator. But I think it would be a more effective apology if it came across as heartfelt, and that means leaving out what really sounds like self-serving praise for India.
I think what really bugged me is that it came across as something a politician would say. It was insincere and designed to offend as few people as possible. Which I find offensive, because it's not how real people talk. It's like the audience is being talked down to.
