From the very first moment of this project, I hoped I would manage to interview Mark Zuckerberg specifically for this book, and that’s why I requested it. I told a representative of the company’s public relations that in our collective imagination, the CEO of Facebook, whom I have interviewed many times over the past years and have seen testify in front of the US Congress for ten hours in 2018, has become something like the ultimate demon. This book could be an opportunity to look again at the important moments in Facebook’s history and see what we didn’t fully understand at the time we were living through them.

I had many difficult questions to ask him, but I could start with an easier one. Why did he want to buy Instagram? I don’t want the answer he gave on his blog, but the more personal story. What were the steps and reasons that led him to decide, on a Tuesday in April 2012, to pick up the phone and initiate a process to acquire the business as soon as possible? And not just to buy it, but to commit to keeping it independent?

A month before completing my manuscript, I received an email from Facebook’s public relations, which contained an answer to this question. It could even be attributed to Zuckerberg himself: “It’s simple. It was a great service, and we wanted to help it grow.” He had nothing else to say on the matter, that was all.