Mark Zuckerberg has revealed he shut down his seven-year-old daughter when she told him she wants to grow up to be like Taylor Swift.
The Meta CEO told the Acquired podcast that following in the popstar’s footsteps is ‘not available’ to his middle child August Chan Zuckerberg.
The father-of-three made the remarks as part of a wider point he was making on the importance of originality and authenticity in the tech sphere.
‘One day, my daughter. We took her to a Taylor Swift concert and she was like, ‘You know Dad, I kind of want to be like Taylor Swift when I grow up’,’ Zuckerberg told podcast hosts Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal.
‘I was like, “But you can’t. That’s not available to you”,’ he continued.
She thought about it and she’s like, “Alright when I grow up I want people to want to be like August Chan Zuckerberg”. And I was like, “Hell yeah. Hell yeah”.’
Zuckerberg, 40, has been a longtime fan of fellow billionaire Swift, 34.
He posted about attending her Eras Tour in Santa Clara in July last year, along with his wife Priscilla and their daughters.
He shared a photo of himself decked out in the kind of face gems and friendship bracelets which became synonymous with the tour.
He posted the picture along with the caption, ‘Life of a girl dad’, followed by another of him checking emails on the way to the event.
The couple share three daughters: Maxima, eight, August and Aurelia, 13 months.
He made the comments about Swift in response to a question about what advice he would give to tech entrepreneurs.
‘Do something you care about,’ Zuckerberg said. ‘If you are trying to pattern out strategy learn as quickly as you can.
‘But part of what I’m trying to say is I think there are different ways to build stuff. Our way worked for me and our team, but different things have clearly worked for other companies.’
Zuckerberg took to Instagram to post about his experience appearing on the podcast.
‘Fun night with at the Chase Center talking lessons from the early days and what’s coming in the next decade of social, technology and AI,’ he said.
Zuckerberg has recently been given the go ahead to train his new Meta AI technology using billions of British Facebook and Instagram posts.
Meta had not launched its AI tools in the UK or EU due to regulator concerns.
Discussions with the EU remain in deadlock. But Meta said the UK would now allow it to harvest billions of public posts and images.
Meta said it would not use people’s private messages, or material from under-18s.
Zuckerberg was recently honored as part of TIME magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in AI.
