As New York-born Mark Zuckerberg turned 36 on Thursday, Indians took to Twitter to wish the social networking moghul a happy birthday with a varied range of emotions.
While some Indians expressed their heartfelt gratitude to the father of Facebook for revolutionising social networking, others hilariously tagged him as the “don” of social media and “the one who knows it all” – taking a satirical dig at numerous user data collection and personal data breach scandals Facebook has been involved in since 2018.
With thousands of mentions, #MarkZuckerberg and #HappyBirthdayMarkZuckerberg are the trending hashtags on Twitter in India.
Happy Birthday to the father of social media #MarkZuckerberg pic.twitter.com/y6LUtF1pvl
— KKworld (@KKworld5) May 14, 2020
#MarkZuckerberg
— Mahavir Singh🚩राष्ट्रवादी🚩💯% (@Mahavir20287079) May 14, 2020
The man who connected the whole world with social media..may you live long🎂🎂♥️♥️🙏🙏
@facebook pic.twitter.com/mVbPCbLrS9
Wishing Birthday to the man who knows everything about everyone.#MarkZuckerberg pic.twitter.com/i2nXOezCq0
— Dr. Tushar Sharma (@tushar_sharma07) May 14, 2020
A Guy who knows everything about You Even Your Birthday 😂
— Javed Khan (@officialsjaved) May 14, 2020
Happy Birthday #MarkZuckerberg pic.twitter.com/dYYNsEY52K
#MarkZuckerberg
— Mujtaba Mohammad (@koiCHAIpilado) May 14, 2020
Birthday wishes to the Zuckerberg.
BTW dads waiting to smash your head for running their kids studies.🙃 pic.twitter.com/SNa2f4ufg0
Happy birthday mark Zuckerberg🥳🥳
— Ayush Mishra (@Mr__Ayushmishra) May 14, 2020
Well I just wished happy birthday to a friend in dm so just want to make this one separately to create no confusion.😇😇#MarkZuckerberg
Between Facebook’s launch in 2004 and 2020, Zuckerberg journeyed from being just another Harvard student to a multi-billionaire entrepreneur and tech mogul whose net worth stands at over $76 billion.
In 2018, it was revealed that Facebook had exposed the personal data of around 87 million users to a British data analysis firm Cambridge Analytica, violating its users’ trust and privacy. American watchdog the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) slapped Facebook with a $5 billion fine as a result of the breach.
The major scandal was followed by multiple incidences where Facebook was found to be exposing information to third parties.
For instance, in November 2019, the social networking giant revealed that at least 100 app developers may have been accessing its user-data records for months. Previously, the media had also reported that Facebook was trying to bribe Indian students to sell their data to the company – which was aimed at improving ad-targeting of its users.
Amid all the controversies, India is one of the largest consumers of Zuckerberg’s "babies" – Facebook, photo-messaging app Instagram and instant messaging app WhatsApp – with nearly 300 million, 88 million and 400 million users respectively.
The huge popularity of his family of apps in the country has recently drawn a fresh wave of attraction for Zuckerberg who invested a hefty $5.7 billion in Indian telco Reliance Jio, which, with over 370 million users is India’s largest mobile network operator.
In a video message, Zuckerberg revealed that Facebook now owns a 9.99 percent stake in Jio, making the US-based company the largest minority stakeholder in the Indian company.
