You Can Block Any Facebook User Except Mark Zuckerberg
The title of this post kind of says it all. As pointed out by blockzuck.com, you can block anyone on Facebook except CEO Mark Zuckerberg. If you try to do it (we did), you'll get a message saying “General Block failed error: Block failed.”
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook had just introduced Facebook Places, a location-sharing feature whose privacy implications were already drawing attention. Against that backdrop, an exception to a basic account-control tool matters because it exposes a gap between the platform's user-facing controls and their application to its own chief executive.
The earlier corpus coverage offers little broader product history, but the failure is concrete: Facebook users can use blocking against other accounts, not Mark Zuckerberg's.
First-order effects
- Facebook users cannot use the platform's blocking control to prevent contact from Mark Zuckerberg, while Zuckerberg's account is exempt from a safeguard available against other users.
- Facebook faces an immediate credibility problem around the consistency of its privacy and safety controls as Places expands the kinds of information users can share.
Second-order effects
- Privacy critics examining Places gain a specific example of why Facebook's stated controls need to be tested for exceptions, not merely whether the controls exist.
- Facebook's product and trust teams are pressured to clarify whether the failure is an intentional account exception or a defect, because either explanation affects confidence in user-controlled permissions.
Third-order effects
- If executive accounts receive different treatment from ordinary accounts, social-network governance shifts toward opaque privilege tiers rather than uniform user protections.
- The episode points to operational permissioning as a core test for social platforms: safety and privacy controls are credible only when their rules apply consistently across powerful accounts.
The trend: As social networks add more sensitive sharing features, scrutiny is shifting from the presence of privacy controls to whether those controls apply equally to every account.