In 2011, at least a lifetime ago in internet years, Mark Zuckerberg resolved to only eat meat that he had killed himself. At the turn of this year he made the more prosaic pledge to “fix Facebook”. Yet he has contrived to get himself in a bloody mess all over again.

Despite everything that has changed in that period of turbo-charged technological development, there are some fundamental problems with the social network that remain unaddressed. Chief among them is Mark Zuckerberg.

If he is serious about fixing Facebook, Zuckerberg’s first move should be to admit he really needs help.

The social network’s reach is vast and its impact little understood anywhere, including in its own boardroom. If the Cambridge Analytica controversy has taught Zuckerberg anything (it is not yet clear that it has) it should be that as things stand his company cannot keep its own systems under control.

Facebook’s boardroom is fertile ground for Silicon Valley groupthink. Every director is steeped in the West Coast technology sector. There are three wise men of venture capitalism, the founder of LinkedIn, and one of the founders of WhatsApp, which Facebook bought for $22bn (£15bn) (the other founder has cut ties with the company and led the #deletefacebook campaign last week).