Before you go, “Whoa there, Kara,” let me just say that the horse is already out of the barn, whether the famed entrepreneur knows it yet or not.

He is not going to go in quite the same way that we’re used to seeing leaders exit the stage — up and then out. Because of his controlling stock, Zuckerberg will continue to wield all the real power at Facebook for as long as he wants. But the era of his being the adored dear leader and cultural touchstone at the company is effectively over.

Facebook staff members used to be considered the most docile in Silicon Valley; no one ever leaked. But the endless stream of internal employee communications contained in the many thousands of documents provided by the whistle-blower Frances Haugen makes clear that a number of rank-and-file Facebookers have had it. One wrote, “It’s not normal for a large number of people in the ‘make the site safe’ team to leave saying, ‘hey, we’re actively making the world worse FYI.’”

Haugen has managed the rollout of the revelations as if it were the invasion of Normandy. The effort has been highly coordinated, from the big reveal in a Wall Street Journal series to her plain-spoken “60 Minutes” interview and the recent creation of a consortium of news organizations, which includes The New York Times, to examine the documents.

She has also projected moral clarity. Testifying before a Senate subcommittee and British Parliament, she said enough to be devastating but not so much that she tarnished her sincere and pristine image. Telling a Times columnist that she’s not relying on any organization’s financial support because she made some well-timed cryptocurrency investments is the chef’s kiss of the whole affair.

But Haugen is not the point here. She has shown us that the management of Facebook has been tone-deaf and uncaring about the harm that its own research showed its products were doing, despite ensuing pleas from concerned employees.

While past accusations that Facebook and Zuckerberg care about profits and growth over safety sometimes fell flat — Wall Street certainly hasn’t had a problem with the company — it’s a message that’s less easily ignored now. It comes at a moment when there’s uncertainty about the future of democracy. Whether you are on the noisy right or left or just quietly miserable in the center, there is a sense that something is awry in this nation and this world and someone or something must be to blame.

It wouldn’t be fair to put the woes of humanity entirely on Facebook’s shoulders. But it is unquestionable that it is handing powerful tools to the obviously malevolent and not doing enough to mitigate the inevitable damage. That’s the parental equivalent of giving a knife to a toddler and hoping for the best. “History will not judge us kindly,” wrote one employee about Facebook’s handling of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

And as the documents show, the company is not just negligent; it is actively making things worse. For example, it removed safeguards it put in place before the U.S. elections that limited misinformation on the platform. So Facebook is not the hey-we’re-just-a-platform player it likes to pretend it is.

Zuckerberg’s belligerent attitude during the social media giant’s earnings call yesterday suggests that he’s facing a new level of pressure. This would normally be the time for the patented apology that he rolled out whenever times got tough before. No longer. He and the company’s P.R. machine are whirring and clicking with indignation and bile. “My view is that what we’re seeing is a coordinated effort to selectively use the leaked documents to paint a false picture of our company,” Zuckerberg said.

Which brings us back to the C.E.O. job. According to numerous sources, Facebook will move to shift its corporate structure this week, creating a holding company with a benign name and Zuckerberg at the top. (Meta has been suggested, but it might end up being even more anodyne.) As I wrote last week, this is what Google did when it morphed into Alphabet. Moving Zuckerberg out of harm’s way is perhaps the smartest strategy, since he has, like most founders, become the personification of the problem. We need time to forget his shortcomings (many) and rediscover his attributes (also many). A new C.E.O. would run the flagship Facebook division and take all the incoming.

The best move would be to bring in someone who is not part of the suffocating inner circle that Zuckerberg has created over the past decade. This group is made up of people who are in constant agreement. They have bragged to me about their longevity and how they could finish one another’s sentences. Can someone from this gang be counted on to make much-needed changes?

But I doubt Zuckerberg could tolerate a smooth outsider coming in — someone like Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith — who would move to distance himself or herself from the mess and declare that he or she was just there to clean up the wonderful land of Facebook. Instead, I imagine that Zuckerberg would pick someone from the inside whom he already trusts.

One possibility is Adam Bosworth, a longtime executive who was just elevated to chief technology officer. Or Chris Cox, the chief product officer, who is an exceedingly earnest techie who returned to Facebook after leaving for a year. He has a clean persona, despite having been along for most of the ride. One dark horse might be David Marcus, another quieter executive, who has been overseeing Facebook’s financial services products.

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The person who I think is unlikely to take over is the current C.O.O., Sheryl Sandberg, who, after a stellar upward trajectory for most of her career, has also become tainted. As Zuckerberg’s longtime No. 2, she’s the Icarus of Facebook. Putting her in the main seat will not fix what’s broken at the company or signal to a now impatient line of regulators that Facebook is ready to change. A restructuring would be an opportunity for her to exit quietly with some grace.

Of course, Zuckerberg could also stand pat and hope for the best, as he has before. Wall Street still loves him. His financial results shine. And his curiously silent board — not one member has made a peep since this whole mess got started — is a willing accomplice to whatever he wants. Most of all, he is a very stubborn man.

There is surely more to be revealed from Haugen’s documents, and perhaps there will be more investigations. At this point, there is already blood in the social media waters, which can only mean sharks. And the thing about sharks, which Zuckerberg knows well from his love of surfing, is that you never see them coming until it is too late.

KARA SWISHER | COLUMNIST

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So, I knew that the new Bond film, “No Time to Die,” would be one of the few films that I would risk Covid for (more on that here). I went to the theater last weekend in my KN95 mask to see the 25th movie in this iconic franchise.

It’s only my second film in person in nearly two years. I know this from opening the Fandango app, which tells me that I last bought movie tickets on Jan. 5, 2020 (four seats for “Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker”). The app, in fact, tells the story of the pandemic and, more important, a trend that started way before we were locked down.

I saw 14 movies in 2018 in the theater, six in 2019, and only two in 2020, both during holiday breaks with my kids. And for 2021, I am now at two, “No Time to Die” and “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.” It’s fair to say my moviegoing pattern reflects a larger trend: More and more, people are watching movies at home.

I’ve been having debates with a lot of Hollywood types in recent months on this shift in consumer habits, insisting that the tide has turned against analog theaters in favor of the home movie-watching experience. That includes in a lively interview I just did with Ari Emanuel, the chief executive of Endeavor, the giant entertainment agency whose business has moved far beyond talent representation to live events and more.

Emanuel has been a real cheerleader for the theatrical experience, insisting to me that “the movie business is not going away.” To underscore that, he’s called me several times to crow about big box office returns for some recent films, like “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” which did $141 million in the domestic box office in 10 days.

More important, Emanuel pointed out, two-thirds of the “Venom” tickets were sold to people under 35 years old. Impressive, Ari, but you’re giving me examples of movies that are best viewed in a big, raucous crowd, and these types of films are few and far between.

“No Time to Die,” however, brought in less than expected at the box office — $56 million for the weekend — despite a lot of marketing and hype. One reason for the smaller number might be that Bond films attract an older crowd (some two thirds of the ticket buyers were over 35, by one estimate). And, even with Covid hesitancy, the Bond performance is an indication of a trend of decline: The opening weekend for “No Time to Die” was 20 percent lower than the opening weekend for the previous Bond film, “Spectre,” which was down 20 percent from the one before that, “Skyfall.”

It might just be that Bond is a fading franchise. Yet I think that many consumers, like me, are being pickier about what they venture out for during the pandemic. And many, too, have changed their view of their home: It’s now seen as the true center of their lives, a trend we also see in new approaches to retail and work, and thus, often a better place to watch a film. (It’s here I should mention that I’m working on a limited-series podcast about the show “Succession” for HBO, which is part of WarnerMedia and a major player in the streaming wars).

When it comes to entertainment, viewers are increasingly using a range of digital tools, from mobile phones to large televisions with on-demand service, that don’t include movie theaters. My own teen sons leap from one device to the next effortlessly, but could not be coaxed into going to the theater last weekend, even though I stuffed the offer full of chicken wings and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. And these were kids raised regularly going to the theater.

Still, without them — “Sorry, Ma!” — I trekked to the AMC multiplex in Georgetown, and I was thrilled to be there. Curiously, the Bond film made an interesting turn away from cool gadgetry, one of the go-to elements in the series’ long history. This time I could count the cool tech on one hand, and some of it has been used before: a bionic eye, a watch that shorts things out, cars with a lot of weaponry. The only fresh tech I noticed was an unfolding gravity plane that turned into a submarine, which also did not even feel especially new, and some magnetized suits that allowed the villains to jump down an elevator shaft.

“Sure, Bond gets a cool watch, a classic bulletproof (and gun-equipped) Aston Martin, and he rides in something called a gravity plane,” Engadget wrote, but the gadgets “come few and far in between. Instead, the film focuses on Bond’s human drama: his inability to trust; his persistent death-wish; the danger he brings to others.” In other words, gadgets don’t kill people, Bond does.

Kara Swisher | Columnist

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Maybe there are no real lessons in this story for Americans. No U.S. government — or any other democratic one — is inclined (or able) to do what the Chinese government is doing to rein in tech companies. And by “rein in” I mean this: The Chinese government appears to be taking control of significant parts of the industry.

Everyone who covers tech has long been aware that the Chinese tech phenoms — including Tencent, Alibaba, Huawei, JD.com, Baidu, Xiaomi and Lenovo — have worked with their government in ways that the big American tech companies have not done with the U.S. leadership.

But the power that the Chinese government has held over its tech firms has always been mostly implicit: No company made a big move without first considering how the Communist Party leadership would react.

But what was once implicit has become explicit. In the last several months, we’ve seen a laundry list of new regulations appear, beginning with the suspension of Ant Group’s I.P.O. at the end of last year.

(Ant, of course, was the brainchild of China’s most famous tech hero, Jack Ma, an energetic chatterbox of an entrepreneur — good luck trying to get a word in edgewise in an interview — who has essentially been silenced. Imagine a stifled Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk combined and you get the general idea.)

The Chinese government has aimed antimonopoly legislation at its powerful platform companies and has enacted stringent data and cybersecurity laws, along with high fines for violators. The government has also stopped companies from signing up users and cracked down on how money is raised abroad.

The leadership has also sought to limit the use of some tech by consumers. For example, companies have been forced to restrict the use of gaming apps by young people to a few hours a week and only on weekends. Strict regulations on celebrity fan clubs have been put in place.

The goal appears to be to reduce social unrest (or the potential for unrest) by targeting the addictive nature of tech, which was clear when Chinese state media called video gaming “spiritual opium.”

Some of the changes in China would be good in any country — privacy and data laws are much needed globally, especially in the United States. And who doesn’t agree that we all should put down our tech devices more often?

But the by-fiat nature of what China has done makes for an unstable situation. No surprise: These government moves have knocked a reported $1.5 trillion off the value of the Chinese companies because of uncertainty about what will come next.

Chinese regulators have sought to assuage those worried investors. One top Chinese official reportedly said at a recent gathering with Wall Street executives that the government still encouraged innovation and the tech sector in general.

Overall, that appears to be true, since the government has placed big bets across the map, like on artificial intelligence. So, too, in the genetic area, which is ripe for opportunity — and abuse.

In a “Sway” interview with me this week, the chief executive of 23andMe, Anne Wojcicki, underscored that the race with China is on: “There’s an information war that’s going on with respect to understanding the human genome. And China absolutely recognized that, and they want to win it. They are sprinting ahead,” she said.

“They have Beijing Genome Institute, they are sequencing huge numbers of people, they collect medical — I mean, they’re doing a lot. And so the U.S., frankly, is just behind.”

It remains to be seen if a stronger Chinese tech market will emerge from this increase in regulation, but the implications for what happens here in the United States are profound.

American tech leaders have long pointed to the expansion of Chinese tech companies as a reason to keep U.S. companies big. But if the Chinese tech companies are subject to such overwhelming regulation and end up still performing well, what excuse will the U.S. firms have?

Obviously, such regulation here needs to be done democratically, which favors the tech giants, since democracy is so slow-moving and disputatious. But, as I noted above, it’s inevitable, and China might be showing the path forward.

KARA SWISHER | COLUMNIST

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