Zuckerbergs' New “Primary School”: Private but Free | Hacker News Reader

Zuckerbergs' New “Primary School”: Private but Free

csmonitor.com

74 pointsohmyiv76 comments

Perhaps I'm initially too cynical about what appears at face value to be selfless philanthropy, but I won't consider these efforts to be anything but self-serving unless they're willing to share data about their successes / failures with other educational institutions and governments.

How is this self-serving? How does it directly benefit Zuckerberg?

At the very least publicity.

$77.4 billion for the Department of Education across the entire US.

The article mentions that this $1 billion investment will go toward "free education and free healthcare for low-income students in the Palo Alto area".

So comparing the two it's obvious that the investment is going into an unsustainable model. The way I'm thinking about this, that could be for one of a few reasons.

1) They want to pour a lot of money into research and development to figure out how to improve education. Concentrate a bunch of money into one place to figure out how to improve the overall model.

2) They want to show how they can do better than public education system.

If they're after #1 I can see no reason why they wouldn't try to give back by sharing data from their research.

If they're after #2 then it's obvious they're simply creating a facade (an unsustainable "model" implementation of what primary education should look like). Depending on the results they'd be looking to sway public opinion that private sector can do better than government.

Needless to say, #1 is constructive, and #2 IMO is highly destructive.

Well, when the data looks like this... http://mathbabe.org/2012/03/06/the-value-added-teacher-model...

That could be embarrassing. "Objective" teacher performance measures all seem to be as bad as, if not worse than measuring programmer performance with SLOC.

Oddly enough it looks like the proposals he was trying to ram through in New Jersey look like a attempt at teacher union busting. Why Zuckerberg would involve himself in that is a bit of a mystery.

While he seems to be the public face, it could be that a lot of the money doesn't come from him.

Selflessness is not important. What's important is doing things that are beneficial to society. If you can also help yourself while doing that, there's no shame in that. That's great! Too many people spend their resources on the selfless pursuit of useless things.

The Milton Hershey model?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Hershey_School

(In case you don't notice, Milton Hershey's endowment is larger than that of most universities)

One-off private schools are never going to move the needle. Even Alt School only caters to folks who don't really need it. Is it really not possible for private industry to address public education? Perhaps "for profit" is just never going to work in education? Kipp?

> Perhaps "for profit" is just never going to work in education?

Well, government-run certainly isn't working, at least in the US. Charter schools (like Kipp) seem to be doing a lot better.

Unfortunately, when it comes to "state-run" institutions and policies, you're arguing against an ideal, rather than an implementation. I.e. You could argue it is some form of the no true Scotsman fallacy.

Additionally, there is a very prevalent and saturated belief in the current society that views anything with 'for profit' motives as somehow bad/greedy. Consequently, everything that is "non-profit" (including the state) regularly gets undeserved moral brownie points.

Public universities, public schools in "better" neighborhoods and public schools in other countries operate well. I think the commonality likely has to do with how devoted the constituents are.

Modern education in the West is mostly pomp and circumstance. Facts are extremely non-discriminatory; people can't help but learn things and absorb the information that's around them. A key to successful education is putting people in environments and circumstances where the information is so well-integrated that it's difficult NOT to absorb it. That basically means giving people something interesting and valuable to do, telling them to do it, and being there to show them how. The magic really kicks in once they begin to show each other.

We're focusing on the wrong things. You don't need a $50 million facility and $5 million of payroll per school to teach people stuff, and you don't have to pay everyone's medical bills. You need to have the learners do something of actual utility and value to both themselves and their immediate community so that they are properly engaged, and then you have to be there to communicate the information they need to fill the gap from "no idea" to "some idea", and the rest happens automatically. Virtually anyone who has written a program has followed this process.

It's best if the teacher is directly invested in the learners, like a parent or other close family member. They'll care much more about the individual child's success. I plan to home school my kids once they hit 3rd grade or so (I think those first few years of school are important for developing the social baseline).

If we actually care about educational quality, we need to get down to basics. As long as the dialogue on education is dominated by pension funds and zoning, it's a losing proposition.

One interesting concept used in some schools is that they will focus on only one topic for 2 or 3 weeks – and then another topic for the next weeks, and so on.

When you just focus on one topic for a few weeks you can go far more in depth, engage the students easier, do more complex group work instead of teachers telling them.

Even in normal school schedules it’s important than never (or close to never) the teacher actually teaches – the teacher can guide, but the students should work out how and why something works in groups. From math to history, from english to sports, this works far better, if students are able to discover and investigate on their own.

In France public schools are 100% free, and private catholic schools have teachers paid by the state + a per-student benefit, so that the remainder paid by families is 200-2000€/year. I find it nice since it promotes alternatives, in case there's a problem with the local school. Contents and efficiency are checked by the ministry, so they don't diverge very much. In Bretagne it's 50% private schools and in the south of France about 15%.

http://www.theprimaryschool.org/ Didn't see a link in the article.

So what model is this, I can't seem to tell exactly? Montessori, Sudbury, democratic, anarchistic free? Or just a traditional school with integrated daycare?

It seems to be a bit more structured than a free school model, more focused on personalization of lesson plans than total student choice. Someone on the New York Tech Meetup mailing list gave a pretty extensive answer:

>Hi everyone, I wanted to address because I think there's some confusion around the term "self-directed" learning as well as Altschobol's mission.

>Altschool is a network of microschools, founded by Max Ventilla - who worked on personalization at google. Through personalizing the learning process, Ventilla hopes to use technology to make the learning process cater to individual student's learning style and interests. They also have a sophisticated method of tracking student process.

>For example, a student who loves basketball might have the opportunity to learn about algebra as it relates to basketball. Personalized learning is quite different than "self-directed learning" where a student has autonomy over what subject they want to learn next.

>A "free school" which is what some of you seem to be referring to is generally a democratic school where students have complete control and autonomy over their own learning process. Far from being without structure, their is a complex set of rules and systems that are invented by the students themselves. Rather than reading "at level" the child has the opportunity to learn if and when they want to. Many boys do not learn to read until age 10, but they do eventually learn to read. Some children go on to college - others pursue different routes. Good examples are Sumerhill in the UK and Brooklyn Free School in Brooklyn. Direct observation and long-term studies have shown that this model can be incredibly successful if started at an early age- but when students enter a "Free school" as teens after being subjected to years of their willpower being squashed by authority figures, the change is too drastic and they flail around and often don't know how to negotiate their new found freedom. This is not the case, of course with every child.

>In the 21st century, the teacher's role as "purveyor of knowledge" is no longer necessary. Instead, the teacher is becoming a facilitator of knowledge. The knowledge is there and leaders like Sugata Mitra with his hole in the wall experiment and Sal Khan have demonstrated how far a child's natural curiosity can take them.

>Back to Altschool.

>Alt school was developed on the premise of three aspects being essential to productive learning 1) great teachers 2) individualized instruction 3) parent and community involvement in the learning process.

>Far from ignoring the indispensable role parents play in the learning process, Altschool hopes to use technology to breach the gap between what goes on at home and in the classroom. Furthermore, by 2016 they are planning on launching their first charter schools in an effort to redesign the entire public school system to be more agile, affordable, personalized and keep track of each student to prepare them to live happy, meaningful lives that make a contribution to the larger community.

>As a disclaimer, I am not affiliated with Altschool and do not know if they will be successful in their mission. However, I think it is a mistake to dismiss self-directed learning and free schools without fully looking into their unique advantages.

> Manisha, http://cottageclass.com

That's a lot of money for something that ostensibly already exists. This terribly busy website has a bit better content as to why they are doing this: http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/ci_29007119/faceboo...

Why is "Primary School" in quotes? Are you suggesting it isn't a primary school?

The name of the school is "The Primary School"

http://www.theprimaryschool.org/

Oh ok.

In many countries of the world, primary schools are schools that cater to classes between kindergarten and high/secondary school.

Calling a primary school "The Primary School" is like calling a brand of bottled water "The Bottled Water".

And who is calling their internet service, Internet? Oh, right, the same person.

What's next, Facebook?

Oh.....

It looks like the submitter (or a mod?) rewrote the title to try to make it clearer, and botched it. The actual title of the article is: "Inside Mark Zuckerberg's new school: Private, but free".

The name of the new school is "The Primary School". It looks like the title rewriter decided to try to put the name in the title, but left out the "The", resulting in the confusing title we now have.

A better rewrite, if the name must be incorporated, would have been "Inside Mark Zuckerber's new 'The Primary School': Private, but free" or "Inside Mark Zuckerber's 'The Primary School': Private, but free".

Clarification: It was a mod change. I left the title close to the original except I left out "Mark".

Interesting that the logo for The Primary School is nearly identical to that used by artist and printmaker Gustave Baumann[1]. I was just at a lecture about him today, and the speaker said it was probably taken from the International Order of Oddfellows who had some saying along the lines of "what you do with your hands, you should do with your heart".

[1] http://grainger-arts-and-crafts-studio.com/wp-content/upload...

If this works, can it be used as an example for better public schools? Even if it's more expensive, one can argue that the increased productivity of well educated kids outweighs the cost of their education.

Better models have been around for a long time, with traditional compulsory schooling being criticized by authors and educators such as John Taylor Gatto, John Holt, Ivan Illich, Charlotte Iserbyt, A.S. Neill and others.

There is no interest in them.

Zuck's approach appears to be only marginally better and almost entirely devoid of influence from alternative schooling.

same argument could be made for healthcare and higher education as well

Well if a single primary school needs 1 bln or anything close to it to operate that won't be scale able.

The question now would be how much improvement would there be due to actual new methods in delivering the education vs just pouring money onto the problem and cherry picking your students.

They did seem to open the school in a place that could benefit from it as far as the silicon valley area goes, EPO didn't receive as much benefit from the valley as some other areas, Belle Haven is a mixed bag with it being quite popular with silicon valley folks that are looking to find a big enough house for a family but can't afford more sought after locations.

The only grief I really have with this program is that they did not publish their acceptance policy online which doesn't bode well for transparency in that aspect, so cherry picking and gating might be a problem here as well.

Their management team and staff has more accreditations than some school districts combine probably, they have a huge capital investment, so the school should do rather well, but I'm really not sure how much impact it can have in the long term.

  Well if a single primary school needs 1 bln or anything close to it to
  operate that won't be scale able.

Just to clarify, Zuckerburg has spent over a billion on education related grants and other gifts since 2010, but no one knows what he has spent on this one school. I can't see how he could have spent anywhere close to a billion dollars. Unfortunately the writing is fairly poor so I'm not even sure how many students this school will serve from which to guesstimate a cost.

FTA:

  Chan did not tell the Mercury News how much she and her husband are contributing
  to The Primary School, but when it is fully built, it will serve 50 students 
  in 14 grades (pre-K through 12) plus the families of their 700 students.

Their new school seems to follow the community school model. Community schools provide classes for parents, wrap around services, dental, medical, social workers, etc. They are fairly popular in urban school districts, though their efficacy hasn't really been proven (though nothing truly ever is in K-12 edu).

Anything any rich person wants to do to improve education, I'm for it. The system is so broken for so many people that I welcome any attempt at reform. And the rich have the best chance of fighting the entrenched interests that prohibit improvements to education.

That's great for the community, but in a larger sense we should question what the point is of amassing huge concentrated wealth and then giving a small part (or even a large part) back to make isolated positive impacts. Wouldn't it be better if it was impossible to amass that concentration of wealth in the first place? Then the token donations would not be necessary. This is not supposed to be a cynical post, but this pattern is indicative of a general problem with the system.

I think there's a good argument to be made that personally accumulated wealth spent on experimental projects such as this one is used better than if it were taxed and added to the relatively enormous federal budget. DoD yearly spend is greater than 10x of Zuck's net worth, after all.

You're pushing a false dichotomy of personal wealth or Federal income tax. It would be much easier and effective to simply preempt the concentration of such wealth in the first place by ensuring more equitable salaries across the workforce. No onerous redistribution necessary.

How would you force employers to pay their employees equitable salaries? What if a job isn't worth that much to an employer?

Turn the question around - how do you force employees to accept horrible salaries?

You make sure there is no job safety so they are scared to ask for a raise. You make sure there is no good social safety net, so they fear for losing their job. You make sure the employees cannot effectively organize to present a more effective bargaining force.

And you get people to believe that a business model that can't pay its employees an equitable salary should still be allowed to continue.

I completely agree. My point was that, without some extra source of money, forcing employers to pay a particular salary won't work. We need to make it possible to live without a salary.

You may agree in principle, but you are using terms like "forcing employers" which contains a built-in bias. Here's the same question with a different bias: "How do you restore power to the employees so they get equitable salaries?"

Your question assumes that what we have now is natural, and that force is required to change things.

If the shop owner's thumb has been pushing down on the scales for years, then the solution is not that the customer needs to apply an opposite force to balance thing out, but the shop owner needs to stop applying force.

(Okay, applying a counter-force, as in Leslie Thrasher's "Tipping the Scales", would be a short-term solution, but it's also an easily corrupted one, and it makes most of the people feel like they are being ripped off.)

To start the answer to my question, first remove so-called "right-to-work" laws, or at least the legal requirement that non-members can "force unions to provide without compensation grievance services that are paid for by union members." (Quoting Wikipedia Right-to-work_law#Unfairness .) There's plenty more, but it's a belabored topic that you can easily find elsewhere.

Check out basic income.

Then the job is not worth doing. Ditch digging and filling has zero productive utility. If there is something someone wants done, but they value it so little its not worth the time to provide another human with a living wage, it is not work worthy of being done. If it actually mattered to whoever wants it done, they would offer more for it.

Remember, corporate profits are only the indirection of the translation of time into things and acts. People buy a McRib to eat, but if they had to pay the supply chain of that McRib reasonable wages they would probably rather eat something else for that price, something healthier and tastier most likely.

Though in all honesty, the real problem is not forcing employers who do employ people to give them more money than they would be willing to work for. The problem is that those wages constitute the survival of that individual, even when in our current society it is asinine to think people are contributing to one another's survival more than they are contributing to superfluous wants. The fraction of our workforce involved in providing food, shelter, security, and health are probably at most one in ten. The rest are there for wants. Our social organization needs to start reflecting that more rather than making the unskilled writhe in destitution for scraps of a living.

>…even when in our current society it is asinine to think people are contributing to one another's survival more than they are contributing to superfluous wants. The fraction of our workforce involved in providing food, shelter, security, and health are probably at most one in ten. The rest are there for wants. Our social organization needs to start reflecting that more rather than making the unskilled writhe in destitution for scraps of a living.

I wish this was stated more often, at least to expose people to converse on ways we can allocate resources in different/arguably better ways compared to say 5k years ago.

Fix monetary policy so that people would be able to save in liquid assets rather than financing everything and living month to month. As an individual's savings rise, their autonomy increases while the marginal utility of an earned dollar decreases. They'd naturally demand a higher salary.

If that job wasn't worth that much to an employer, either the cost of the resulting service would rise or the job wouldn't get done, just like now.

>How would you force employers to pay their employees equitable salaries?

* Provide more competition for labor from the public sector by employing more people in the public sector (i.e. the opposite of austerity).

* Raise the minimum wage significantly.

>What if a job isn't worth that much to an employer?

"isn't worth it" = "can't employ that person and make a profit"

Corporate profits are at all time highs and labor's share of income is at an all time low. Ergo there is a massive amount of slack at the low end.

Every corporation that employs a lot of people will scream until they're blue in the face that they will fire half of their workforce if you raise the minimum wage by so much as a cent, but when it actually goes up, they don't do anything of the sort.

Raising the minimum wage to $20 or $25 / hr would be one of the most direct ways to transfer money from 0.01% to the pockets of the people who do all the actual work in this country. It would not only drag salaries up it would drag the cost of property down.

You just have to deprogram all of the people who erroneously believe that it will cause mass unemployment, massive inflation, or who think that it's somehow unfair to people earning $minimum wage + $x (who would all get a pay raise too).

shifting the narrative is what's needed. When I hear people talk about "being rich" these days they aren't talking about owning luxury things but being out of debt with enough time away from work to pursuit other things and enough capital to support having a child.

The big problem is that being unslaved from obligatory wage is quickly being considered to be "rich".

> Wouldn't it be better if it was impossible to amass that concentration of wealth in the first place?

Billionaire tech founders are the worst examples to use for this argument. Zuckerberg's wealth is mostly paper wealth from his stock ownership. His net worth fluctuates greatly depending on Facebook's stock price.

> Wouldn't it be better if it was impossible to amass that concentration of wealth in the first place?

This was a total non-sequitur. Mind explaining the logic there?

No it wouldn't be better. Wealth is not zero sum. Accumulation of wealth does not mean other people are denied wealth.

> Wealth is not zero sum.

Why are you so sure?

Uh huh yes. The sum wealth of humans today is vastly larger than that of humans 100, 500, 1000, 5000, and 10000 years ago. Vastly.

Yeah, maybe it isn't zero sum when you include time dimension, but at each point in time, it still is zero sum.

Why that matters? Because humans need to eat at every point in time, and have limited timespan.

In fact most of the today's wealth was generated by people who are long dead. Despite this wealth being effectively "free", it is still a zero sum game how to distribute it.

New wealth is literally created every second of every day.

> Wouldn't it be better if it was impossible to amass that concentration of wealth in the first place?

Just curious, but that would deny many millionaires and billionaires the chance to change the world. For sure, SpaceX and Tesla probably would not exist [1].

I'm surprised that this sentiment is growing among many people that somehow they believe the Government is going to be better at experimenting and managing these types of far out projects rather than the free market.

SpaceX has probably the most advanced rockets in the world, far surpassing that of all other countries.

I am not sure I want the future of our species solely in the hands of politicians and not giving private enterprise a chance to rise up and have a shot.

If I misunderstood the gist of your post, I do apologise.

[1] I know they both have taken Government money, but both Tesla and SpaceX could not have been started by a Government politician or employee.

Let's see, going to the moon, the internet, the atomic bomb, the space shuttle...I think the government has proven to be effect in the past. Not that the free market hasn't been effective too, but one might make the mistake of serious selection bias to really believe that the government can't perform "far out projects" well, especially when the will to perform them doesn't exist in the free market yet.

The Internet wasn't the Internet before the Commercial Internet Exchange (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Internet_eXchange). I'm not sure how much credit the government can take for what it is now really. The space shuttle is no longer in service and failed with significant fatalities more than once. The atomic bomb is one of the most horrific technologies which exists. I'm not sure you're making your case with these.

Do you want me to list the failings of businesses and the horrific things they've created? Is it even fair to lump all players in the free market under one umbrella as it is to lump all government programs and governments of nations and call it "government"? The post I referred to argued about the ability of the government to lead "out there" projects well, and all of those are out there projects which had some "success" whether you agree with that definition or not.

I think the big misunderstanding you and the parent commenter have is that you're conflating "large scale projects" with "far out projects". Just because both are large scale, doesn't make them the same thing.

Technologically complicated, Politically easy, "far out projects" or "moonshots", governments are relatively good. eg. putting the first man on the moon (politically easy: because of the competition with Russia).

Technologically easy, Politically complicated, "large scale projects", governments are (as the data shows) really, really bad at. eg. reforming the education system.

Some rationale: Humans looking for authority that then gain it, don't want to lose it. i.e. The dislike disruption. Government is run by humans with authority. It would then follow that governments don't like disruption.

Its extremely hard to politically justify disenfranchising all the poor performing teachers, administration, budget planners, healthcare workers, etc. even if it is actually in the best overall interest of society. Primarily because governments are a monopoly, and its in the best interest of all management (lower, middle or upper) in a monopoly to keep their controlling interests intact (and happy), regardless of productivity. As they say "keep things churning".

I guess I do agree to this extent: There are things that are politically difficult for the government to do, just like there are things that are politically difficult for corporations/rational free market players to do.

> governments are (as the data shows) really, really bad at. eg. reforming the education system

Are you sure? Finland government did pretty good in reforming education system..

> governments are a monopoly

No they are not! Bad governments, maybe. But ideally, they should be democratically controlled by the population, and then the usage of the term "monopoly" is meaningless. (Not to mention that each nation competes with other nations.)

I'm not saying that Government can't do great things, but it should never be the only player in town when it comes to innovation on a large scale. Denying private citizens the ability to have great wealth basically gives the Government a large scale monopoly on far out projects.

These are the types of projects where a single billionaires great wealth can inspire other investors to come along. If Musk couldn't pour millions into his ventures, it's unlikely the average investor would have followed him into space.

In addition, the USA invested in the internet, space and atomic weapons solely for the purpose of war, even the hubble is based on military technologies. I am again concerned that people are arguing for a future that's dependent on the needs of politicians or the military.

Even China was smart enough to see value in the capitalism model. Allow for the ability of great wealth, allow the private citizen to decide how to deploy the fruits of their work and something good might come out it.

Also, the Government has taken over a billion dollars in tax from Mark Zuckerberg, so the Government has plenty to play with. Remember, it's always easier to play with other people's money, hence the inefficiency regarding the use of tax dollars.

Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax to the UK Government in 2014 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34504474).

I have to agree with your sentiment about there being no check for the government, especially when there are things the government can't do. Still, on one hand, you have Zuckerberg trying to revolutionize education, while on the other hand, you have Soros and the Koch brothers inverting democracy for their personal interests. At least when the government is corrupt, you can vote them out or at worst, have violent revolution. An individual? Ask them kindly to stop? Kill them?

I think I'd feel more comfortable with corporation(s) competing with the government, because then, you could "vote against them with your dollar." Another thing which is done in government labs in the US is having labs/universities compete with each other for funding (although whether this yields good incentives for research is another story, and we're trying to find avenues for innovation that are difficult for the government, and ostensibly, difficult for govt labs too).

Finally, if we do accept this form of oligarchy (where one oligarch is the government we vote for), no doubt will we have entities which disagree with each other, say, Soros or the Koch brothers. Now, then, the rest of us just become the grass at the feet of fighting elephants[0], and I hell don't know how anyone would feel comfortable with that. I suppose the only option you have then for having a voice is to become the next elephant, and while I love hacking/disruption as the next guy, I know statistics too, and I won't delude myself I will become Zuckerberg or even four orders of magnitude near him.

[0] http://www.afriprov.org/african-proverb-of-the-month/27-2001...

> Denying private citizens the ability to have great wealth basically gives the Government a large scale monopoly on far out projects.

Not necessarily. People can still organize, collect wealth and build a large scale project themselves. Or the bureaucrats running companies can organize and together finance big projects. There are many other possibilities.

> allow the private citizen to decide how to deploy the fruits of their work

Assuming these really are their fruits, which is pretty disputable in case of very wealthy people.

> it's always easier to play with other people's money

I agree, and this is actually the reason why one person owning a billion may be more willing to invest to crazy projects than a thousand people owning million each.

A good article on this subject arguing otherwise http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-myth-of-basic-science-144561.... Continuation of the ideas from the What Technology Wants book.

The space shuttle program was a horribly expensive sideways step that help back space exploration.

Really?

http://www.loper-os.org/wp-content/sovcosm.png

Although the manned moon landings were American, they probably wouldn't have happened if the Soviet Union hadn't beaten them into space. NASA were US Government funded. All manned launches since 2012 have been on Russian and Chinese rockets. No manned SpaceX launches yet. So it appears that communism has done more for manned space flight than private enterprise.

There are numerous other major government funded science and technology success stories: Manhattan Project, Concorde, CERN, ...

The US and USSR governments' effectiveness at early space travel had less to do with the ability of public entities to innovate and more to do with the existential threat of the Cold War. Constant fear of nuclear annihilation is not worth the increase in practical government research.

The same can be said of the Manhattan project with WWII. CERN is a valid counterargument, but I think it demonstrates that markets need to be occasionally corrected (to acomodate basic science research in this case), not that markets need to be dismantled.

On the other hand, we may never know how many Shakeaspeares never got a chance to write, because they were poor and died young. If you think it takes big investments to "change the world", you're wrong, the combined efforts of millions of people may be less glamourous, and harder to quantify, but that doesn't make them less real. The future of our species depends more on how we treat each other than anything else. Private enterprise won't be able to stop war for water and resources. The incentives will be more aligned with arming those wars, and then we'll be burned out.

Where would the incentive be to try risky experimental business ventures? To invent new things? I think you underestimate the motivating power of economic opportunity.

It's wise to let those who are good at allocating resources be in charge of allocating resources. The best way to decide who is good at allocating resources is to create a system in which those who are good at allocating resources have opportunities to do so.

Extracting profit from a system is different from efficiently allocating resources. At an extremely example, consider bank robbery. Then consider LIBOR.

The wealth isn't "amassed," it is created. It hasn't been taken from anyone else. But I'm guessing you wouldn't ask "Wouldn't it be better if it was impossible to create that much wealth in the first place?"

Created by who?

Speaking of Facebook, does anyone know if this is true?

https://www.youbetrayedus.org/facebook/

It's from "Fight for the Future", so it is at best highly questionable. They have a long history of exaggerating (I'm being very charitable in my choice of words) about bills. They believe that inaccurate information is fine as long as it gets people to click their links to send form letters to Congress.

See, for example, this other page at the same site: https://www.youbetrayedus.org/experian/

I asked them to back up a particular serious claim on that page in this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10321374

Note the lack of a response. I also asked them several times on reddit where they were repeating the same thing. Again, no response.

I wouldn't be surprised at all. Zuckerberg worries me in a very ominous and looming way. He has access to a lot of data and his company is a massive source of public influence. And he's repeatedly abused that power with little to no public knowledge or blowback. Initiatives like his free limited internet and the primary school seem like attempts to control information and future generations, disguised as philanthropy. Couple that with his radical political views / connections and you've got yourself a recipe for a kind of war and oppression that we've never really faced before: a war on information.

He doesn't scare me. I just thought people would get tired of his site by now. I can't figure out the appeal anymore, unless you come from a third world country, or are under a dictatorship, or you in you twenties, married, or with kids.

Don't get wrong, I don't hate his site. I just don't get the appeal anymore, but it might be me. I'm older and I can take only so much of the social posturing, 5000 friends, photos that are so self-aware--I cringe, the constant positive affirmations about a person's looks, the crying out for a attention, and praise, the nosey algorithms, etc.

I have one question, and it's geared towards Americans, "What are you getting out of Facebook these days. I'm not trying to be cute, or clever. I'm just curious.

Maybe it's my fault. I have used Facebook in order to look up old friends. I have found that so many people seemed to have caved into social pressures, and become politically correct conformists(which is fine), and I understand why they need to protect their online identity. It just depressing looking at people who raised their hands in class, tried to fight certain aspects of the system just settled, and went along with the Villagers. I'm not even bothered by that--it's the phonyness, or I hope phonyness?

Has anyone over thirty, gone on Facebook and looked up someone you used to know, maybe that women/man that was different than the rest; and viewed their profile, and said, "I must get in touch with that person!". I have found complete opposite effect.

I'll admit it's probally just me, or I'm being too negative, or my experiences on Facebook is not typical.

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