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Comment by aswanson | Hacker News Reader

I have had some problems with the way his company operates sometimes but I can't find a single thing he said I don't emphatically agree with here. Hat tip, Mark Z.

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I find that I don't agree with the whole thing. It just seems like a PR stunt to me :( Why the fuck are you posting a letter to your daughter across the globe? Why do you have a letter at all, can you just say it to her sometime when she is actually able to understand. I guess for him completely different rules apply, but my wife and I don't even post any pictures of our daughter online nor are we sharing anything about her. She should be able to decide herself, what she wants to put there, when she is able to…

One good answer: It totally changed my perception of Facebook. If the guy at the top is trying to save the world, that automatically makes facebook a lot more appealing, not just to me and many other other I know who have historically been quite suspicious of facebook and its overly invasive privacy 'features'.

I will never change my perspective about Facebook. They sell data to the highest bidder and almost certainly use that data to exploit Facebook users.

(this contradicts my positive post about respecting Mark for posting the letter).

It's similar to Standard Oil. Rockefeller screwed over many businesses and jacked up the price of fuel to great detriment of society (at least in some ways). Then, he donates the money to help society.

I guess we lucked out that our wealth proclaimed leaders are benevolent

Pretty clear you didn't read the thing. The guy just pledged to give away 45 Billion dollars to try and improve humanity in various ways. Seems like a pretty expensive 'PR stunt'.

Have you read it? If you have you clearly haven't understood a word of it, he's not giving dollars but stock. And he's not so much giving it but says he will over the course of his lifetime.

The PR stunt is making this public under the guise of a supposed letter to his child, he could have done all this without the media fuss.

By the time he gives it away it is likely worth more than 45B. So unless he is willing to give it away on the spot the same day it is not worth anything and is just a PR stunt? Sure I don't particularly like the letter and the way he announced it or even the guy for that matter but he just committed 99% of his net worth to charity and deserve some credit for that. Not people bitching and moaning about how he did it in the 'wrong way'. Can you really commit 45B dollars to charity in a wrong way? How big portion of your money have you given to charity?

Well turns out he'll be giving he's not giving anything to a charity foundation after all but investing in a LLC investment fund / holding, you know to retain the ability to lobby and make profit and do away with the 5% rules.

Thanks for the kind attempt to reframe the discussion by putting me in the spotlight but what I do with my life has nothing to do with the current matter nor with my legibility to contribute to the discussion.

This will encourage others to do similar things with their wealth, which is a good thing.

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