Man tries to help the world with his money and he's greeted with criticism.
Now he's giving 99% of his wealth to a charity he controls. This is an awesome step: dynastic wealth is stupid. However, it will take a few more good deeds to convince me that he's grown out of his youthful moral indiscretions.
1. http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims...
2. http://www.businessinsider.com/how-mark-zuckerberg-hacked-in...
More specifically, I worry that Internet.org is an advertiser-funded competitor to the user-funded internet as we know it, and that the interests of advertisers are in many ways contrary to the interests of individuals (e.g. w.r.t. privacy).
Information pipes are a really important building block to a thriving political and economic ecosystem, and for those blocks to be sturdy, it's important that these pipes have built-in privacy protections which remove a lot of value advertisers derive from them.
Which is just a way to setup a comfy retirement where you make more from the money than you have to give away to be considered a charity and everywhere you go is now "business" as long as you give some money away on the trip. Make 30% on investments, give away 10%, avoid all kinds of taxes and appear charitable all the while still in control of the whole fortune. Color me skeptical.
Any profits made from investments go back into the charity's holdings. This is a good thing.
Why the Rich Give to Charity[1]
Some give out of vanity. Some out of guilt. Some for the tax breaks. Some give out of conviction that their success in business makes them equally expert in solving the world’s problems. Yet perhaps the most powerful and common reason why the rich give is the idea most commonly referred to as “legacy.”
would you rather be remembered as that guy who build the biggest and meanest personal data collection machine, tracking people, extending global surveillance, pushing to destroy the foundation of the internet and made a fortune out of it (and a little stock trickery), or as the guy who gave most of his billions of money to charity ?
[1]:http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2012/03/08/why-the-rich-give-to-...
if he's really giving 99% of his wealth to charity, and on top of that puts effort into where the money goes and that it's put to good use, why do you care that he's doing that for legacy?
By "charity" he means himself, his own charity foundation. He's basically putting the money in another pocket and calling it charity. It's a tax avoidance scam. Cheaper to give away 10% a year in the guise of charity than actually pay the taxes you'd owe.
>scams his coworkers Citation or clarification much appreciated :)
Any public letters are carefully crafted pieces of PR, intention notwithstanding. The criticism probably stemmed from that angle.