I remember when he called his users 'dumb fu*ks'. That told me everything I needed to know about the DNA of that company.
That said, I never really understood why here of all places he gets grilled over that phrase. I mean, he was right - they were dumb for uploading personal data and pictures to some unknown site owned by some unknown kid. Should he pretend otherwise? Is hypocrisy or stupidity a requirement for running a social network?
It reminds me of the quote from Red Mars, "It was a mistake to speak one's mind at any time, unless it perfectly matched your political purpose; and it never did."
I had the opportunity to make an account back in the day when you needed a .edu email address, but to this day I have never made one.
Because everything he says and everything he indicates about his beliefs is that sharing is a net good and everybody should be doing it as much as possible (I'm simplifying a little bit, of course). Just because you (and many here) feel differently doesn't mean it's impossible that someone could genuinely believe in the mission of connecting everyone, as opposed to thinking people are "dumb fucks" for wanting to do so.
Listen to Larry Page speak enough times and you'll get the same sense: he genuinely believes (to at least some degree) 1) organizing all the world's information from every possible source does powerful good that is more than worth the risks/costs and 2) advertisements are effectively a human-curated addendum to information-seeking and thus entirely consistent with the "organizing information" goal. The fact that you or I may disagree with those ideas doesn't make him a hypocrite for his true-believer status.
> Is hypocrisy or stupidity a requirement for running a social network?
This is a beyond-bizarre assertion. Loudly and constantly extolling the value of less and less barriers to oversharing when you in fact agree with many people that those doing so are dumb _is_ hypocrisy. To use the same analogy, it's as if there were early records of Larry Page saying something like "once everyone gets their information filtered through us, we can nudge them into believing whatever we want". Do you think the absence of such records indicates that LP is a hypocrite?
People were uploading their personal data, expecting it not to be completely out in the open (back then, FB was even restricted to colleges), despite the site being run by someone they have never heard about.
It's like believing that people should travel and meet new places, it doesn't mean you can't also believe that entering in an unmarked "taxi" in a foreign country in a high crime area is a dumb move.
When the person constantly trying to convince 7 billion people that sharing every aspect of their lives on his platform is a good idea, it seems entirely relevant that he has demonstrated in the past that he will gladly market you something that he believes is damaging or dangerous or whatever. This is part why people are more inclined to think of the guy as a snake than many other tech leaders: while it's obviously in their interest to sell you their product, you can make a much more plausible case that Bezos or Jobs or Page or Brin actually believe in their pitch too.