Zuckerberg in Lagos Land | Hacker News Reader

Zuckerberg in Lagos Land

backchannel.com

54 pointsveggiefits19 comments

Call him "Zuck" as many times as you like, show him in hoodies, or in Africa... that's one man who's far too much of a known quantity for anyone with half a brain to buy the spin.

This isn't a very helpful comment. You are signaling that you know something important about him, and that I am stupid for not knowing what you're talking about, but that's about it. Please be more specific.

That you decided to take my comment, directed at no one and certainly not some random person I've never spoken to in my life, as an indictment of your intelligence is surely not my problem, nor is it what I wrote.

You wrote that no one with half a brain would buy the spin. Since I bought the spin, you are implying that I have less than half a brain. That is another way of saying I'm stupid.

How is that not what you wrote?

And your comment was not "directed at no one". You addressed quite a lot of people "people with half a brain", "people without half a brain", "people who bought the spin", "people who didn't buy the spin", and the author.

Lets not kid ourselves, he is there for Free Basics & that shit. I am not against Free Basics, a Company should be free to offer whatever they want, but that also seems like a very cruel plan to offer poor people with shitty internet.

Remember the time when he was in India for a week or even a month, but then India decided not to allow Free Basics, and now he's doing the same with Nigeria, which is soon going to be 3rd most populous country.

This reads like a PR article that Zuckerberg paid to have written.

Am I the only naive one who's digested this article at face value? I mean he's providing a service an encouraging the denizens to build upon it. WTF is wrong with that?

The very first picture looks like something on the front of tabloid?

Hey, it's me, Mark, just taking a stroll with my two cool Nigerian friends...

It's a mix between tabloid journalism, pr puff piece, great man narrative, and a new brand of American imperialism. It's shameless in its portrayal of these poor hard-working people as having their lives made better by Zuckerberg showing up saying "awesome" and doing a very public tour which boosts his brand.

Other people do this stuff, but they don't get this kind of attention.

You can't take anything Facebook, Google, or a number of the other big social media giants do at face value anymore. Check out their backgrounds, the politicians they are very chummy with, and what they censor. Business is war and the American social media giants need footholds in the 3rd world if they are going to combat the Chinese, etc.

I think it's more likely just horribly uncritical fluff "journalism", which is supported by the rest of their site.

Steven Levy is a pretty old-time tech journalist. I think calling him an enthusiast is more fair than accusing him of fluff.

If he's experienced, then I'm more inclined to believe that this was a PR piece, pure and simple.

All Backchannel posts are like this.

I saw your comment before reading the article and, I get it. There's a cynic in me too. However, after reading the article, I'm thinking, who cares?

I'm a sucker for a story about potential, especially in the underdog, and the parts jumping out at me are all about the potential of the people in Nigeria.

I somehow ended up following Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, but it's Twitter so the picture I get is very incomplete. To read that he got up at a formal demo day ceremony during Zuckerberg's trip with the VP of Nigeria in attendance and then criticized the country for being resistant to change is enthralling.

It's hard to be cynical about the article's puffery for Zuck, when it illuminates the intestinal fortitude of entrepreneurs making a hell of a run at it in a place that is infinitely less geared to making startups a reality than Silicon Valley.

I spent several weeks in Lagos at the beginning of this year for my work at stellar.org; I was struck by how excited all of the developers were to talk with someone who works in silicon valley. I'm a nobody, but the guys at iDEA Hub, CC Hub, and Andela rolled out the red carpet for me and it seemed like they hung on my every word with regards to tech.

I met many smart, driven entrepreneurs while there, but as a new friend said while I was there: "It's tough to be Nigerian on the internet". The number of obstacles that a Nigerian web developer has to fight through even for something so trivial to us like getting a webhosting account, is shameful.

Additionaly, it's tough for the Nigerian developer community to get taken seriously by the outside world... I had several stories related to me about tech companies promising then balking at trips into Nigeria, in one specific instance for totally bullshit reasons. Google apparently does a great job with the developer relations in Lagos, but it seemed like that was about it.

I hope that in the future we get to really see what the Nigerian entrepreneurial community can really do; If they can chip away at their road blocks I think someone from there will eventually build something really special for all of us.

I also hope I get to go back and work with their community some more.

I don't mind Zuckerberg going to Nigeria. I don't even mind the fluffiness of the article. But the whole narrative of Silicon Valley saving the world by showing up, is getting old. Zuckerberg isn't going to go home again and be like "You know what? We need to deploy ipv6, bring computer science curriculum's closer to the real world, have a fundamental programming language that lives up to the requirements of today, fix software patents and get robust standards in place instead if reinventing everything all the time, so these guys can catch up to us and build their own future".

It's an effective way to generate positive spin... hell the "on site guidance" has been the major theme the Kims have used for three generations in North Korea. It's a way to appear generous, helpful, and subtly signal your indispensability at the same time.

You couldn't have said it better. Shameless, manufacturing consent.

> [Founders in Lagos] struggle everyday against obstacles that are unimaginable to their brethren in San Francisco. .... For startups, there are particular challenges. Every hour or so, the power goes out. Most people do not have bank accounts or credit cards, so it’s hard to collect money from customers. Funding is elusive. The nearest Philz Coffee is 5,418 miles away.

Sometimes it's easy to forget how first world our own problems are.

They should elect him president. I doubt most of the people running the place have walked those roads or visited the start up hub

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