Is Facebook capable of adapting to the world it created?
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
- Zuckerberg denied he is running for president in 2020. I wonder what is the reason of his postelection tour in America and his big PR team. [1] I don't think it's possible to be both Statesman Zuck and Silicon Valley engineer Zuck. As the article says, you cannot be concerned with only quantifiable outcomes and at the same time propagate fuzzy human ideas like ethics, judgment and intuition.
- Facebook's motto of Move Fast and Break Things seems to be replaced with Break Things and Test Results. The News Feed has turned into a Skinner box to study the daily behaviour of more than a billion people.
- I get very overstimulated looking at the picture of their newsfeed office for a few seconds - bravo for people being able to be focused and able to write code in that environment!
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-18/this-team...
There is increasing unrest and resentment towards the very rich including silicon valley ceos in america.
He might have a different plan in mind for effecting changes in the world. Being elected President gives you certain powers, but it also comes with a lot of responsibilities and limitations; whereas, being a traveling Do-Gooder and (ugh) Thought Leader or whatever, with several billion dollars behind you and no constitutional limitations on what you can spend the money on might be more freeing.
Basically, a Heinlein novel come to life and adjusted for the 21st century.
That's a common tactic. I'm all but sure he plans on entering politics. In addition to his recent tour of America and big PR team, he also recently renounced his atheism. That, imo, is a big tell.
Trumps win this fall is going to open the door for many other billionaire-celebrities. He basically proved that name recognition alone can take you very far.
This is why you see people like Mark Cuban mulling a campaign.
Zuck has name recognition - arguably more than Trump - is less blatantly offensive, and has a treasure trove of data. Not to mention a natural marketing/communications/propaganda platform. He also has a seasoned team of lobbyists at his disposal. Oh and he's loaded, too.
No, not a particularly belief system. He just made a FB post stating that "religion is very important" to him. Previously, he was on the record as stating that he was an atheist.
He'll prob embrace Judaism - that will probably fly a bit better with middle America than Bhuddhism.
It sounds like a weasely statement - "I care about this because you care about this", meaning, I don't give a shit but don't want to offend you.
Either way, though, it's definitely and unfortunately a near necessity for entering politics.
https://www.wired.com/2017/01/zucks-sure-acting-like-someone...
He severely lacks the oratory skills of Obama, the fiery commitment to economic justice of Bernie, the decades of government experience of Hillary, or the Barnum-esque showmanship of Trump.
Trump is the first non-stateman to win, and he did it by keeping the cameras on him at all times, and competing against a wide field of primary candidates that split the vote. And also by appealing to some base desires that Republicans have only dog-whistled in the past.
And the left is much less friendly to a billionaire with eyes on purchasing the presidency than the right. Why would anyone pick Zuckerberg in 2020 when they could pick someone like Warren or Booker?
I'm not saying he won't run, but I think it's delusional to think he can win a primary, let alone the presidency.
2) He has money. Doesn't need to waste time raising funds. He can also take Trump's line and say he is independent, not in the pockets of big money doners
3) He has access to possibly, the best voter database, and a platform to communicate and drive home his messaging (remember, some say that Trump's win was due to massive FB analytics and targeted ad campaigns)
4) He is likely already in bed with the "establishment". I'm sure he has deep connections to the intelligence agencies and local, state, and federal government. Not to mention of course, the media.
5) He is young and likely more appealing to the millennial generation, who will be more deeply entrenched in society by the time he runs. Certainty more appealing than say Booker or Warren.
> And the left is much less friendly to a billionaire with eyes on purchasing the presidency than the right. Why would anyone pick Zuckerberg in 2020 when they could pick someone like Warren or Booker?
Warren and Booker are pretty discredited IMO. It'll be hard for Warren to win the Bernie votes, given her disloyalty and lack of action during the primaries. I had such high hopes for her, but she really let the power and possibility of a presidential run corrupt her. Her who shtick was this fearless, independent, populist. That image came crashing down this election. If she would have publicly backed Bernie early on, he might have taken the nomination. It's obvious to all that she only backed HRC to kiss-ass to the establishment and curry favors for either a VP nom or to secure her "successor" status to Hillary. Compare her actions to someone like Gabbard.
Booker is similar discredited, given his non-transparent lobbying for a variety of corporate elites.
The main problem for Zuck is his young, rich, tech, Jew shtick makes me persona non-grata for alot of blue collar voters in the key swing states. But who knows, the next generation of those voters, who grew up on FB/Instagram, may not find him so unappealing as their parents.
I think he has a pretty good shot. I def agree that his main weakness is his lack of charisma and perceived fakeness / always-scheming persona, but thats something that can be changed with the key handlers, messaging, and media campaigns.
I disagree, but most importantly, I strongly disagree that they're so discredited that a controversial billionaire can waltz in and capture their voters.
What do you think Zuckerbergs positions on the issues are? Specifically the things that the left would have a problem with Cory Booker on (charter schools, the medicine import vote, corporate donations, etc)?
That's a fair point. I just don't see him being the one to unite the party between the establishment dems and the bernie dems. The bernie supporters I know absolutely hate the guy.
> What do you think Zuckerbergs positions on the issues are? Specifically the things that the left would have a problem with Cory Booker on (charter schools, the medicine import vote, corporate donations, etc)?
I think Zuck will be a bit of political chameleon. On the issues you cite specifically:
Charter = prob pro charter. Def pro education reform and experimenting with new education models. He's already pretty involved in this via The Primary School that he setup with his wife. I'm not so sure he'll be bullish on charters, but he'll def push for more technology reform in schools (think infusion of more data analytics, student self-directed learning via online resources, etc.)
Medicine Import = no clue, but def pro medical reform. His wife will drive his policy positions here and lend him alot of credibility in this arena.
Corporate Donations = anti Citizens United and pro campaign finance reform. He's incentivized here to reform the funding/donation scene, since it'll only weaken his foes if it makes it harder to amaze/pool funds. Unfortunately whatever positions he adopts here will prob further entrench billionaire-influence in American politics.
The critical asset I see here is he'll be able to unite alot of the big tech billionaires behind him: Cook, Bezos, Page and Brin, etc. By the time he runs, these tech companies will likely completely own American media. It'll be an uphill battle for an opposing candidate to fight this.
Outside of tech nobody.
Even if people don't know him by name, they've definitely heard of FaceBook, so messaging for the rubes: Zuckerburg, he's the guy behind FaceBook!
In which he was the villain.
He has more or less zero people skills, but truckloads of money, and creepy amounts of personal information. IMHO his best bet for being elected President would be to straight-up purchase a major party's nomination, then buy the necessary votes in swing states. Let's say it costs $1b to buy a party's nomination. Florida was won by about 100,000 votes in 2016, and he can probably target persuadable voters using FB's data. Can he buy those people's votes for another billion (i.e. $10k apiece)?
Is he more of a "villain" than Trump? I think most Americans understand that you have to step on a few toes (or many toes) to build a global empire the size of FB.
Also remember that in American society, might (money) = right. Everyone knows that Jobs was an asshole, people still worship him anyways. It's sad, I know, but it's a fact.
Trump is a chest-thumping buffoon, but he's also a "manly man" -- just look at how he made Marco Rubio apologize for obliquely questioning his penis size, while shamelessly bragging about being well-endowed. He was also willing to tap into America's latent racism, something I doubt Zuck could credibly do. He doesn't have a good story besides "technocrat in chief," and many people will just see the oblivious, arrogant nerd who spent his high school years getting chocolate swirlies.
Case in point: Bernie Sanders. Also before Trump surged ahead, Jeb "low energy" Bush was the GOP front-runner.
It's true that Trump ultimately won, but I don't think his "manly man" image was the key factor. Recall '08 when Obama defeated the Maverick and his gun-toting mama bear VP.
It's not $1 billion, but are you going to tell me that giving Jeb 6x more money would've made him competitive?
Let's say Trump doesn't get impeached or bored with the job, and runs for reelection in 2020. There are almost no viable Democrats younger than retirement age, and Zuck could drop a few billion on the primary and general. Or let's say that Trump serves through 2024. As long as Zuck picks a party instead of going full Ross Perot, he only has to shift a few hundred thousand voters in the right places.
Don't take me too seriously, but I wonder if there's a socially-valuable benefit here to the advertising industry, since it makes it easier for anyone to jump in and run for office.
Don't take me too seriously, either, but I would say it makes it easier to translate money into other things. The surveillance economy is all about collecting information and renting it to the highest bidder. Buying crap you don't need? Voting for X instead of Y? Being sent to jail for doing Z? It doesn't matter -- money talks.
That's a solid point. Most people don't realize this, but Trump's path to re-election is really just a handful of key counties in a handful of key states. So long as he brings jerrrbbsss to those areas, he's going to win.
If Zuck starts building FB data or operations centers in flyover, America, that'll all but confirm his intentions to run.
I think a team of handlers could prob mold Zuck into presentable shape.
See the interesting thing there is, he was viewed as the bad guy by the older viewers that watched the movie, but not by the younger viewers.
Trump didn't win on name recognition anyway, he won on racism, pure and simple. He tapped into white middle class racist conservative American's anger about losing their place in the world by saying what they think and normalizing their racism. That his opponent was a women also helped due to their misogyny that he also tapped into. This isn't the kind of thing Zuck or any left leaning billionaire can replicate.
Zuck has the power and influence to be a king maker, but he'll never be King, he's not suited for it. In fact, Trump nor any business titan is suited for it, government isn't a business and the president isn't a CEO and Trump is only proving that truism; the president is a diplomat and requires a professional diplomat, not a businessman.
Compare to who? Warren Buffett? I honestly can't think of a single person I know who doesn't know who MZ is, probably by name, but if not, they at least know the face and recognize him as "the Facebook guy." Getting name recognition will not be a problem for him.
I'm not sure if he could win or not, but it would not surprise me to see millennials vote in swarms for one of their own.
I don't see MZ as a politician, but I'm not sure why you think that means he couldn't win. Anti-establishment sentiment is at an all-time high. Trump won on it. Sanders campaigned on it, and had it not been for his own party's corruption, may have won.
> Trump didn't win on name recognition anyway, he won on racism, pure and simple
Trump didn't win. The left lost.
The left lost on their own corruption, both real and perceived, and the consequences of that corruption. He won on the left's identity politics and the insistence that anyone who disagrees with them is ignorant, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, stupid, or a million other pejoratives. He won on (actual, not reported) unemployment by a class of people who have seen their standard of living in sharp decline under the last two administrations, but who the left does not include in its list of deserving.
Edit: Spelling.
It would surprise me to see millennials vote in swarms at all, that fact that young people generally don't vote is one of the big problems and always has been. Young people don't choose government, they're too busy being young; it's older people that show up and vote and largely always has been which explains the demographic of congress.
MZ isn't a politician, and I don't think he could win because he doesn't have the personality required of a politician and diplomat. Trump didn't win on anti-establishment, he won on racism pure and simple and that was born out by the numbers. He ran a nasty divisive campaign invoking the worst in people and it was just enough with our wacky electoral system to win despite losing by millions of votes overall.
As for your summary of the left, well, it's just an unhinged partisan rant not grounded in any facts and not worth arguing with.
It's grounded in the experience of actually talking to people with differing opinions, rather than trying to claim they are racist or "not worth arguing with" or declaring them a "partisan" without even knowing their political leanings, much less their positions on individual issues.
Talking to people who behave like racists, doesn't make them not racists. Refusing to call out racism because it might offend the racists simply isn't something decent people should be willing to do. If you can't see truth in the lefts claims of racism, and they are true, it's very likely because you yourself don't recognize racism when you see it likely because you're so normalized to it or you're unaffected by it and unwilling to understand your experience isn't the same as everyone else's.
The left didn't lose because they called people out on their racism/etc, they lost because so many people are racist/etc that Trump was able to find an audience and combined with an electoral system that favors rural voters and thus land over people, he was able to win while getting far less votes than his competitor; he literally won on a technicality. Trump is a straight up racist who demonstrated this fact time and time again, so much so he got the KKK's endorsement and support from ignorant folk from all over the country.
That you blame those pointing out the problem instead of those who are the problem is quite telling. I have no problem talking to people of different opinions and do so often, but racism isn't merely a difference of opinion, it's a form of oppression and violence and can't simply be ignored by slapping a euphemism of "different opinion" on it. When you oppress other people, whether it be women or people of color, you are not just having "different opinions" and it's dishonest to attempt to label it as such.
If the left were busy educating and informing people about their racism in constructive ways, they would not have lost. I do this. Plenty of other left-leaning people I know do this. But this is not what "the left" as a whole does, at all. The left spent this election vilifying and labeling people as racist, and that is not constructive. And honestly, it doesn't matter if you agree, that is how people felt and that is what drew them to Trump. He treated them like idiots, but he made them feel good rather than bad. If you want to call that "winning because of racism" fine.
This is why the left lost. They can't see past racism, sexism, ___ism.
Remember that many of the key swing states Trump won, went Obama 4 and 8 years ago.
I'm not denying that racism had a role in his victory, I just don't think it played as critically of a factor as you think.
http://www.broadcastlawblog.com/2010/02/articles/leaving-the...
Maybe I'm being paranoid, but I think I'd need to see Zuckerberg completely divest himself of Facebook before I'd vote for him. Trump already has enough conflicts of interest. The last thing we need is for the next President to actually control the way huge swathes of people receive the news.
I'm also very uncomfortable with the notion of Zuckerberg mining private user data on FB in order to very precisely target voters in a way that no other Presidential candidate can. I think this sets a dangerous precedent and creates all the wrong motives for future candidates if it works.
We don't know in advance who Zuck could be up against.
Trump ran as "angry man" at a time when the public was angry with the dishonest elites and was greatly aided by the fact that the democrats failed to offer an electable candidate as an alternative.
In order to beat someone like Trump when their message of anger and loss resonate with the public, you cannot really depend on connections and advisors no matter how well funded the candidate might be. Someone will still have get on the stage and follow through in a way that resonate with the emotional state of the public and that mean someone willing to go off script and screw up.
However, I wouldn't put it beyond any megacorp today to actually manipulate the flow of information during elections to favor the candidates who are likely to give them the best deals. They cannot become kings, but they can certainly become king-makers.
I know Zuckerberg is not a well liked on HN, but still if we consider his previous resolutions of reading book, running, building AI. Most are simple without ulterior motives of ruling the world.
The office looks like a Facebook news feed: Cluttered disarray.
It seems America is slowly becoming a plutocracy where decisions originate from one place and Congress has to uphold that decision in the fear of being fired or losing on copious amount of lobbying money.
America is no longer a functional democracy.
"After studying how people shared 1.25 million stories during the campaign, a team of researchers at M.I.T. and Harvard implicated Facebook and Twitter in the larger failure of media in 2016."
This is one problem, but according to Nicholas Carr the problem might be deeper and more fundamental : "free-flowing information makes personal and cultural differences more salient, turning people against one another instead of bringing them together."
http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2017/04/21/how-technology-c...
I didn't read the article because, frankly, I have no interest in Zuck's pointifications ... He created a 900lb gorilla and sometimes the beast is gonna wreck havoc. Nothing with the deep social significance of FB can skate through culture without ripping up a few roads.
I think it's much ado about nothing and is nothing but the new normal.
I've now individually hidden every major news source (BBC, CNN, etc...). Huge improvement to my Facebook experience. While I still get ads from companies, my Facebook feed has been entirely purged of Donald Trump and mass murders.
"I would like to show that with algorithmic governmentality, what we face is precisely a crisis of the regimes of truth. To my mind, we are less facing the emergence of a new regime of truth than a crisis of regimes of truth. A whole range of notions are in crisis: the notions of person, authority, testimony."
More here if you're interested: https://iainmait.land/pdf/Rouvroy-Stiegler.pdf
Buckminster Fuller talked about the same thing in Cybernetics. He made the proposal that a feedback formula such as PID would lead to utopia when applied to government... but as many note, the problem is less about distribution of quantifiable resources than managing conflicting values.
I also came away still believing even more how we are still better off now - even with some fake news- than the time of Walter Cronkite and the pre cable networks. All you had was whatever THEY decided you should know. One of two newspapers with editors that chose for you.
Even as a news junkie in my pre teens I wondered why they chose what they chose. Thus, by default , what they chose was important.
Now people choose and we just don't like the results, especially the old school hardcore journalists.
To the people working at FB NF, do not let old school editors change your "user decides" algorithms. And never put a human in an editing position.
Remember, it's JUST news.
In addition, mainstream US newspaper subscriptions have been booming since the election with readers demanding unprecedented oversight over this new administration and its addiction to blatant lying. In a way, fake news made real newspapers great again.
Why would you need to buy up anything when you own the entire platform people consume their news on (e.g. Facebook)? Sure anyone can be a journalist, but unless Facebook's algorithms like what you're writing you might as well be yelling at a wall. I think the internet's golden age of information freedom is quickly coming to a close with the re-centralization of content publishing and discovery into a handful massive, privately-owned platforms.
Is this true? As a Valley-raised New Yorker who visits frequently, Silicon Valley seems politically sleepy. Conversations are vibrant as ever. But action is slim.
The whole article basically paints Trump supporters in the same light as terrorists and Nazis - nothing unfamiliar in discourse certainly - but certainly not a neutral stance.
I mean basically all of this "introspection" and everything surrounding facebook "investigating" fake news etc... came, not from FB, but from the MIT/Harvard study as well as from either side of the aisle shouting fake news and news bubbles.
This is the story of how heroic outlets like the NYT are defenders of Real News(TM) against terrorists and neer-do-wells, and how Zuckerberg and his use of his proprietary data collection and mood manipulating reality construction system to take a stand against Fake News(TM) will save us all from evil boogeymen, damnit!
Get on 'the right side of history' already, sheesh.
At least we haven't reached the point where the armed forces are auctioning the Presidency.
Reminds me of 'Spirits that I've cited // My commands ignore.' (Goethe)