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Comment by uniban | Hacker News Reader

Zuckerberg has done all these things within a relatively short period of time:

* Says he’s no longer an atheist, "questioned" religious matters, he broke through his skepticism and now believes religion to be “very important.”

* Restructuring of Facebook stock trough the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. In the SEC filing it says that he can take a leave of absence from Facebook and still retain voting control of the company if he goes to work for the government.

* Hired a top Democratic campaign manager David Plouffe into the iniative. Plouffe was Obama's campaign manager.

* Hired top Republican campaign manager Ken Mehlman into the iniative. Mehlman is a former George W. Bush campaign manager and RNC chairman.

* Promised to visit all 50 states and meet people.

* Hires a former top adviser to President Barack Obama and the chief strategist for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

This is not PR as usual for CEO. He is into something big.

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> Restructuring of Facebook stock trough the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. In the SEC filing it says that he can take a leave of absence from Facebook and still retain voting control of the company if he goes to work for the government.

It can't possibly be kosher for him to be President with this arrangement, can it? If Carter had to divest his peanut farm, why would we let a President retain a massive interest in the biggest media/marketing/surveillance platform in the country? It would make Berlusconi look like an amateur.

Trump is kind of paving the way for this type of corporativism, no?

No.

Are you saying you disagree with the notion that it SHOULD be normalized, or are you disagreeing with the fact that he is doing it?

I'm disagreeing that he's doing it.

Although, I wouldn't mind it being explained to me how he is.

Republicans seem quite content with Trump billing the secret service to stay in his own hotels while protecting him, so I think that's your answer.

Yeah and Zuckerberg pays himself every time he uses Facebook, so are we going to make him delete his account?

If he were to win I think he would be pressured to structure some kind of trust that prevents him from leveraging Facebook's political power in conjunction with the government.

But in truth there is absolutely no way Facebook is not going to become his private political action committee. There's no way to separate the two.

He already partners with organizations like WaPo and Politifact to be 'fact-checkers', paying them large contracts I assume.

Once these groups determine something to be 'fake news' they are set up to censor as they see fit. Pretty smart if it wasn't so evil.

> Yeah and Zuckerberg pays himself every time he uses Facebook, so are we going to make him delete his account?

> If he were to win I think he would be pressured to structure some kind of trust that prevents him from leveraging Facebook's political power in conjunction with the government.

That's the point, isn't it? It's happening right now without consequence, so why should it be different then?

That's actually normal and has been in place for quite some time now.

What's normal, the president owning a hotel chain? Or taking so much holiday it breaks the secret service budget? http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/08/the-trumps-trav...

It is normal for a President to own a hotel chain. I didn't realize he's breaking some long-standing rule with that. Just because no previous President happened to own a hotel chain doesn't make it abnormal.

The holiday thing is something to complain over.

But...

Since the original statement of the Secret Service paying for property they make use of has absolutely nothing to do with either of your questions, I believe you are a bit misguided.

It is completely normal for the Secret Service to pay for usage of property and/or services during their duty. It has been in place for some time and payments have been made to numerous persons of both parties for years.

The complaint is not about the Secret Service paying for what they use. Of course they have to pay to stay in a hotel room.

The complaint is that money is going into Trump's bank account. It directly benefits him financially to go on vacations as often as possible when he stays at his own resorts, because he makes a cut off the tax dollars used to pay for his vacations.

Again, this is a long-standing protocol that many people over the years have benefited from within both parties. It is nothing new. People complaining about it today should be willing to condemn every single one of those that benefited from it. Of which, I never hear anyone doing that.

IIRC, there is a law/policy that the Secret Service has to pay the going rate for any accommodations or services they consume from businesses (which Trump's properties are).

That is by far the biggest red flag for his political aspirations. I cannot even fathom the conflicts of interest, the potential to misuse/abuse Facebooks front page rankings, and the massive data and insight he would have access to.

The President and Vice President are exempted from conflict of interest laws. The reason for this is interesting -- the Constitution sets out the requirements for being president, so the concern was that the laws would be challenged as unconstitutional and invalidated entirely if they applied to POTUS.

Of course, at the time presidents were in the habit of divesting themselves of their conflicts.

Just a year ago I'd have thought it'd obviously land him in hot water, and probably get him impeached in short order if he refused to divest.

I no longer think that. Even massive, wholly overt corruption is apparently fine now. Along with a bunch of other stuff. There are no rules now as long as you can get elected, you're useful to one party or the other, and that party retains enough seats to block impeachment.

Berlusconi is precisely the kind of person who's in power now, and it's taking months of slow, grinding work to maybe, maybe catch him on something bad enough he can't ignore it, while he's plainly profiting from the office and hasn't attempted to avoid actual conflicts of interest, let alone the appearance of them, and that's not even the thing we're trying to throw him out over.

At the highest levels of American power, you can now openly be as corrupt as Berlusconi and... no one cares enough to do anything about it.

So yes, Zuck totally can. Which makes the prospect of his presidency all the more worrisome.

> now believes religion to be “very important.”

... to his future political career. That's right, Zuck, get your strategic lying in. I'm sure you'll go far in politics.

He is into something big.

Agreed, and he'd be a fool if he wasted his position on trying to be the President. He has a real capability to become akin to a modern day emperor if he does it right.

This country worships success. That's the reason Trump won.

Zuckerberg is not only ridiculously successful but touches everyone's life everyday and people may feel an intimacy that doesn't exist.

Without being judgmental just looking at the dynamics he is going to win.

You're ignoring that he's short, uncharismatic, robotic, and looks like a dork.

As opposed to current president, who is quite dashing and the smooth speaker.

Say what you will about Trump, but you have to admit he's charismatic...in a bad sense. Republican primaries were all about him being the center of attention with the remarks and banter that caught everyone off-guard.

There's a difference between charisma and being overly offensive to all senses.

Trump's vengeful, bilious and vulgar behavior appeals to the American anti-establishment zeitgeist. People like it because Trump gives voice to the contempt they feel for modern culture, political correctness and the "status quo."

Zuckerberg, on the other hand, may not be able to spin his negatives into positives quite as handily.

Do you wish to challenge the latter?

His rallies dwarfed Clinton's.

> This country worships success. That's the reason Trump won.

While the former is true, that's not why Trump won.

> Zuckerberg is not only ridiculously successful but touches everyone's life everyday and people may feel an intimacy that doesn't exist.

That same intimacy throws off a significant percentage of the population.

> Without being judgmental just looking at the dynamics he is going to win.

My analysis is that he doesn't have a chance. Assuming he runs as a Democrat, I think it'd be difficult to win the nomination and if he does, he'd get crushed in the general against Trump.

> This country worships success. That's the reason Trump won.

If I had a dime for every reason given for Trump's win, I could dive into a pool of them like Scrooge McDuck.

I think it's certainly a factor which made Trump seem credible as long as you didn't scrutinize his self-made mythology too hard, but it's not primarily why Trump won. If it were that simple, Mitt Romney would have won as well.

What scares me about Zuckerberg vs. Trump is how much more of a cypher Zuckerberg is. Trump's motivations are pretty clear: money, fame, and his own ego. These aren't noble causes but they're easy to understand and it's possible to predict what trump will do from these. What motivates Zuckerberg? The mealy-mouthed, 5000 word manifesto [1] from Facebook this year certainly doesn't shed any light on this question. Nor does he have a track record in politics to point to.

From his unscripted words [2], actions [3], and the company he keeps [4] I suspect his vision is some kind of techno-libertarian utopia where anything is legal as long as it's in the TOS - unless it's the bad thing and must be therefore be purged from the internet.

But considering Facebook's weird puritanical streak [5], and their recent refusal to reveal political ad information [6]. I'm left with this quote from Alpha Centauri:

> "Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."

[1] https://www.recode.net/2017/2/16/14640460/mark-zuckerberg-fa...

[2] http://gawker.com/5636765/facebook-ceo-admits-to-calling-use...

[3] http://www.mercurynews.com/2013/10/10/mark-zuckerberg-buys-f...

[4] http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-defends-faceb...

[5] https://news.artnet.com/art-world/facebook-censors-caravaggi...

[6] https://www.yahoo.com/news/fire-facebook-refuses-disclose-po...

"Zuckerberg sometimes talks about the promise of brain implants, which he believes will one day convey the entirety of one’s mental state to another human being"

Those who join us need only give up only half of their humanity - the illogical, ill-tempered, and disordered half, commonly thought of as 'right-brain' functioning. In exchange, the 'left-brain' capacities are increased to undreamed potentials. The tendency of Biologicals to cling instead to their individual personalities can only be attributed to archaic evolutionary tendencies.

--Prime Function Aki Zuckerberg-5, "Convergence"

Sounds like he's going to run for president!

I hope not! He will never win.

If it's Trump vs Zuckberberg, he'll win. The only question is if he makes it through the primary.

I am more scared of Zuck becoming president than I am of Trump becoming president.

Not if people really mean it when they say they are upset by the Russia news manipulation or Trump's incomplete withdrawal from ownership where conflict of interest could be perceived an issue.

It depends on if people have convictions against those complaints or they were simply "not our candidate" excuses.

Or maybe Mark will divest completely.

> Or maybe Mark will divest completely.

He and Andreessen specifically colluded to restructure Facebook stock so that he could take a LOA and work for the government while maintaining voting control over Facebook.

That's not something you do when you plan to divest.

or one can dream that he will try a third party and consequentially breath new life into US politics by simply dumping money out of the two big ones.

That is what I initially said about Trump.

Now look where we are

Zuckerberg is the young politician Hillary pretended to be last time around.

How can he not win if his are the only political ads allowed on Facebook?

I do not oppose this ambition. If 45 can be POTUS and the world is not collapsing then I have a feeling that we will be fine with Mark Zuckerberg as well.

The world is collapsing for some, it just depends on who you are (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/05/donald-trump...).

In other words now it's a race to the botttom for President. Or we have already reached the point where there is absolutely nothing left to lose. Serious question: would you vote for Kim Kardashian or Trump in the next election if it came to that?

There exists a greater conundrum: If Trump married her, who would you vote for?

nothing screams "disconnected coastal elite" more than a young hip billionaire who thinks that his 50-state "poverty safari" trip resonates with voters

> nothing screams "disconnected coastal elite" more than a billionaire who thinks that his 50-state "poverty safari" trip resonates with voters

I just removed "young hip" and it describes Trump.

At this point, we should just experiment with a disconnected coastal elite just to see what happens.

Other than age and industry, what's different about him and the current US president?

Hairline?

Trump had the ability to make people believe he genuinely cared about them and their problems.

Trump's crassness, and the fact that the other coastal elites legitimately hate him, makes him seem authentic, despite his background.

Demeanor. Oh, and the small matter of their political positions.

comments like these are why I love HN

I for one would welcome the scenario that someone who is smart, ambitious and genuinely concerned about poverty becomes president of the USA. He embodies the things I aspire to - entrepreneurial drive, smarts and philanthropy.

Watch any video of him presenting, Mark has the charisma of a potted plant. This guy doesn't stand a chance of winning ANY election without increasing his social skills at least tenfold.

I would vote for him. I think he and Sheryl Sandberg realized just propping up establishment politicians is not enough.

So is the end game to sell the country to China for market share over there?

You couldn't source all these bullet points, could you? I'm not saying that they're not true, I'd just like a bit of confirmation to what you're saying without searching for 20 minutes.

They were in the article?

Cheers.

They're all in the article.

Oof. My bad, sorry.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/12...

https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/04/connector-in-chief/

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/08/zuckerberg-hires-cli...

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/01/10/chan-zuckerberg-initia...

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/02/zuckerberg-hires-fo...

https://www.businessinsider.nl/mark-zuckerberg-personal-goal...

Thank you!

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