Mark Zuckerberg Is Either Ignorant or Deliberately Misleading Congress
theintercept.com
theintercept.com
His answer about logged-out tracking cookies is the most glaring example from the article, but the most serious one he dissembled over was the questioning from Harris.
That said, I watched the both hearings in full and I can't recall a single complex, non-softball question being answered. Unless, of course, you consider "Senator, this is a very important question" followed by some time wasting non-answer material an "answer".
What he did, of course, for HN / tech people / journalists was fiasco, because we know what actually happens there. For the average people it was another reassurance, because now they say "Facebook is okay, the guy went in congress and no consequences followed, so it's good."
I tend to believe that the questions and the hearing itself was so bad and uneventful, because Facebook probably holds tons of data and collaborates closely with US government. So it will be quite unfortunate for the government and for Facebook if the real questions are being asked.
I really enjoyed reading the commend of @DyslexicAtheist [1] from yesterday's thread.
> it was a sham because asking hard questions would require them to admit FB being an important asset for US own intelligence operations.
Like some dude who had no idea with 19, got the proper idea by chance / zeitgeist, gathered a lot of good people around him who build all of it and now he is unbelievable rich, boss of a way to influencel company and has no clue about it.
He doesn't feel like a Bill Gates or Buffet or any other rich known person.
/shrug
Don't underestimate a guy who built a billion dollar empire and sits on the biggest potential dictatorship tool in human history.
Now the funny thing is that his presidential ambitions seem to be dead for now. It's interesting...
From a technical standpoint and from a political standpoint. Facebook feels like the small brother of all those big impressive companies who did things, invented things and formed technology like i know it. Google, Microsoft etc. Facebook on the other hand feels strange.
Political speaking: they are reacting and not acting.
This hearing made it more obvious than ever.
Makes me wonder if he or someone else came up with/suggested original The Facebook name.
I don't think Mark's developed the open pathways for deep critical thinking, say that Elon Musk's thoughts all stem from - foundational principles being something he's commonly referred to.
While uncharitably stated, in my opinion this demonstrates a lot of technical ability and business savvy.
I also think we (as in Hacker News) need to consider the extent to which useful discussion about Facebook's legitimate failings is getting drowned out by the noise of hyperbole and outrage.
I haven't seen much hyperbole and outrage re: Facebook on here. The scale of Facebook and the issue, how Trump and others got elected into power because of what Cambridge Analytica did -- the gravity (hmm, how grave it is..) and scale, how serious this situation is, would be fairly hard to exaggerate - it should warrant strong anger as well, if looking at the holistic impact, even though individual users may not realize the malice through purposeful ignorance.
Not exactly an insult but since they're not his ideas he doesn't have the ideology to back it up or an end goal. He never wanted to connect people. Vs someone like Musk who lives and breathes his ideas and has an end goal.
Who would you jump to referencing if wanting to include an example of holistic thinking, empathetic person, who is known to work/think/make decisions from founding principles?
It was a tradition on Harvard campus that academic Houses published their own facebooks. The people Zuck stole the idea from were making a digital version. Here's a piece about it from Harvard's newspaper in 2004:
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/2/9/hundreds-register...
>Lisa H. Feigenbaum ’04 said that she joined thefacebook.com because it provided an open alternative to the password-protected House facebooks.
Harvard was also trying to make their own before students did it:
>“There is a project internally with computer services to create a facebook,” Davis said. “We’ve been in touch with the Undergraduate Council, and this is a very high priority for the College. We have every intention of completing the facebook by the end of the spring semester.”
This is one of the most telling parts of the whole story:
>Davis said that the principle complication with the creation of an official facebook was figuring out how to design an interface so that directory information could not easily be compiled without authorization.
Everything was really lined up well for him to take advantage of, eh? The student population was excited and waiting for such a platform -- with the same name too.
Mark's right though from his quote: “I can do it better than they can, and I can do it in a week.” - you can certainly launch things much more quickly if you don't take into account any concerns that others worry about/want to take into account -- like the privacy and security of people's information.
It's no surprise this is where we are today: people who think ahead and want to be careful because of ethics, all the way to him taking the idea, implementing it - while deceiving/leading on the brothers who hired him vs. the foundation of Facebook and the Cambridge Analytica happenings.
I wonder if he'll ever understand this himself, and how grave this all is.
Talk to anyone who actually knows Zuck. He's a compassionate liberal that gets a bit intense at times, but he's both incredibly intelligent and fully aware of whats riding on his decisions.
Bill Gates has a different personality, but he also grew wealthy in a different time. The world was unipolar under American leadership, and Microsoft was a key element to American power. Gates could focus his energy on fighting malaria and studying flu epidemics. The world Zuck lives in is far different. Machine learning is taking off, China is ascendant, and America / the liberal order is asymmetrically exposed.
He has enough money to grow as well.
Bill Gates is/was an guy who build Microsoft. Zuckerberg got lucky with facebook. There is not much to build because the whole it world already exists.
He as a human being brought more distress to this world as anything he is doing with his money to help, can't fix.
Tx to his luck with the Zeitgeist, he is facebook and because of his incompetence, facebook hurts us all.
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks.
He's still doing the same thing.
On the other hand, I also repeat things about a person I know who stole from me many years ago. That person happens to be in jail for, among other things, theft.
The problem here is that he was and is rewarded for the bad behavior, so he keeps repeating it.
If someone asks you "did any of your employees ever do XYZ?", and you've never heard of a case where they did, then sure in normal conversation you'd answer "no". But if you're under oath, you'd better damn well say "I don't know."
Lawyers see this sort of thing happen all the time. Coaching Zuckerberg not to give answers like that, would be one of the first things they'd do to prepare.
Two words: plausible deniability.
Also see: dog and pony show.
This was a performance for the various constituencies that will, save for a few minor exceptions, prove to be ultimately a toothless exercise.
I can't believe I'm defending the guy - I'm really not a fan - but most of the criticism I've seen seems to be based on unrealistic expectations.
By all means criticise Facebook's business practises and hold MZ to account for getting them changed... But this circus seems like a meaningless distraction.
The most valuable good/commodity/crop today is our attention, because with it outsiders can influence what you think and feel.
There was much repetition, in some instances multiple speakers asked questions in very similar vein.At the end of it it remains unclear to me whether any laws has been contravened attracting any kind of liability.
Now the legislative sausage has to get made. Social media's lobbyists are going to have a rough time of it, and the telecom industry, who has been nipping at their heels for a decade, are going to lay it on thick, trying to gut them so their data becomes more valuable to advertisers.
Expect any law that gets passed to marginally affect privacy, and maximally affect a few pocketbooks.
And as usual in American Politics and/or debates the focus has shifted to be about the petty stuff of the individual, rather than focusing on the actual topic at hand. Pretty soon everyone will be so busy criticizing Zuck they'll forget why he was even speaking to Congress in the first place.
Americans love a good gossip, to the determent of actually getting anything done.
It's a sad state of affairs. I only heard part of the second day, but one of the ladies asked a question about the Obama administration using that survey leading to the huge amount of data gathered. Had it not been only four minutes, I feel this is the question that would have lead to the most important discussion of why it was not against terms for that administration to use Facebook data, but was for Analytica (Other than the fact that it was sold to them, but I believe unless Zuck passed the buck, it could have lead to discussion about the data itself being the problem, not the selling to Analytica.)
Or is it like a former HOC whip said to me once executives get a way with " a lot of naughty shit"
Everyone's going through the motions, to moderate (heh) and deflect public outcry.
Now I know he's an idiot, just like everyone implicated in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
He's a lucky idiot who was in the right place at the right time when he built Facebook.
What's more idiotic is that people rank him along Gates, Musk, Bezos, Buffet... He's just a lucky idiot!
The Sky is Falling. (facepalm)
But don't despair, Robert Mueller will take care of business. Mueller will be more effective than the Congress Circus.