Mark Zuckerberg Named TIME’s 2010 Person of the Year | Hacker News Reader

Mark Zuckerberg Named TIME’s 2010 Person of the Year

time.com

118 pointsssclafani116 comments

Obviously Assange should be the person of the year. Although I personally dislike him for being such a popularity whore, it's obvious Time magazine has been pressured to choose someone less controversial.

But what happened to original principles of this award? Hitler was the person of the year for 1938. This award went always to the person with the highest impact on news. What the heck happened this year? Time magazine is becoming irrelevant.

This idea of him being a popularity whore, where do you have that from?

You see this everywhere now. People get to act like they're being reasonable compromising middle ground moderates by opening up with a personal swipe against Assange and then following up with a vague statement of support for what wikileaks does.

Brilliant observation, I wish I could give you +10. People are afraid of supporting Mr. Assange or Wikileaks directly, even if they feel like they should, The scare machine is working.

Well, he has got loads of people to persecute him for a rape he probably didn't commit, isn't this what popularity whores do all the time for a little bit of fun. Righttttt?

You don’t even have to go back to Hitler and Stalin. Vladimir Putin (Person of the Year in 2007) was an at least as ambiguous Person of the Year as Assange would be.

(I’m not sure about your conspiracy theory, though.)

Can we stop throwing around terms like "conspiracy theory" in an attempt to kill discussion?

That really wasn’t an attempt to kill discussion. Conspiracy theories are fine, I’m only not willing to accept them just because I feel like it and without further evidence.

Saying “[…] it’s obvious Time magazine has been pressured to choose someone less controversial” (emphasis mine) seems a little too sure to me. I would rephrase that to “Time’s editors might have felt that picking Assange in the current political climate could have resulted in negative consequences, which, if it happened like that, really says a lot about media and politics in the US.”

This is not conspiracy theory. Time magazine admitted in 2002 that they are not going to award person of the year title to anyone controversial to United States anymore.

In 1979 after they have chosen Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini, they had dramatical drop in subscriptions. That was the reason why person of the year for 2001 wasn't Osama Bin Laden although he was obviously the one with the biggest impact on news in the world that year.

That’s interesting. I didn’t know that.

He made readers choice by a decent margin, which was not unexpected TBH.

(Although weirdly it's not very obvious from the main "100" landing page)

Hitler was the person of the year for 1938

Some other notable choices:

Joseph Stalin, 1939 Ayatollah Khomeini, 1979

I have the the original Khomeini copy. It's a gem. The articles inside are well worth the read compared to what we know today as facts regarding the US/CIA involvement.

I wish I could download a PDF of that!

it's obvious Time magazine has been pressured to choose someone less controversial

I feel that a far more gloomy and more likely scenario is that companies like Time, Mastercard, etc etc have not been pressured significantly or at all by government

The older you get, the more responsibilities and (financial) risk you have, the harder it becomes to think outside the box and swim upstream. I think it is perfectly plausible that people in their position decided on there own that supporting Assange was a step to far into a brave new world :-)

according to Time Magazine, the person of the year title goes to the person "for better or for worse, ...has done the most to influence the events of the year."

Then they probably made the right choice. Zuck has done far more to influence things in the past year than Wikileaks. I'm not saying Wikileaks hasn't done it's fair share, but as far as real impact to people around the world, Facebook has done more than Wikileaks.

What were the results of the Iraq information Wikileaks released earlier this year? Besides getting coverage in the papers?

Also, consider how much is being done in the business world because of Facebook. Apple, Microsoft, Google - three giants in the industry - are practically dancing to Facebooks tune, reacting. Entire industries are popping up around the social network.

And there was even a movie.

While I don't doubt the good WL is doing, Zuckerberg is doing far, far more than many realize.

Facebook is a fad, something here today, gone tomorrow.

"What were the results of the Iraq information Wikileaks released earlier this year? Besides getting coverage in the papers?"

That is a very simplistic view. What would you expect the results to be, a going back in time and not starting the war? Truth is way more powerful than a simple gimmick of virtualising social interactions. Think, virtualising truth!

Besides, the Iraq files were only one thing. The superinjunction was another which caused actual and real change in the way of invalidating the superinjunction. The ambassador's files has revealed the true way those we trust see the world, etc.

> Facebook is a fad, something here today, gone tomorrow.

Which means little according to the criteria of Times PotY. It's PotYear, not PotDecade, or Century, etc.

> That is a very simplistic view.

Not within the context of the discussion.

> What would you expect the results to be, a going back in time and not starting the war?

I think your missing the point. Zuck meets Times PotY critera more than WL or Assange. I'm not debating the value, merely which has had more impact this past year.

Feel free to debate the merits of Time's decision making process, but please do not to paint their views as mine.

Or perhaps they just genuinely don't like the guy. They're all American companies run by American people, and Assange clearly has an agenda which does not include the interests of the US.

"Obvious" doesn't mean what you think it does.

I don't know what Zuckerberg is doing there, but let's hold off on peddling completely unfounded conspiracy theories. More likely, and less unfounded: Old-style news organizations are scared positively pantless by the fact that a blogger (He's a guy with a computer, if that's not a blogger, WHAT IS!?) was in charge of not just one, but quite a few, of the top news stories this year.

"blogger" doesn't mean what you think it does.

It was an unsuccessful attempt at sarcasm towards the disdain traditional media shows towards un-traditional (internetbased) media.

A blogger is a person who writes a blog. What's Zuckerberg's blog? (hint: Facebook is not a blog. Even if it was, Zuckerberg would have to write blog entries on it for even some part of Facebook to count as his blog)

>He's a guy with a computer, if that's not a blogger, WHAT IS!?)

Wut?

Who knows what this decision will look like ten years from now - one can imagine Zuckerberg looking like a pretty plausible choice.

However, I agree that the trend you're talking about definitely exists. The most egregious recent example is Rudy Giuliani instead of Osama bin Laden in 2001, a decision which looks even stranger today than it did nine years ago.

> one can imagine Zuckerberg looking like a pretty plausible choice

I agree. Facebook is after all the second most popular website.

> The most egregious recent example is Rudy Giuliani instead of Osama bin Laden in 2001

Indeed. They chickened out.

Person of the YEAR. Not "person of the year-looking-back-25-years-from-now"

Wikileaks only really hit the mainstream news less than a month ago. They've obviously been putting this piece together for longer than that. A runner-up article, on the other hand, can be pasted together pretty quickly.

I wouldn't assume malice just yet.

They hit mainstream already in April when they leaked Baghdad airstrike video.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_published_by_WikiLe...

It's true, that did make the news, but it was more of a footnote. Nobody really cared until December.

In my perception the wikileaks of iraq / afghanistan / cablegate got far more tv-news exposure throughout the year than facebook did. It is true that wikileaks itself became only an issue until nov/dec, but its leaks before that had high news value.

Not to be callous, but no matter how tragic one war crime is, it doesn't rise to anywhere near the level of either the more recent Wikileaks data or, well, a lot of other news events from the year. That is to say, if the Baghdad air-strike video was the only thing Wikileaks did this year, than you wouldn't think Assange should be person of the year.

if if if...

I think you're being unreasonably dismissive of a valid point: preparing a person of the year issue takes a considerable amount of time, and Assange's most noteworthy act of the year happened relatively late.

It apparently also doesn't surpass a website which lets people throw sheep at each other.

Sounds fun. Do you have a link to that?

The events surrounding Wikileaks are the ones that are going to go on to define the next decade and influence the future of the internet. Their choice is an easy, popularist one that avoids any political controversy in the USA

Time magazine lost large amounts of subscriptions after Khomeini won in 1979, that's what happened.

Of course there is no objective choice on that, but to give a bit of counterweight to that, I would note that Assange didn't leaked the information. He published it. He was not the one risking prison for getting the data out of the US network. Also the mainstream don't care that much about Assange like the geeks & journalists do. Most people don't care about the cables either.

Zuckerberg, though, created a tool that is used by many many people, and impacts much there daily life and the way they interact together. Facebook brought social networks to the masses.

Assange is in the runner-up, and history will tell what the right choice was.

Also finally, I would have expected the crowd here to be a bit more happy to see a geek - and startup founder - make the headline.

Given that the article is published already,it's quite possible that they made the decision before cablegate. Plus it's supposed to be for the year as a whole. While Assange has released other stuff this year (collateral murder, etc), until cablegate, a pretty small segment of the population knew about Wikileaks

It seems like I'm in a minority, but I don't think there's anything wrong with choosing Zuckerberg over Assange - Facebook has been hugely influential on society, in a way that Wikileaks has so far only promised to be. (I'm not saying that Wikileaks doesn't herald some kind of revolution, but said revolution hasn't happened yet IMO).

I was going to draw parallels to Bill Gates getting the award, though it turns out that was in the '00s, for his philanthropy, not in the '80s for Microsoft. The '82 award to "The Computer" and '06 award to "You" are in the same vein, though (even if the second one was a bit silly).

Facebook has, this year however, become a mega force, ingrained in society, and pushing to become an all encompassing layer OVER all of reality.

I would say WikiLeaks should be "named" next year (depending on whether anything actually changes / consequences are met with the disclosures). Currently WikiLeaks is in its "infancy" of impact / effect.

In other news, Time magazine announced a new version aimed at adults:

http://www.theonion.com/video/time-announces-new-version-of-...

Yeah. Time is an infotainment magazine.

I saw that a while ago. This is why The Onion is so good, sometimes when they hit an issue they knock it out of the park in a way that nobody else can.

Our news media, in all forms, has become increasingly infotainment for quite some time now.

Facebook isn't a 2010 phenomenon.

2010 was the year Wikileaks changed the world.

Yes, but in 2010 Facebook had a movie. No doubt Assange will be Man of the Year in 2012, when they make a movie about him.

Wikileaks is grade A movie material, by the way. Will be nice to see who picks that up.

Probably not an American Film studio.

Thank goodness. They'd wreck it, turning the geek protagonist into some stereotypical weirdo..

Zuck? Is that you?

They're already on it, from what I've heard. Look up information on "Wikirebels" (I can't find a good source at the moment).

What has changed with the Wikileaks prior to the last set?

Wikileaks is also not just a 2010 phenom.

I believe Wikileaks reached 'climax' (for want of a better word) in 2010.

I'd hope not. If we've felt the full ramifications of Assange and WL already, then Time's criteria and choice were far more correct then we realize.

Can someone explain to me how Wikileaks changed the world? I'm not trying to be provocative, but seriously what is all that different now than it was two months ago?

When Google hit the world stage, arguably the concept of personal privacy became null and void.

When Wikileaks hit the world stage, arguably the concept of a nation state's right to privacy became null and void.

Because some people (Assange and others) have dared to release these documents into the public domain, a radical precedent has been set.

I believe it will be very difficult to go back to a time where governmental secrecy is an unchallenged aspect of modern life.

The technology is nothing new, I'd grant you.

However, in historical context, Wikileaks is (very likely) revolutionary.

Wikileaks challenges the whole concept of closed government. Governments have assumed that they can keep secrets, whether out of national or selfish interest. Suddenly that's not true any more. Any secret will eventually become public. And there's little you can do - national newspapers and TV stations can be dealt with, but how can you shut down a server on the other side of the world ? And if you do, so what ? The secrets are on a million sites and torrents.

For good or ill, this changes the way governments, especially democratic governments, do business. If you know that your innermost secrets will be revealed, not in 40 years time but in tomorrow's evening news, how do you conduct affairs of state ?

Maybe this is something we've all realized for a long time, but only now, it appears, do governments realize the full implications of what "World Wide Web" really means.

I guess I'm just unwilling to grant the point that the idea of closed government is dead. If anything, the reaction to this leak may be worse than the disease. But, nonetheless, these were a ton of `secret' cables. They were embarrassing, they make it more difficult to conduct foreign affairs, but they were not actually that destructive or informative. For two key reasons:

1) The cables are the opinions of low-level functionaries, no matter how good they are at their job. These were not TS cables, they did not include a shocking set of information. In fact, it is all sort of "meh, we pretty much knew that.

2) "The fact is, governments deal with the United States because it’s in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets. Many governments -- some governments deal with us because they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need us. We are still essentially, as has been said before, the indispensable nation."

The first point is that we pretty much didn't learn anything, and the second is that it won't really matter.

It doesn't really matter about the content of the cables themselves, other than the immediate diplomatic embarrassment (and if an Army private in Baghdad was able to access this information, you can bet the Chinese/Russians/French/Iranians/anyone else has been reading US diplomatic cables for a long time).

Nor does it really matter about whether the United States is "indispensable" or not (worthy of a more detailed reply on US foreign policy, but this isn't Reddit).

The point is the long-term implication of governments being able to keep secrets. Of course, leaks are nothing new (for example, the Pentagon Papers). But if you have technology which allows instantaneous transmission and replication of data around the world, then governments will have a hard job of keeping secrets from their citizens except for very short periods of time. In the same way that that the internet is destroying the record business - despite their attempts to hold back the tide through legislation - the same technology is destroying the secrets business, both public and private.

As an example, the President of the Portuguese Republic said this to the USA Ambassador: "I met Chavez, and he's a crazy man, but we have 100,000 portuguese on Venezuela".

That's something that he definitely (spelling?) won't say again.

(Although this example is more of a problem with information leakage and not Wikileaks itself, Wikileaks greatly increased the easiness of acessing leaked documents, by allowing anyone with an internet connection to see them and analyse them for themselves, instead of waiting for the media)

What is everyone's opinion on the Chilean Miners getting a runner up place (as opposed to none)? I was a bit surprised. It is incredible and inspiring that they survived, and the feats of engineering required to save them were remarkable (although those people aren't receiving an award), but do you think even they feel they should be runners up to this prize?

It was fortunate that they survived, and they did what anybody in their position would by trying to stay calm and hold out, but their circumstances were not that unique. In West Virginia in April this year 29 miners died, but that is "old news" now to everybody except those in the immediate area. How many people are tortured, raped, wrongfully imprisoned annually? It is horrible but I'd rather suffer being in a dark, hot and humid mine for a few months and escape a hero and celebrity (with book deals) than be tortured or raped continuously, with nobody fighting to get me out of that situation.

Maybe I am missing the point of the prize; which is to reward media attention. In which case why not reward X Factor, American Idol or whatever winners instead? Far more people know them.

I don't even know about inspiring. It's just accident-porn, inflated by a publicity-craving Chilean government and blow way out of proportions by an all too willing international press.

Proving once and for all that Huxley is better than Orwell...

you said it.

I didn't expect that comment, but it's so true. If it was a vote for the most influential person (is it?) basically people would be voting for themselves.

I still don't get why people give Zuck all the credit. And I'm not talking about the creation myth about the company. I'm just saying that for a long time his company has probably not been steered by a 20 year-old. These days he's likely been coached just to not come off as a robot. But business-wise I don't get the impression it's all him either.

They give him all the credit because that is the story given by FB, its a large part of their marketing strategy.

You could apply that statement to the founder of most companies but it doesn't make it true. A good founder knows how to focus their talents, not control the entire chain. However that doesn't mean they aren't one of the most important links in that chain.

Indeed he is. He could have sold Facebook to Microsoft. They would, inevitably, rename it "Windows Live Facebook" before canning the whole thing.

"has probably not been steered by a 20 year-old", "he's likely been coached just to not come off as a robot"

How much of this is speculation and how much of this is fact?

Either way, it's not like having advisors or help makes someone's accomplishments important. Presidents have armies of staff, all CEO's have advisors and aides and coaches, and Assange doesn't run wikileaks alone.

Do you really believe that Facebook is driven by Zuckerberg? All things considered there are a lot of descisions an a lot of deals to be done. Couple that with a lot of investors and a lot of money, and you're not going to let the Zuck learn by making billion dollar mistakes.

The comparison with Steve Jobs etc have been more marketing than fact. It's kind of unbelievable that you're believing any differently. Steve Jobs also likely had a great deal of coaching at the beginning, that's why they hired real business people and that's why Facebook has done the same. Not to mention partnering with countless tech businesses.

Do you really believe that Facebook is driven by Zuckerberg?

No, but I'm not quite sure why it matters. No business with 1000+ employees is driven by a single person. If Steve Jobs was "Person of the Year" for 2010 for some of Apple's accomplishments, would we be sitting around discussing how it's wrong to give him the award because he doesn't run every aspect of Apple all by himself?

The CEO and founder is the face of a company, that's just the way it is.

My other large nitpick here though is making criticism based on personal speculation... "probably doesn't make all decisions", "is likely getting help" etc.

It's not possible for someone outside of Facebook's executive management to state any of that as fact. What do you expect?

Millions of dollars in Accel/In-Q-Tel money doesn't come with no strings attached, after all.

A business the size of Facebook or even 2% the size can't all be the work of one person, of course. They like to make it seem that way for marketing purposes. Why they don't choose someone less creepy, I"m not sure. I guess like a lot of other douchebag founders, Zuckerberg stays in the limelight to feed his ego.

Julian Assange would disagree!?

Brilliant!

I am ashamed to say that I did not understand this reference at first. To anybody else who did not understand: http://www.prosebeforehos.com/image-of-the-day/08/24/huxley-...

Zuckerberg was born in 1984....coincidence?

Wait?! Time's person of the year WAS Julian Assange as decided by the online community. TIME just chose to make Mark Zuckerberg the person of the year. In their words "though TIME's editors who choose the actual Person of the Year reserve the right to disagree".

Julian Assange led the vote by ~ 150000 votes.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2...

“Assange won our poll by a great margin — but of course, Lady Gaga was No. 2. We take all that into account.”

Why hold these polls if you are going to discredit it yourself and put such snide remarks?

But anyway does anyone even read Time here in US?

I'm kinda sad Assange didn't win

Feeling sad would imply that you hold some respect to the judges that decided who won, but I think Time magazine just lost the respect of many readers. I'm kinda sad for them, not for Assange.

I totally agree with this. Farmville is such a game-changer. Distributing whistleblower messages that expose corruption doesn't bear any significance in front of Facebook's vision of making everybody friends. <3

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2003942 - readwriteweb.com - no comments

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2001882 - time.com - no comments

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1990612 - time.com - 1 comment

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1975517 - time.com - no comments

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1968958 - time.com - no comments

Edited to add comment count in response to replies below.

Novelty accounts? In my Hacker News?

RiderOfGiraffes, is that you? If not, I suggest that you do the same as he; pointing people to the stories that have tons of comments on them. In this case, none really do yet, so maybe a note about that?

It's semi-automated scripting from RoG. I'm trying to work out the most useful method(s) of detecting duplicates and cross-referencing. In this case I didn't put the number of comments, and marked the referenced items as "related". Compare with:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2005790

and

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2004764

where one is marked strictly as a duplicate, the other lists related, along with a note of how many comments.

I'm working on this. There's a sort-of A/B testing, since I'm able to go back and see which cross-references get up-votes, and which get down-votes. Currently I'm getting precious little of either.

This is a slippery slope. It's just a matter of time before we have novelties like http://www.reddit.com/user/keanu_reeves/ :)

I don't think of it as a novelty account. I think of it as a robot providing a service. Since it's still under human supervision it lags somewhat, but it's already found a discussion that's been split between two duplicate submissions, something I find annoying, and a waste.

It's still an experiment - I may yet give up entirely.

Showing how many comments is a good improvement. Consider only posting when the other thread has comments, otherwise it's a waste of space and a distraction (why would anyone leave the perfectly-good version they're on to go to an empty one?).

Is it really a dup if there is no comments in any of them?

While I have hoped that Julian will win this one I'm happy that both the winner Zuckerberg and runner-up Assange are one:

Hackers.

Great choice, forget about that Nobel Peace prize guy who is locked up for freedom of thought and speech or something about democracy... It's a hard name to remember anyway.

Nice contrast, huh? Instead of some guy who fights for freedom and democracy and symbolizes a struggle against a tyrannical regime, let's choose some smug rich punk who is working with the government to catalog info about every citizen in the US.

Facebook is sooo 2009, time.com seems to just have no balls to make Assange the person of the year.

What a joke. If I had any respect left for institutions like time, I'd be shedding it.

Facebook is a new, proprietary way for people to do what they were going to do on the internet already, without Facebook. I don't feel that it has been influential on society as a whole - the entire electronics revolution has.

I'd rather see Steve up here with an iPad, personally. Or perhaps someone who has influenced the actual direction of history.

Nice safe choice for Time, huh? Underscores their commitment to undermining the entire world of journalism by making news as bland and irrelevant as possible.

Times had better prepare for a DDOS.

the legion of unknown has moved on to operation paperstorm

I am sure TIME had this picked out by October at the latest - it just had to go through editing, proof-reading, printing, etc. for a while and they kind of missed Wikileaks in the process. While I think it's not an excuse, it was probably chosen before Wikileaks released even one of the cables that are a big deal now.

The problem is that they specifically made it sound like it was a late-breaking decision in their wording on the online poll and elsewhere.

Single-page version (best for Instapaper or just reading online period) - http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/printout/0,29239,...

While this isn't the first time wikileaks has been in the news, am I the only one that sees a problem with people's seeming interest in awarding this to whatever person is in the news closest to the time of the reveal?

Wikileaks has been in the public conscious for maybe a month (combined) this entire year. Regardless of your politics, you have to admit the Tea Party has been ever-present and incredibly effective at changing the makeup of our government and getting their message out. I don't see how wikileaks has that same (perceived) effect on everyday Americans' lives.

Ironic if you think of how much Facebook has been criticised this year with regards to its privacy settings and data governance tactics.

The guy deserves it. He created a tool that a lot of people find very useful. I don't use it myself but I recognize how valuable it is to others.

I still haven't seen any significant revelations come out of wikileaks, so I think they were right to not pick Assange

He created it in 2004. The only thing FB received during 2010 was criticism about the way they handle data.

Here's a question... if there was no Facebook vs if there was no Wikileaks, which would impact the world the most now and going forward?

If there's no Facebook I honestly don't think the world changes all that much. People are on MySpace, and some of the other social networks are more popular. 10 years down the line, I don't think the world looks noticeably different. Whereas I think with Wikileaks the whole dynamics of US foreign relations will change.

Both are speculative, but I do think that Wikileaks is more impactful than Facebook. With that said,if they gave the award to "the social network", I'd be in more agreement.

spineless

Big deal. I was Time's person of the year back in 2006 - http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00....

Shouldn't the credit go to the soldier who leaked the documents (I am ashame don't even know his name). He is the one who is going to spend his life in prison.

Yeah, there's a nice story out about Bradley Manning's less than hospitable confinement conditions. I'm sure they're getting the biting dogs, exotic chemicals, sexual assault team and waterboard ready for Assange.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/14...

Love how they're dosing him with antidepressants.

They are trying to sell magazines. If they did Assange a "cancel your subscription to terrorist magazine" campaign would be started by Fox News.

My personal stance in refusing to read that drivel stands as personal protest. What is TIME turning into anyway, Teen Idol Mania Essays? Meh.

Just like Time to suck up to power instead of those who challenge it.

Mark totally deserves this.... but not this year. After the IPO.

Apparently, concentration camps are not evil when compared to a whistleblower website. Enough said.

I feel sorry for Zuck though.

Note that this is who was named by the editors, not who won the "Reader's Choice": http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2...

"though TIME's editors who choose the actual Person of the Year reserve the right to disagree"

thats it. the time is dead to me. i can take amazon, paypal etc. because those are companies and heck they can kick whoever they want, its their business. but when a magazine ignores its readers votes... well i guess the time just adjusted to its country. democracy adieau, long live the republic.

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