Mark Zuckerberg Believes Only in Mark Zuckerberg | Hacker News Reader

Mark Zuckerberg Believes Only in Mark Zuckerberg

wired.com

48 pointscaution24 comments

I'm not a Zuckerberg fanboy, but this article seems to me to just be character assassination.

That's a truly terrible article.

What has happened to Wired? Zuckerberg goes into the principles behind these kind of decisions in depth, in his own words, in a conversation with Yuval Noah Harari that for some reason nobody ever mentions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Boj9eD0Wug8

Lots of folks don’t have time to watch 60-minute YouTube videos. Can you explain the principles he cites or give a time stamp?

It's difficult to summarise but the last 30 minutes is where they have a really good argument, starting about here: https://youtu.be/Boj9eD0Wug8?t=3981

It gets quite philosophical, and hinges on whether people basically come to lose their own free will if embedded in a powerful algorithmic communication engine. They disagree with each other and there are definitely weak points in Zuckerberg's argument, but it is an earnest and principled-sounding defence. I think he loses the debate overall, but it's easier to attack his position than propose a coherent alternative.

There is also a part somewhere where Zuckerberg claims that when the platform takes actions such as marking a claim as untrue and linking to a source, that conspiracy theorists just use that to double-down and claim that the platform is trying to suppress their truth.

Isn't the fact that his stance is un-summarizable kind of the point?

If he had an actual position or policy, it wouldn't take 30 minutes of clawing at the edges to express it. This is the entire strategy. The invisible line can just be moved a little bit every time and we never have to cross it.

Anyone watching this would agree the question here isn't whether or not Zuck has a principle around it but rather whether that principle is 'good' for the future. Their perspectives here are clearly different.

The problem with centralized platforms that allow for mass censorship and ubiquitous surveillance is that they are never “on your side.” There will always be pressure to bend the knee to the ruling party, and whether or not you agree with the politics of the ruling party at a given point in time is irrelevant. In a long term sense this is a slippery slope into fascism. Companies like Facebook are responsible to their shareholders, not users, and certainly not our vague notion of democracy.

Well said. And I think it’s out of his control at this point. Not some mirror of his core beliefs.

Zuckerberg also believes Facebook has privacy as a foundation.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/a-privacy-foc...

The premise of "power" and "domination" seems correct. Though there are other things he believes in:

- Mark Zuckerberg believes/believed in China. He read Chinese president Xi Jinping’s latest book and recommends it to his employees, learned Chinese, and asked president Xi for a baby name suggestion. [0]

- Mark Zuckerberg believes in Judaism. He has grown “more religious” after becoming a father and as a result of the “challenges we’ve been through as a company.” [1]

- Mark Zuckerberg believes in Sheryl Sandberg, his Chief Operating Officer since 2008. Author Shoshana Zuboff called Sandberg "the Typhoid Mary of surveillance capitalism." [2]

[0] https://qz.com/1115960/an-idiom-uttered-by-xi-jinping-perfec...

[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/facebooks-zuckerberg-says-hes-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheryl_Sandberg#Criticism

He asked Xi Jinping to be the godfather of his child despite not knowing Premier Xi nor having met him.

Wow, that's fascinating. That's a political move, like marriage used to be among royalty.

The apple doesn't fall far from the Thiel tree.

Also, division and hate are good for the bottom line:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21270659/facebook-divisio...

> Over the past two weeks these questions have taken on a new urgency as Facebook employees have for the first time publicly voiced anger and frustration with Zuckerberg’s decision to protect Trump’s calls for state violence against those who are protesting racist police violence.

I interpreted the statement as describing people who are breaking into stores.

I live in Europa, so really I don't get what's happening in the US right now, but this Wired article seems so partial and biased against Trump (and Zuckerberg).

It's a problem I see more and more in the media: taking side politically. Remember net neutrality? This was one one of the founding stone of Internet.

Peer pressure, pushing people and platforms, this is what looks like tyranny to me - not Trump nor Zuckerberg.

And of course I will get downvoted by these same people talking continuously about diversity of opinions and freedom of speech.

Usually Net Neutrality is not about having or not political leanings, but making sure that everyone has equal access to internet regardless of them (as far as I understand it).

> Net Neutrality is the basic principle that prohibits internet service providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon from speeding up, slowing down or blocking any content, applications or websites you want to use. [1]

1) https://www.freepress.net/issues/free-open-internet/net-neut...

News sources have always been biased, though I agree it's gotten much worse under such a polarizing president. Net neutrality is an entirely different concept about internet service providers giving equal speeds to all websites, though, nothing to do with this.

Yes, net neutrality was for Internet providers to just be some kind of pipes that don't prioritize some websites over others. I think a platform like Facebook is a bit like that on a higher level. It's about information distribution, not about being an editor of contents.

it can be overwhelming. cnn turns every news story into a story about trump. it seems looney tunes sometimes. there's a lot of fear and uncertainty pumped out.. it'll make you go gray early. i'm glad hackernews is here, and that it's mostly about other stuff. good, brain-food, kinda stuff.

Siva Vaidhyanathan writes only about Mark Zuckerberg: https://www.wired.com/author/siva-vaidhyanathan/

Not only does your own link prove you are wrong, it’s not relevant to the discussion.

Accuracy is not what I am going for.

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