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Comment by peteretep | Hacker News Reader

I can't see history being especially kind to Mark Zuckerberg.

I'm not so sure.

Bill Gates was Zuckerberg of 80s and 90s. Very unethical tactics, self admitted bully. Tried to screw his best friend of MS stocks. MS monnopoly strategy hindered innovation software development for a long time.

Now in the retirement he is perceived favourably and seen in positive light.

He is actually hated fervently by a large crowd that believes in various Covid conspiracy theories. Most any recent video of Gates on Youtube will have top comments that are along these lines.

Sure, but this "large crowd" is still a tiny tiny fraction of the number of people who hated Gates in the 80s and 90s.

The thing is, history is written by the winners. Depending on which side wins ultimately wins the cultural and political battle, I could see future school children learning in history class how Mark Zuckerberg was a hero for standing virtually alone for the principles of free speech when all the other big media and big tech companies sought to censor conservative voices. If the other side wins, then Mark Zuckerberg will be vilified as an ally of the horrible, racist alt-right.

History, and how history views stuff is not a passive thing, but an active thing based on winners and losers.

This is an old trope, and only half true. You only have to look at the Bible to see that some figures who absolutely won in their lifetimes and for many years afterwards can nevertheless ultimately be remembered as demons - King Herod and Pontius Pilate being good examples here.

I thought the trope 'history is written by winners' is not just that the winners of the time when it happened, but more importantly the 'winners' (i.e. rulers) of the time when the story is being told. Our perception of history change, because the powers that be (i.e. the winners) change.

And Rome became a Christian empire and the story that remained was what we know today.

I agree with you in the long term, but in the short term, it will be quite the opposite, given the level of control his platform currently enjoys.

Really? Who actually views Zuckerberg positively?

There are probably a few, but "who likes him today" isn't necessarily a good predictor for how they're considered in the future. Plenty of people weren't liked much in their time but have lots of fans today.

I do. Despite the amount of pressure he has on him, he’s done better with trying to support free speech than I would expect most people have have done.

I blame most of Facebook’s missteps on the aggregate decisions of many FB employees that have less conviction on free speech than he does.

No company the size of Facebook could achieve a perfect response in real-time. Facebook’s greatest challenge is being headquartered in a place that is an ideological echo chamber chamber with not enough diversity of thought politically.

While I agree that FB is operated mostly by people with a strong political bias, I do not think that is the biggest problem with FB. I think its much simpler than that: FB makes money out of user engagement and the most direct way to engagement is via outrage. To correct this it would take the decency to accept a loss in revenue. Zuckerberg does not seem to be the man for that task.

A lot of kids consider him the ultimate success story. In India, the prime minister welcomed him like a hero. That alone would have influenced a billion people to think of him positively.

I personally don't like the guy, but believe me, there are a ton of people that assume his success is a sign of him being good and righteous.

Zuckerberg also tried to push the whole "internet.org" thing in India and was absolutely lambasted by Indian people on his own Facebook page. It was beyond awesome to see 1000s of people piling on well-articulated condemnations of Zuck's cartoon-evil PR doublespeak.

Anyone who kept comparing themselves to or searching for "the next Mark Zuckerberg".

As soon as he was entering the political spotlight, the answer is almost always no-one.

Facebook and he hosted me at their Menlo Park headquarters and fed me as many burritos as I wanted. That's honestly way more than 99.9% of the people I've met have done for me, so I don't have a negative view of the guy.

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