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Comment by goldenchrome | Hacker News Reader

It sounds like you had an interesting observation but it’s not clear to me. Can you state it more plainly? What kind of organization?

I have also noticed FBers have a certain kind of personality. Vaguely utopian but removed from reality with a heavy emphasis on hedonism.

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@goldenchrome - Facebook:

“Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”.

Italian philosopher & Minister of Public Education under Mussolini Giovanni Gentile, who was arguably the architect of 1930's Italian fascism.

Sorry for sounding cryptic, it is hard to pin down exactly, but I somehow see Zuckerberg himself kind of like that; maybe someone who likes technical problems, but sees human relations in a kind of formulaic way, and oblivious to ethical consequences of technical work, not interested in the classics or humanities.

> oblivious to ethical consequences of technical work

He was told about the consequences pretty much from day 1. I don't think anyone at Facebook (especially not Zuckerberg) gets to be oblivious.

I don’t think anyone realized the full extent of the consequences until very recently. Even now, we’re still learning just how pervasive the mental health consequences of social media have been. See the recently released CDC data on teen mental health.

The trajectory for Facebook has been consistently bad. Not knowing the "full extent" is not absolution.

The CDC study is a lagging indicator; it describes the trendline of a mental health crisis that's self-evident to practitioners. On the research side, there have been many studies in the last 10 years associating Facebook use with poor mental health outcomes.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal broke out 5 years ago.

This sounds mildly apologetic for someone who lacks basic empathy, or is just a giant dick.

Smart, Fun and Nice: there are LOTS of people who have all three; don't settle for less!

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