Mark Zuckerberg: This Man Is a Coward | Hacker News Reader

Mark Zuckerberg: This Man Is a Coward

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205 pointsdoener86 comments

Agreed with the cowardice. But I think it worked both ways. It was pretty clear that Facebook (and a lot of other industries) also took on a lot of practices that they clearly didn't believe in either. DEI was taken up performatively for political reasons. We cannot be upset when it is removed performatively for political reason.

And we have to be honest that these programs were largely failures. Fact checking especially. Even performatively, these companies took on pretty big responsibilities, only garnered more criticism and controversy, gained nothing, and after years of plugging away had no light at the end of the tunnel.

Sandberg was pushing DEI long before 2020.

And I don't think she was being performative.

Agreed about the cringe cowardice.

> Fact checking especially

It's very confusing to me that pretty much nobody takes what Zuck said in that interview at face value. It's entirely possible he thought that doing fact checks is a good approach in the context of the beginning of Corona - and then find out how borderline impossible such an approach is in practice and consequently change his opinion on doing it...

I mean it's also pretty arrogant and/or delusional to say that in his place, as a businessman, you would have been making a big stand against an entire US presidential administration..

Entities with that kind of attitude usually don't grow to the size facebook is.

The biden administration using backchannels to pressure social media instead of being transparent about it are the one to MAINLY criticize. Zuckerberg is just another businessman speaking in whatever press relases will be best at that moment, but obeyed people he kinda HAD to obey at the end of the day.

In general when the men with guns (here the law) speak, you listen

It has been extremely instructive to watch the worlds richest people line up to kiss the ring of the new administration.

I hope people remember this in the future when they talk about the rich controlling our government and the population being just along for the ride.

As a European observer, it's been an interesting lesson in how much power and sway the US presidency is invested with, despite ostensibly existing in a system that is less centralized and puts more power (and elected offices) at the state level than our flavor of democracies.

You may not be able to bend the will of state officials, but if you can bend the will of national-level companies this easily, "the Feds" are effectively a much larger operation than it otherwise would be.

Since the 1950s, more and more power has been claimed by the executive, sometimes as a consequence of legislature dysfunction, more often by unchecked supremacy clause execution.

The US was envisioned to look a lot more like the EU. The US Civil War required a stronger federal response, and unfortunately reconstruction failed to sufficiently address the primary economic differences in industrialization, resulting in deep geographical divides.

Further propaganda machines set up by one party due to embarrassment over Nixon's resignation has resulted in one effective party; the other is primarily controlled by corporations.

"more often by unchecked supremacy clause execution."

Which is also quite often legistrature dysfunction.

There’s always been disgusting amounts of money involved with US presidential elections. Its just never been so blatant.

Their whole system is not really geared towards a fair election. Gerrymandering, millions of dollars in political donations, optional voting and you don’t need to give time to employees to vote, voting system specifically designed to maintain a duopoly.

Wait until you hear about the French presidency ;)

How do you think "the rich controlling our government" would look? I can think of two possibilities: either someone rich and corrupt being elected and using the office to their own advantage and that of other rich people, or the rich influencing the government to enact the policies they want despite the people in control not also being rich. I'm not sure about you, but watching "worlds richest people line up to kiss the ring" of the new Trump administration is impossible for me to differentiate from either of those scenarios, let alone both of them.

Yes, most Trump voters are not nearly as wealthy as him (or the other executives kissing the ring), but when taxes are lowered and government services are cut due to the reduced budget, they're the ones losing more than the rich compared to a higher progressive tax rate. If the theory you're trying to disprove is that the government couldn't possibly be caused to enact policies that benefit the rich to the expense of everyone else, the fact that someone is elected by a large number of non-wealthy people doesn't demonstrate anything that would make your argument more convincing.

You're assuming that those non-wealthy people have objectively studied both candidates, weighed their platforms, and chosen the one they have determined will make their lives better. As opposed to, say, the one who promises to hurt they people they want to see hurt, or the one who claims they will protect them from whatever out-group they consider dangerous.

How am I assuming that? If those non-wealthy people haven't objectively studied both candidates, how does that make it less likely that the wealthy are able to exert outsized influence on government policy (either by directly taking part or lobbying)? Trying to distract people by redirecting their unhappiness towards convenient targets that are unrelated to wealth is pretty much exactly what I'd expect from someone wanting to enact a pro-wealthy agenda that doesn't actually help the average voter at all.

> It has been extremely instructive to watch the worlds richest people line up to kiss the ring of the new administration.

Definitely instructive, but I think also important is how it recharacterizes the past. We should not assume that "kissing the ring" is new starting with this administration. Instead, it's probably fairer to conclude that rich successful tech companies will almost always adopt whatever stance they think will be most to their benefit. It's generally safer to presume that their actions are based on exigency rather than deeply held beliefs.

This _is_ the rich controlling our government! Except it's more openly visible in this case than usual.

Going forward they'll have a good deal of say in the policies they care about, by donating and attending and show of loyalty.

To me, it's very interesting that you're only noticing now that it happens to be someone outside your Political Tribe who is in charge.

But anyway, agreed.

I find it interesting how they were afraid before Trump to say their feelings. Seems like one side is much more threatening and hateful. Left do not fear to express their feelings right now or in Trumps first term.

It is a shame this was flagged. This is a conversation that is needed. Culling all political discussion is not what today's hackers need.

It's not surprising when you consider HN is full of temporarily embarrassed tech billionaires

No one should be ashamed of being rich.

What grates me is that these people have ginormous amounts of FU money and don’t exercise it. They just horde it and be more sociopathic.

Parent is referring to the Steinbeck quote.

"Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." It's reliably a marker of bad comments and worse threads.

Also, please "Omit internet tropes."

Both from https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I came here to write this will get flagged, and I was already too late. We need a new "HackerNews"

Check out the hackernews sub on rdrama.net

I did check it out just now.

During signup, one must check a box stating "I swear lifelong allegiance to the state of Israel"??

You should make an account, you can use a temp address. And that's a joke, to keep out people that take things too seriously.

An edgy forum like kiwifarms, apparently. The Red Scare podcast has an instance of the same software and has this checkbox text instead: "By checking this box you agree that you are not, have never been, and will never be fat, physically or spiritually."

We are decidedly not like kiwifarms. rdrama is about having fun, not being mad on the internet.

rdrama also shouldn't require accounts to read if they want engagement. Lurkers are 10X, don't block them. That's X's biggest technical issue currently, discounting the weird strategies around the wokeism-strawman and supporting apparent malefactors.

It's a temporary thing. But there's no harm in making an account, I don't think you even need to verify your email.

Use hckrnews.com to read the HN front page and check "show dead" in settings. This will let you see threads that were active but flagged off the front page.

Or look at https://news.ycombinator.com/active, linked from https://news.ycombinator.com/lists, linked from the footer of every HN page.

Users flagged it. We can only guess why users flag things, but the title is flamebait, so that's a start.

Usually there are clues in the comments as to why users may have flagged a post. I found these:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42835090

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42835082

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42835033

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42835027

> Culling all political discussion is not what today's hackers need.

Not all political discussion is culled from HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....

The problem is that when an article (and title) are more fulminating than substantive, we get comments like these:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42835006

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42835014

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42834977

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42835227

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42835420

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42835490

That's not the thoughtful, curious conversation that HN is supposed to be for: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Most political articles point people toward indignation and away from curiosity—but we can maybe at least not push ourselves off a cliff.

Idk, this article assumes that the company before the recent changes reflected his beliefs of how companies should be run. But the way I see it, it's pretty clear he disagreed with a lot of it, and just felt too much pressure (internal from employees, external from the media) to not fall in line.

Does no one remember that in the 2010s, Zuck went around trying to advocate against the calls for censoring "disinformation", arguing free speech shouldn't be regulated by a company? These types of views aren't new for him, they were aggressively suppressed by the press which published thousands of articles calling his ideas anything from "reckless" to "violent."[1][2]

At some point, he gave in, in part because the new administration very much agreed with the media on this (and again, many of Meta's employees). But now he has the political cover to run things the way he actually wants to, which we can see from his public remarks years ago.

So, you can I guess call him a "coward," but it would be misinformed, in my opinion, to claim he's a coward because he's seemingly kowtowing to the Trump people in the changes he's making. On the contrary, if anything he was a being a coward before by not following through on his true convictions!

(fwiw, I don't agree any of this is cowardice. It's extremely difficult to run a company at that scale and try to keep everyone happy, and he's only human at the end of the day. The author simply disagrees with his currently expressed opinions. If he agreed, she might be calling him a hero, though probably not. I also think laying the NIH stuff at his feet is a huge non-sequitor. Zuck has nothing to do with any of that, idk what she's expecting he's supposed to do about it?)

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/18/mark-zuckerberg-georgetown-s... [2] https://www.google.com/search?q=mark+zuckerberg+tour+talking...

> Does no one remember that in the 2010s, Zuck went around trying to advocate against the calls for censoring "disinformation", arguing free speech shouldn't be regulated by a company?

Nope! I remember it too. It was impressive at the time. All the CEOs standing in line acting like there's no problem with a ministry of truth approach, and Mark was the only one who said the obviously correct thing. I've liked him since then.

> All that power, all those resources, all that potential influence - and he uses it to make himself smaller

This is what I find most incomprehensible. These people really do have the power to do whatever they want and still have enough money to retire comfortably a thousand times over. And this is what they choose to do.

Insecure narcissists. Those guys had no friends before being rich, and they seem to have a deep need to feel loved. Because they don't know what it means to have actual friends, they think whatever they pay or enforce with money counts. It doesn't, they are just rich losers.

Perhaps the opposite is true: Maybe Zuck found the courage to stand up for what he's come to believe in as he's matured as a person and a leader. Maybe what we're seeing now is a Zuck thats willing to say No More. Its seems rational that what we're seeing is just exactly that and that he actively wishes to be aligned with the policies of the new administration as he sees merit in their approach and ideas.

>a complete surrender of principles at Meta

Charitable to assume those "principles" weren't performative if they can be discarded so easily. Lets not forget this product was developed as a mechanism to skeeze on college girls.

A poorly conceived and generic article.

If he has a malignancy (if), it is greed not fear. And with that fact clear, the whole article makes no sense.

I missed the accusation of malignancy. Malignancy and cowardice will lead to the same outcome when courage is called for. And MZ is simply greedy and afraid of losing what he's got, which is four orders of magnitude (at least) more than basically everyone else involved.

Greed leads to cowardice.

The two are not mutually exclusive.

I find it shocking how many otherwise intelligent people drank the kool-aid and believed that businesses have some mission bigger than making money, and salesmen tell the truth rather than whatever almost-lie gets the deal done. On top of that, it is very amusing to see people throw tantrums over being reminded that there exists a world and culture outside of their own bubble. The ignorance of California's upper-middle-class just couldn't last forever, and it had to come crashing down at some point.

There really should be no relationship between the CEO of a social media company and the NIH budget. Out of all criticisms that is one that should not be answered with change...

Good recent Search Engine podcast episode on zuck and his changes over the years:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3Pvsvk6fGJa1BqnPGsske9?si=g...

Seems kind of a bit much.

I don't know what mark's true beliefs are. For all i know maybe his actions are ernest. I feel we need more than this to subscribe him a coward.

Someone doing something you disagree with, or even being straight up evil, is not the same thing as being a coward.

He did the exact opposite when it was trendy to do the opposite. Did his beliefs change so conveniently?

"Beliefs"? Classic binary "if you're not with us, you're against us" thinking. Believe it or not, a lot of people didn't really give a hoot about either side of the culture wars squabbling and just went with the flow.

> just went with the flow

Be better. Go against the flow.

The public went against the flow at the voting booths in 2024: "Big voter turnout this year benefited Republicans, contradicting conventional political wisdom" (https://apnews.com/article/election-2024-voter-turnout-repub...). Didn't work out too well, did it?

Sometimes it's smarter to let sleeping dogs lie.

Maybe when it was trendy he heard some convincing arguments one way, and now that trends shifted, he was convinced to go to the other side.

Maybe he doesn't give a shit at all and is going with the flow.

None of this particulary feels like cowardice.

Honestly, y'all should stop caring what mark thinks and start caring about the average american. Trump isn't scary because a couple of billionaires are on his side. He's scary because a majority of americans are on his side.

Trump got a plurality of the vote, not a majority.

Either way, he clearly has support among the population at large, and that is the problem.

I don't have a horse in this race, but to be fair, Mark goes into great detail about all this on the Joe Rogan podcast [0]. I think a reasonable person would also listen to what he says about his own motivations. If you have already listened and have an opinion, then please ignore this suggestion!

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k1ehaE0bdU

I think this is the mistake being made - he has no beliefs. He’s purely and completely a sociopath. Nothing matters but money and whatever power he has at Facebook.

His little masc outfits only amplify his fundamental bitchness. It’s so embarrassing to watch.

https://nitter.poast.org/TheMarcitect/status/187806317225258...

https://nitter.poast.org/mtgilchrist/status/1877825066588672...

https://nitter.poast.org/MaryConner62814/status/187780076528...

The author dismisses Zuckerberg’s perspective, assuming cowardice and self-interest behind his actions while conflating multiple issues into a simplistic narrative of moral failure.

While I am critical of Zuckerberg, the approach relies on petty rants rather than constructive analysis. And I can't really get onboard with such an approach.

Meta supported the previous administration's social media hopes through directed platform bias, and they're clearly going to support the next one. I hope this gives all the people who supported it the last time an opportunity to think about how convenience shifts with the changing of power, unlike the principles of a free society.

You kinda think that someone who is in favour of "masculine energy" would, you know, choose to not bend the knee.

His masculine energy is about as real as Musk's gaming skillz

Real strength isn't talking about masculinity. It's taking responsibility for your team's actions, and sticking to your principles even when it hurts your profits.

Character is strength observed.

Move fast and break things no more.

Bow fast and say yes to all demands of our new overlords is the new motto of Meta.

Please change that title.

when you take the king’s shilling you must do his killing

it's all fun to call it now coward when he rollback all his fake news/DEI stuff, but when he put it for biden administration, it was all for better. go figure.

Frankly, these words are too kind.

Also relevant: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/16/i-knew....

It's incredible, really. I thought the main point of being a billionaire was independence. "Fuck-you money" taken to the extreme. You've "won" society, now do whatever you want. Make things better for humanity by funding novel research. Or sit in a cave and build the best orgasm machine ever. Whatever. I think Larry and Sergey have the right idea, but in very different ways: Larry has completely disappeared to go live on a private island, and Sergey gets to be as weird as he wants and still pops in to work on whatever tech project he finds interesting. I don't think having billionaires who live completely separately is a good thing for society, but those responses at least make sense to me.

Zuckerberg became rich and famous for being a smart guy who didn't do the bullshit that other people wanted him to. Remember "move fast and break things"? And now instead... he (and Musk, but he's probably a true believer; and a number of others, but to lesser extents) want to... kowtow and suck up to a weak, blithering idiot? Profess the value of caveman-tier "masculinity" ideology? Never mind how obviously contradictory it is to believe in both "men should be strong" and "Donald Trump is what we should want in a man" - what is the point? Why is this what he wants to do with his power and wealth?

> Zuckerberg became rich and famous for being a smart guy who didn't do the bullshit that other people wanted him to.

I disagree. He became rich for being in the right place at the right time. He became famous because he became rich.

It's really showing his deep lack of character; Aaron Sorkin got him dead on. He's always done the most convenient, values-free act possible from the get-go.

Something something "capitalism responsibility to shareholders" something

Trump and his sleazy tech bros will go down in history as the gravediggers of democracy.

Hating Mark Zuckerberg is like a barometer for someone having no mind of their own. We've been told that Mark was responisble for Trump in 2016 and teenagers having low esteeem. It's so laughable.

He seems like a fine guy to me. His quasi-embrace of Trump reflects the wider public realizing that, first, Trump has some plus-sides (dismantling DEI is one of them). And second, the whole "resistance" thing really didn't pay off. I didn't vote for him, but he's president, and moping about it isn't useful.

Zuckerberg and people's attitude towards him also represents progressives quite nicely, especially in their relationships with tech. Turns out "we hate you so much, you are awful and evil" is a good way to drive people away.

edit - I will also say that Mark was the only tech CEO who impressed me in front of Congress, when he pushed back on the whole misinfo/disinfo craze.

> This man is a coward.

This man is a CEO. If you mistook him as something else then you simply fell victim to clever marketing. (See: Elon Musk)

> Power corrupts, but cowardice corrupts more completely.

What are they cowarding from? Could it not be power itself? Perhaps your analysis is too focused on the object of your anger and has devolved into printed bile. As a result it lacks any forward value.

I don't understand. CEOs cannot be considered cowards?

Their point is that cowardice isn't necessary to explain the obvious. He's a CEO, he's going to do what's most profitable. "Cowardice" suggests that if he were more brave he would sacrifice profit on the basis of some principle, but as a CEO principle was never part of the equation to begin with.

Thank you!

At these stakes you can expect anyone to do what they believe is making them the most amount of money.

you have to wonder if there's a limit to the things people, companies, CEOs, shareholders will do to satiate their greed if only for the sake of the public good

there are limits to the things some people will do to satiate their greed, but if you are a billionaire you've already demonstrated there is not

I dislike Zuck but starting off with how we was silent on the NIH isn't the strongest point and it's a disservice to the countless other things Zuck gets wrong.

PETA is against the NIH and I see no reason to support the existing healthcare infrastructure. https://headlines.peta.org/nih/

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