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Comment by bitlax | Hacker News Reader

Google is also creepy.

And yet, nobody feels that so viscerally that they feel compelled to write these schoolyard-level insults directed at its leadership every time it comes up in a HN thread.

There was a ton of backlash when Glass launched. Search for "glassholes" to find articles on that topic from back then.

I remember that quite well. However, the backlash was very specific; as far as I remember it was never directed at the company as a whole, let alone the person of, say, Eric Schmidt.

Because Meta was and is whatever Zuckerberg wants it to be, due to his control of the majority of voting shares. It’s a direct reflection of his soul

Eric Schmidt didn’t present as a creepy weirdo. He also didn’t make the company a reflection of himself. That kept the glasshole backlash compartmentalized.

Strange things happen when a leader merges the company brand and with his personal brand. It can strengthen the company brand (in the case of a plucky can-do technologist) but the company brand starts to get colored by the personality of the person (in the case of a person who goes off the deep end and starts saying weird and inflammatory stuff).

There's something about Zuckerberg that annoys people - see the Onion back when facebook started https://theonion.com/the-smug-little-shit-behind-the-latest-...

Probably the "dumb fucks" comment.

To be fair, I feel compelled to do just that.

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