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The Zuckerberg hate is lame. The guy is 26, and has grown up while building what's almost certainly the most significant tech company to be started since Googl

by pc 16y ago

The Zuckerberg hate is lame. The guy is 26, and has grown up while building what's almost certainly the most significant tech company to be started since Google. Despite the challenges inherent in building a company whose currency is personal information, almost all of the major decisions that we have enough data to judge have been proved smart and non-evil in hindsight. He has hired one of the best engineering teams in the Valley. Trite as the observation may be, Facebook has tangibly improved the lives of me, my family, and almost all of my friends. By any fair metric, he has at least earned the benefit of the doubt. And while plenty of criticism of the company's actions is justified, the bitter schadenfreude that surrounds his mis-steps is unseemly and lazy. To the extent that Facebook has made mistakes, the speed with which social norms are changing means that no matter how good a job they do, screw-ups are almost guaranteed. This applies to everyone: Google messed up privacy in Buzz, and, despite dealing with far less private information, Twitter, too, have had various issues (e.g., leaked private tweets). I'm embarrassed to be a part of the Valley tech industry when I come across this kind of mean-spirited pot-shot. [Disclosure: none. I don't know him, and don't work at Facebook.]

nicholas1987 16y ago
Except he has no revenue model and is essentially just a big digital ponzi scheme. Who is going to foot the bill for Facebook? Advertising? Please...the click through rate is 1000x more effective for Google adwords than Facebook. It's passive vs. active advertising. Anyone involved in marketing or advertising knows this and will stay away. Only the naive would consider using Facebook to advertise. Zynga/Credits seem to be their newest revenue model...but seriously how long can that sustain itself? Persistent profitability..I don't see it.
pavs 16y ago
I think the problem is, when Google screws up, you don't have one person you can pin it to. Who are you going to blame? Larry, Sergey, Eric Schmidt or whoever was charge in that particular project? With Facebook, Zuckerberg is the face of the company (similar to Steve Jobs for Apple), so its easy to point at him and show your anger when Facebook screws up.
nearestneighbor 16y ago
From Wiki: "In the cases in which they had entered failed logins, Mark tried to use them to access the Crimson members' Harvard email accounts. He successfully accessed two of them." If this was buffer overflows, I might have looked the other way, but this is despicable! Perhaps if he hadn't avoided justice then, Facebook wouldn't be screwing with its users' privacy now.
- jaekwon 16y ago
  He was in college. What was the most despicable thing you did in college? I've learned all my lessons the hard way -- I believe many hackers do too.
  - pavs 16y ago
    I had root access to school IT network, thanks to default redhat username/password (that to from remote access). I was planning to do some real damage, poking around, too bad I forgot about it. Few months later when I tried to log in again but they closed down remote root access. It wasn't that I was a really bad person (at least I hope I wasn't) who had an evil intention to burn everything in my path, if I get chance, its simply because I was young and naive and there wasn't anyone there telling me how foolish it was to do what I was doing. I also had "Cain & Abel" setup on my computer lab and access to pretty much every single student (and faculty members) who was checking their email, myspace (facebook wasn't famous) and even their proprietary class management system with access to attendance/grading/unique school ids of each students and personal comments by instructor on student or class and what not. Thankfully I have short attention span, and soon I got bored of it and moved to something else. If I was caught doing what I was doing, I would almost surely be in jail or at least expelled from school. Now, sometimes I think of those naive things that I did when I was young and I shake my head. Case in point. When you are young you do a lot of stupid stuff, its not fair to judge people by what they did when they were young (even if it only 5-6 years ago). People can change drastically on their way to adulthood. I don't know Mark Zuckerberg in person to judge what kind of person he is, I don't think it is fair to judge him based on what he might have done when he was younger.
blizkreeg 16y ago
I find it rather sad too that people revel in taking shots at him at every possible opportunity. He started this company at what 20-21? I am by no means a Facebook or Zuckerberg fanboy, but just for a second, put yourself in the guy's shoes. I doubt most kids in their 20s would be able to fit in those shoes. They would either be replaced by the board or melt under the pressure and cash out. He's trying. He's doing it with passion. It's not easy. Yes, he has made bad decisions, some unethical choices. But in all honesty, I'm not sure either one of us wouldn't have screwed up in a position like that. Google essentially had three guys making the big decisions with Eric Schmidt to look over Larry and Sergey's shoulders. Facebook has essentially been Zuckerberg throughout. Criticizing, laughing at, mocking - that is easy, people. Let's not be those guys.
ryanhuff 16y ago
It comes with the territory. A person in his position should face scrutiny. For many people, Facebook is now integral to their social relationships, and was built upon an understanding of privacy that is now being rewritten on the fly. When you change gears as Facebook is trying to do, you can't expect a free pass. The schadenfreude that you mention is all part of the debate of what ultimately will be accepted.
- arach 16y ago
  Facing scrutiny +1 Being made fun of because you got nervous/self conscious on a stage -1 Not that I worry about Zuckerberg. He'll be fine. He'll probably get better at public speaking in the future and keep running a successful company.
dejb 16y ago
I agree that the personal attacks are unfair. But when you look at his role of CEO of a company that wields as much power as Facebook it is unsurprising that a lot of people are going to be interested in his foibles. The more power they have they more the discussion becomes political in nature and an unconventional 26 year old guy like Zuck is always going to have image problems in this domain. To me it seems inevitable that some 'adult supervision' will be required, even if only for the sake of image and to relate to the older power structures. Something similar seems to be working for Google.
quizbiz 16y ago
>> The Zuckerberg hate is lame. I disagree. I admire Zuckerberg's success so so much. He has made incredible business decisions. He has refused to sell out and is now looking at an IPO. The guy seems relentlessly good. And it's scary. Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuck: Just ask. Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks. http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5#ixzz0plkz0DzJ http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims... But we must be critical and it is important for journalists to put him on the spot right now because on a personal level, he does not seem concerned enough with his mostly naive user base. He is very powerful, he controls a lot of information. With Google and Tesla we see a rising mantra to do genuine good in the world. Zuckerberg's public appearance at the conference in light of his leadership abilities shows a man that is hiding things and it shows a man that in my uninformed opinion will not hesitate to push the limits to see how far he can grow Facebook. Based on the statements he has made and based on the progression of Facebook's features, I fear where facebook is headed given the amount of private data it has access to and _more_ importantly the amount of behavioral data it has access to. Just my opinion.
- jaekwon 16y ago
  yes and, Facebook is proving itself to be respectful of users. They're responding to the media and fixing issues intelligently. Also, on the divisive "Draw Mo" day Facebook showed maturity (by blocking content from being viewed by people would would get offended). I suspect that much of this hate is part ignorance (about the nature of software development) and part jealousy. From my perspective it looks like Zuck is a great CEO. I'd work with a guy with that much passion any day.
izendejas 16y ago
I personally have no problems with him, but I have serious problems with his opt-out policy. As such, I relished the fact that he was sweating up there. This is good. Why? There's nothing like body language to get the truth out of someone. And because I hope this brings even more attention to the privacy issue.

by pc 16y ago

nicholas1987 16y ago

Except he has no revenue model and is essentially just a big digital ponzi scheme. Who is going to foot the bill for Facebook? Advertising? Please...the click through rate is 1000x more effective for Google adwords than Facebook. It's passive vs. active advertising. Anyone involved in marketing or advertising knows this and will stay away. Only the naive would consider using Facebook to advertise. Zynga/Credits seem to be their newest revenue model...but seriously how long can that sustain itself? Persistent profitability..I don't see it.

pavs 16y ago

I think the problem is, when Google screws up, you don't have one person you can pin it to. Who are you going to blame? Larry, Sergey, Eric Schmidt or whoever was charge in that particular project? With Facebook, Zuckerberg is the face of the company (similar to Steve Jobs for Apple), so its easy to point at him and show your anger when Facebook screws up.

nearestneighbor 16y ago

From Wiki: "In the cases in which they had entered failed logins, Mark tried to use them to access the Crimson members' Harvard email accounts. He successfully accessed two of them." If this was buffer overflows, I might have looked the other way, but this is despicable! Perhaps if he hadn't avoided justice then, Facebook wouldn't be screwing with its users' privacy now.

jaekwon 16y ago
He was in college. What was the most despicable thing you did in college? I've learned all my lessons the hard way -- I believe many hackers do too.
- pavs 16y ago
  I had root access to school IT network, thanks to default redhat username/password (that to from remote access). I was planning to do some real damage, poking around, too bad I forgot about it. Few months later when I tried to log in again but they closed down remote root access. It wasn't that I was a really bad person (at least I hope I wasn't) who had an evil intention to burn everything in my path, if I get chance, its simply because I was young and naive and there wasn't anyone there telling me how foolish it was to do what I was doing. I also had "Cain & Abel" setup on my computer lab and access to pretty much every single student (and faculty members) who was checking their email, myspace (facebook wasn't famous) and even their proprietary class management system with access to attendance/grading/unique school ids of each students and personal comments by instructor on student or class and what not. Thankfully I have short attention span, and soon I got bored of it and moved to something else. If I was caught doing what I was doing, I would almost surely be in jail or at least expelled from school. Now, sometimes I think of those naive things that I did when I was young and I shake my head. Case in point. When you are young you do a lot of stupid stuff, its not fair to judge people by what they did when they were young (even if it only 5-6 years ago). People can change drastically on their way to adulthood. I don't know Mark Zuckerberg in person to judge what kind of person he is, I don't think it is fair to judge him based on what he might have done when he was younger.

blizkreeg 16y ago

I find it rather sad too that people revel in taking shots at him at every possible opportunity. He started this company at what 20-21? I am by no means a Facebook or Zuckerberg fanboy, but just for a second, put yourself in the guy's shoes. I doubt most kids in their 20s would be able to fit in those shoes. They would either be replaced by the board or melt under the pressure and cash out. He's trying. He's doing it with passion. It's not easy. Yes, he has made bad decisions, some unethical choices. But in all honesty, I'm not sure either one of us wouldn't have screwed up in a position like that. Google essentially had three guys making the big decisions with Eric Schmidt to look over Larry and Sergey's shoulders. Facebook has essentially been Zuckerberg throughout. Criticizing, laughing at, mocking - that is easy, people. Let's not be those guys.

ryanhuff 16y ago

It comes with the territory. A person in his position should face scrutiny. For many people, Facebook is now integral to their social relationships, and was built upon an understanding of privacy that is now being rewritten on the fly. When you change gears as Facebook is trying to do, you can't expect a free pass. The schadenfreude that you mention is all part of the debate of what ultimately will be accepted.

arach 16y ago
Facing scrutiny +1 Being made fun of because you got nervous/self conscious on a stage -1 Not that I worry about Zuckerberg. He'll be fine. He'll probably get better at public speaking in the future and keep running a successful company.

dejb 16y ago

I agree that the personal attacks are unfair. But when you look at his role of CEO of a company that wields as much power as Facebook it is unsurprising that a lot of people are going to be interested in his foibles. The more power they have they more the discussion becomes political in nature and an unconventional 26 year old guy like Zuck is always going to have image problems in this domain. To me it seems inevitable that some 'adult supervision' will be required, even if only for the sake of image and to relate to the older power structures. Something similar seems to be working for Google.

quizbiz 16y ago

>> The Zuckerberg hate is lame. I disagree. I admire Zuckerberg's success so so much. He has made incredible business decisions. He has refused to sell out and is now looking at an IPO. The guy seems relentlessly good. And it's scary. Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuck: Just ask. Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks. http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5#ixzz0plkz0DzJ http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims... But we must be critical and it is important for journalists to put him on the spot right now because on a personal level, he does not seem concerned enough with his mostly naive user base. He is very powerful, he controls a lot of information. With Google and Tesla we see a rising mantra to do genuine good in the world. Zuckerberg's public appearance at the conference in light of his leadership abilities shows a man that is hiding things and it shows a man that in my uninformed opinion will not hesitate to push the limits to see how far he can grow Facebook. Based on the statements he has made and based on the progression of Facebook's features, I fear where facebook is headed given the amount of private data it has access to and _more_ importantly the amount of behavioral data it has access to. Just my opinion.

jaekwon 16y ago
yes and, Facebook is proving itself to be respectful of users. They're responding to the media and fixing issues intelligently. Also, on the divisive "Draw Mo" day Facebook showed maturity (by blocking content from being viewed by people would would get offended). I suspect that much of this hate is part ignorance (about the nature of software development) and part jealousy. From my perspective it looks like Zuck is a great CEO. I'd work with a guy with that much passion any day.

izendejas 16y ago

I personally have no problems with him, but I have serious problems with his opt-out policy. As such, I relished the fact that he was sweating up there. This is good. Why? There's nothing like body language to get the truth out of someone. And because I hope this brings even more attention to the privacy issue.