7 ms·

Zuckerberg apologizes for VR cartoon tour of Puerto Rico devastation

85 points by Caveman_Coder 9y ago

ckastner 9y ago
Unless he does indeed style himself as "Zuck", can we please spell his name properly?
- codemac 9y ago
  Real Names Only!
shpx 9y ago
The video this article was about is 10 minutes long https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10104094186863501/ https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10104094186863501/ Here are timestamps of the quotes from the article: https://youtu.be/cIA1AVpKt5c?t=4m19s https://youtu.be/cIA1AVpKt5c?t=4m19s https://youtu.be/cIA1AVpKt5c?t=5m34s https://youtu.be/cIA1AVpKt5c?t=5m34s https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10104094186863501/?comment_id=180060679227397 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10104094186863501/?comm... https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10104094186863501/?comment_id=142922293109217 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10104094186863501/?comm...
taytus 9y ago
The fact that probably millions of people would vote for him to be president is terrifying to me.
- eb00 9y ago
  Trump may have doomed us to an endless flood of celebrity politicians. I despise Zuckerberg but other celebrity candidates scare me more. If we must have a tech mogul I would prefer Gates or Cook.
  - fiblye 9y ago
    Other celebrity presidents would merely be dumb. Society has managed to survive bumbling politicians, mocking them all along the way. Zuckerberg strikes me as hell-bent on global domination, but doing it with the most plastic smile possible. Given any sort of real authority, I doubt even humor at his expense would go unchecked.
  - Caveman_Coder 9y ago
    > "Trump may have doomed us to an endless flood of celebrity politicians..." We've had numerous celebrity politicians before Trump. Franken, Reagan, Arnold, Ventura, Springer, etc... The list continues[1] and it definitely wasn't Trump that was the first (although he holds the highest position of any of the other celebrity-actor-politicians, without having first held another political position). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_actor-politicians#USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_actor-politicians#USA EDIT: Clarified my comment on Trump being the "first" celebrity-president
    - pitt1980 9y ago
      fwiw, Springer's political life was before he became a nationally known celebrity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Springer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Springer
    - Cthulhu_ 9y ago
      Reagan was president too though.
      - Caveman_Coder 9y ago
        Fair point. I edited my comment to make clear that I meant first celebrity-president without having had any other political position.
  - romanovcode 9y ago
    Gates would actually be pretty good IMO.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
tn_ 9y ago
I'm wondering what kind of feedback they got from their dry-run... I kind of wish interviews for engineering positions took soft-skills more seriously. What ends up happening is you have a room full of technically brilliant people, who might be on a spectrum, making user-facing decisions.
- Caveman_Coder 9y ago
  > "...on a spectrum" Does "on a spectrum" mean "autistic" the way you used it?
  - vorotato 9y ago
    I think instead he may have affluenza
  - krageon 9y ago
    I'm sure it also means any other deviation from the norm. Framed as something intrinsically bad, or at least indicative of deafness to tone.
- drzaiusapelord 9y ago
  What happens when the top guy is on the spectrum and over-rides these decisions? Part of the problem isn't just being on the spectrum but having someone in a position of power on the spectrum. You can have the best men and women at Facebook, but if Zuck is personally greenlighting these moves then it does no good. As someone who worked in an environment like this, its very frustrating to see good judgment tossed out the window because the boss's ego or social blindness overrides all. Worse, executive culture in the US is elitist culture. After a while, when you push 7 figures for years, fly your own plane, spend weekends on the yacht, have four homes, etc you just simply fall out of the mainstream and one's judgment on what is appropriate PR simply is off-kilter. Its funny how well we understand this with, say, royalty of old, but somehow our capitalistic 'royalty' get a free pass. Its the same human brain at work here be it today or 18th century versailles. People who are elevated to a certain point will simply become out of touch. Adding being on the spectrum to this only makes it worse.
apexalpha 9y ago
I cringed a bit when I saw this. It is one thing to go to Puerto Rico and walk around a block of houses to raise awereness. But to do this in VR, not even taking the effort to actually go there... it's a bit. I don't know. I guess tone-deaf is a good word for it. Just feels like those pictures where people pose for a selfie next to the homeless people they just handed €1 to.
- brndnmtthws 9y ago
  It's also sickening that this feels like some kind of product promotion piggybacking on the devastation in PR.
- coldcode 9y ago
  The people of Puerto Rico are suffering in Actual Reality using VR to visit them is unbelievably dense. Doing it as a cartoon is even worse.
  - hackinthebochs 9y ago
    No, its a way for the rest of us to visit the devastation in a way that triggers our empathy. This isn't about Zuck, this is about the rest of the country that has basically been ignoring PR.
    - leereeves 9y ago
      The rest of the country hasn't been ignoring Puerto Rico. It's been in the news everyday for weeks. FEMA and other agencies sent 20,000 people to help. Tens of billions of dollars for aid have been approved by Congress or requested by Trump. Perhaps you've been misled by partisan claims that Trump is failing to respond.
- vorotato 9y ago
  I mean they were in Puerto Rico, but yeah there is an emotional distancing with VR that they really really should have been aware of. They probably were aware of it and zuck overrided.
20170319 9y ago
Despite an army of PR people coaching him for over a decade, he still can't stop the inner sociopath from coming out once in a while.
- roywiggins 9y ago
  It might be the other way around. Something about having more money than God and influence over the social lives of the planet probably doesn't help you keep in touch with your actual humanity. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-wealth-reduces-compassion/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-wealth-reduce...
- dang 9y ago
  I know how beloved that old standby is to some of you, but it breaks the HN guideline against name-calling. We ban accounts that do this repeatedly, so please don't. No, this isn't because we love Zuckerberg, serve corporate overloads or whatnot—it's because repeating the same things over and over is off topic for this site, especially when they are toxic waste. All: this is also the sort of comment we use to downweight user votes, since it's a honeytrap for reflexive internet indignation, and that is the thing we're most hoping to avoid here. If you'd like your votes to count on HN, cultivate the habit of pausing before you use them.
  - 20170319 9y ago
    What standby? This article is about Zuckerberg apologizing (again) for being completely tone-deaf in a manner that suggests he really has no idea how humans work beyond stimulus-response machines. What do you suggest? That we comment on the VR tech? This entire thread is just reaction on his behavior. You may as well just close the thread.
    - dang 9y ago
      The "sociopath" standby, with extra anti-points for "dumb fucks" icing. The thread of course has plenty of things to talk about other than that petrified nugget, which was getting old ten years ago.
lalos 9y ago
Things like this make me want to have a VR cartoon tour of the meeting or round table that produced this train wreck. Wonder what their expectations were.
roywiggins 9y ago
You'd think politicians and pseudo-politicians[1] would have all learned their lesson from Bush's poorly-received Katrina flyover[2]. [1] https://www.gq.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-pollster https://www.gq.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-pollster [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2010-11-05/bush-calls-new-orleans-flyover-in-wake-of-hurricane-katrina-huge-mistake- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2010-11-05/bush-call...
dontreact 9y ago
If this was so cringe-worthy, why wasn't that mentioned in the original coverage? https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/09/vr-zuckerberg-shares-details-on-some-of-facebooks-ai-aid-to-the-red-cross-in-puerto-rico/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/09/vr-zuckerberg-shares-detai...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- MattBearman 9y ago
  From your lined article: "seeing a cartoon avatar in the middle of an NPR-produced 360 video highlighting the situation in Puerto Rico while very real people walk around surveying the devastation of their homes perhaps wasn’t the most appropriate choice."
diogenescynic 9y ago
Zuckerberg really seems to have something wrong with him when he does stuff like this, yet gaslights Congress over Russia's use of Facebook during the last election. I never really like cared for Zuck or Facebook, but don't they have any adults over there saying no to any of this stuff?
- mmsmatt 9y ago
  Traditional media is chasing social media every day. This was the dream, it just took Trump to bring it into reality. A company that lives and dies by ad analytics couldn't have not known about election influencing purchases. The adults in the room want more Facebook in your life at any cost, totally rational goal for the organization to live on. I would bet a day or two of bad press from Mark's VR stunt is probably worth the bump in engagement and publicity.
romanovcode 9y ago
Still not as cringey as the fact that he wanted Chinese president to name his son which president refused to do!
- emodendroket 9y ago
  I mean that was depraved in a different way.
- WillReplyfFood 9y ago
  Would have found a awesome name if i where the chinese president. Cringekotau M. Zuckerberg
  - romanovcode 9y ago
    Hehe, or something like "Miantang" which would mean "noodle soup" :)
_pmf_ 9y ago
Let's focus on the positive things: at least he did not call the people "dumb fucks" again.
sergiotapia 9y ago
Fellow humans, I apologize for my lack of tact. Rest assured my borg has assimilated the proper human constructs and all sources of error have been purged. Have a mellow day.
- sametmax 9y ago
  I'm gona still that. Espacially the mellow day.
bamboozled 9y ago
Really? Talk about out of touch.
clifdweller 9y ago
Perhaps more pr firms need to have some historians in their ranks. This far too much seems like the 19th century slumming by the affluent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slum_tourism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slum_tourism
2g67vupsoknn 9y ago
The headline seems a bit misleading... he didn't actually apologize for the cartoon, but for the fact that some were "offended" and misunderstood his stated goals for the presentation (showing off VR and the partnership with Red Cross). In other words, a classic non-apology. The issue is that people did understand the true goal of the presentation: self-promotion.
- srrge 9y ago
  This has become an standard PR stunt. I agree with you that journalists should point that out. Also, why public figures could not apologize for real? Like "I am sorry, this was not a great communication campaign after all. We'll do better next time." Is this really difficult?
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    Potential liability, and/or massive egos.
    - jermaustin1 9y ago
      I got my "law degree" from watching TV, so take this with a grain of salt, but when you apologize you are admitting fault, which could be legally binding if a lawsuit is brought upon you. So if he were to apologize, Red Cross could then potentially sue over a down tick in donations due to the join campaign, etc. Again, not a lawyer, have no real interest in law, but this has played out on TV shows a few times.
      - ciro_langone 9y ago
        This could be partially true. CA, MA, and a few other states have laws protecting against this kind of liability, but it's still probably a best practice against major liability. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-apology_apology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-apology_apology
      - QAPereo 9y ago
emiliobumachar 9y ago
The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics strikes again.[0] I'm taking the contrarian stance that "visiting" a disaster zone in VR is more engaged than just reading about it in the news, which is more engaged than not taking any interest at all, which is the default. "When you’re in VR yourself, the surroundings feel quite real. But that sense of empathy doesn’t extend well to people watching you as a virtual character on a 2D screen" -Zuckerberg, as per the article I think this effect did most of the damage. The cartoons involved are just the avatars, presumably each participant was not even seeing their own avatar. [0] https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...
- sremani 9y ago
  Instead of talking the tech and how to apply the tools of technology, the media and their consumers are as usual scoring style points and mounting a lynching expedition. VR is a useful tool, for various parties including for planners to really "see" the devastation in 3D.
  - _jal 9y ago
    > the media and their consumers are as usual scoring style points Zuckerberg's stunt was tacky as hell. He clearly demonstrated how laughably out-of-touch he is with the reality other people live in. You may care more about the tech, but it was like watching a spray-paint salesman hawk wares by spraying over masterpieces, except worse because we're talking about humans. Also, calling criticizing an out of touch goofball for being tacky a 'lynching expedition' is ludicrous. It isn't even a VR lynching. > VR is a useful tool, for various parties including for planners to really "see" the devastation in 3D. Stop and think about this for a minute. If you can get sufficiently detailed data for logistics planning (say, by driving Google Cars around), you're past the planning stage.
jijji 9y ago
Lets cut in some video of the rawandan refugee crisis, hey look at all the cute kids running around LOL here we go! this is fun! here is some PR for PR
malloreon 9y ago
America: please do not elect zuck president.
40acres 9y ago
It's events like this one that make me doubledown on the idea that having a more diverse employee base helps buisnesses out, especially when it comes to "optics". Maybe just maybe if someone at FB in the decision chain had lived in an impoverished area struck by disaster, or had relatives who were in this situation, they could have made a convincing argument that this was insensitive. It seems as if every week there are 2-3 companies that have a PR disaster that really seems as if it could've been averted if they had a different perspective "red team" the idea, I guess this week it's Facebook and Dove[0]. 0 - https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/dove-apologizes-racially-insensitive-facebook-advertisement-n808806 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/dove-apologiz...
- ryandrake 9y ago
  > in the decision chain That's the key, and in the vast majority of companies, the decision chain is going to consist of less than 10 people, all wealthy, mostly white, and mostly whose privileged, elite world views are divorced from "normal human" life.
rdtsc 9y ago
> the tone-deafness of the video was pretty pronounced and even though the content of his video pointed to all of the positive work Facebook was doing in Puerto Rico, People are pretty good at detecting superficial niceness. It's something even babies are good at, it's hard-wired so to speak and it's basically the answer to the important question "does this person really care, or are they just pretending". Sure, some become really good manipulators and can fool others. Somebody else could have done pretty much the same VR tour and it would have had a different effect. The technology itself here wasn't the main problem. > Facebook is generally pretty careful to isolate its CEO from opportunities for bad press, Zuckerberg has an extensive team helping him maintain his manicured public image on the social media site. The manicuring part is the fake niceness. "Someone is making him look like what he is not, what are they really hiding..." kind of idea. That is it is contrasted with his or his company's action, what he did and said in the past (ex. "They trust me — dumb fucks") and then it becomes unsettling and has a negative effect.
- ogrisel 9y ago
  About manicuring a public image and fake niceness, for some reason, I find the following funny take on his public image quite authentic :) https://twitter.com/BasedDrWorm/status/913282180280934400 https://twitter.com/BasedDrWorm/status/913282180280934400
  - rdtsc 9y ago
    I love it! Thanks
thearn4 9y ago
It reads like a script right out of Silicon Valley.
ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
I think Zuckerberg and everyone involved with VR at Facebook have been overly effected by Chris Milk's TED Talk about how VR can be the "Ultimate Empathy Machine". The arguments in that talk are compelling, and they probably felt they were doing a great humanitarian service. I don't think they are bad people at all, but they are definitely in a bubble where a certain awareness of the humanitarian potential for VR has made them blind to the perception of the average person. https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_milk_how_virtual_reality_can_create_the_ultimate_empathy_machine https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_milk_how_virtual_reality_can...
- elicash 9y ago
  That makes me wonder... If rather than viewing it as a YouTube video I had instead watched their "tour" in VR, would I STILL have been immediately struck by it being tone-deaf? I think I still would be, because the whole point is to have actual conversations with people who are affected by the humanitarian crisis.
throw2016 9y ago
Many here would pass this off as 'growth hacking' and that's a bigger problem. Of course Mark Zuckerberg doesn't need growth hacking. For a social network that prides itself for being on top of things this makes him and the facebook team look completely clueless and disconnected. Maybe some fresh blood ideally not from the software ecosystem who can make the connection back to reality.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

85 points by Caveman_Coder 9y ago

ckastner 9y ago

Unless he does indeed style himself as "Zuck", can we please spell his name properly?

codemac 9y ago
Real Names Only!

shpx 9y ago

The video this article was about is 10 minutes long https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10104094186863501/ https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10104094186863501/ Here are timestamps of the quotes from the article: https://youtu.be/cIA1AVpKt5c?t=4m19s https://youtu.be/cIA1AVpKt5c?t=4m19s https://youtu.be/cIA1AVpKt5c?t=5m34s https://youtu.be/cIA1AVpKt5c?t=5m34s https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10104094186863501/?comment_id=180060679227397 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10104094186863501/?comm... https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10104094186863501/?comment_id=142922293109217 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10104094186863501/?comm...

taytus 9y ago

The fact that probably millions of people would vote for him to be president is terrifying to me.

eb00 9y ago
Trump may have doomed us to an endless flood of celebrity politicians. I despise Zuckerberg but other celebrity candidates scare me more. If we must have a tech mogul I would prefer Gates or Cook.
- fiblye 9y ago
  Other celebrity presidents would merely be dumb. Society has managed to survive bumbling politicians, mocking them all along the way. Zuckerberg strikes me as hell-bent on global domination, but doing it with the most plastic smile possible. Given any sort of real authority, I doubt even humor at his expense would go unchecked.
- Caveman_Coder 9y ago
  > "Trump may have doomed us to an endless flood of celebrity politicians..." We've had numerous celebrity politicians before Trump. Franken, Reagan, Arnold, Ventura, Springer, etc... The list continues[1] and it definitely wasn't Trump that was the first (although he holds the highest position of any of the other celebrity-actor-politicians, without having first held another political position). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_actor-politicians#USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_actor-politicians#USA EDIT: Clarified my comment on Trump being the "first" celebrity-president
  - pitt1980 9y ago
    fwiw, Springer's political life was before he became a nationally known celebrity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Springer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Springer
  - Cthulhu_ 9y ago
    Reagan was president too though.
    - Caveman_Coder 9y ago
      Fair point. I edited my comment to make clear that I meant first celebrity-president without having had any other political position.
- romanovcode 9y ago
  Gates would actually be pretty good IMO.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

tn_ 9y ago

I'm wondering what kind of feedback they got from their dry-run... I kind of wish interviews for engineering positions took soft-skills more seriously. What ends up happening is you have a room full of technically brilliant people, who might be on a spectrum, making user-facing decisions.

Caveman_Coder 9y ago
> "...on a spectrum" Does "on a spectrum" mean "autistic" the way you used it?
- vorotato 9y ago
  I think instead he may have affluenza
- krageon 9y ago
  I'm sure it also means any other deviation from the norm. Framed as something intrinsically bad, or at least indicative of deafness to tone.
drzaiusapelord 9y ago
What happens when the top guy is on the spectrum and over-rides these decisions? Part of the problem isn't just being on the spectrum but having someone in a position of power on the spectrum. You can have the best men and women at Facebook, but if Zuck is personally greenlighting these moves then it does no good. As someone who worked in an environment like this, its very frustrating to see good judgment tossed out the window because the boss's ego or social blindness overrides all. Worse, executive culture in the US is elitist culture. After a while, when you push 7 figures for years, fly your own plane, spend weekends on the yacht, have four homes, etc you just simply fall out of the mainstream and one's judgment on what is appropriate PR simply is off-kilter. Its funny how well we understand this with, say, royalty of old, but somehow our capitalistic 'royalty' get a free pass. Its the same human brain at work here be it today or 18th century versailles. People who are elevated to a certain point will simply become out of touch. Adding being on the spectrum to this only makes it worse.

apexalpha 9y ago

I cringed a bit when I saw this. It is one thing to go to Puerto Rico and walk around a block of houses to raise awereness. But to do this in VR, not even taking the effort to actually go there... it's a bit. I don't know. I guess tone-deaf is a good word for it. Just feels like those pictures where people pose for a selfie next to the homeless people they just handed €1 to.

brndnmtthws 9y ago
It's also sickening that this feels like some kind of product promotion piggybacking on the devastation in PR.
coldcode 9y ago
The people of Puerto Rico are suffering in Actual Reality using VR to visit them is unbelievably dense. Doing it as a cartoon is even worse.
- hackinthebochs 9y ago
  No, its a way for the rest of us to visit the devastation in a way that triggers our empathy. This isn't about Zuck, this is about the rest of the country that has basically been ignoring PR.
  - leereeves 9y ago
    The rest of the country hasn't been ignoring Puerto Rico. It's been in the news everyday for weeks. FEMA and other agencies sent 20,000 people to help. Tens of billions of dollars for aid have been approved by Congress or requested by Trump. Perhaps you've been misled by partisan claims that Trump is failing to respond.
vorotato 9y ago
I mean they were in Puerto Rico, but yeah there is an emotional distancing with VR that they really really should have been aware of. They probably were aware of it and zuck overrided.

20170319 9y ago

Despite an army of PR people coaching him for over a decade, he still can't stop the inner sociopath from coming out once in a while.

roywiggins 9y ago
It might be the other way around. Something about having more money than God and influence over the social lives of the planet probably doesn't help you keep in touch with your actual humanity. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-wealth-reduces-compassion/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-wealth-reduce...
dang 9y ago
I know how beloved that old standby is to some of you, but it breaks the HN guideline against name-calling. We ban accounts that do this repeatedly, so please don't. No, this isn't because we love Zuckerberg, serve corporate overloads or whatnot—it's because repeating the same things over and over is off topic for this site, especially when they are toxic waste. All: this is also the sort of comment we use to downweight user votes, since it's a honeytrap for reflexive internet indignation, and that is the thing we're most hoping to avoid here. If you'd like your votes to count on HN, cultivate the habit of pausing before you use them.
- 20170319 9y ago
  What standby? This article is about Zuckerberg apologizing (again) for being completely tone-deaf in a manner that suggests he really has no idea how humans work beyond stimulus-response machines. What do you suggest? That we comment on the VR tech? This entire thread is just reaction on his behavior. You may as well just close the thread.
  - dang 9y ago
    The "sociopath" standby, with extra anti-points for "dumb fucks" icing. The thread of course has plenty of things to talk about other than that petrified nugget, which was getting old ten years ago.

lalos 9y ago

Things like this make me want to have a VR cartoon tour of the meeting or round table that produced this train wreck. Wonder what their expectations were.

roywiggins 9y ago

You'd think politicians and pseudo-politicians[1] would have all learned their lesson from Bush's poorly-received Katrina flyover[2]. [1] https://www.gq.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-pollster https://www.gq.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-pollster [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2010-11-05/bush-calls-new-orleans-flyover-in-wake-of-hurricane-katrina-huge-mistake- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2010-11-05/bush-call...

dontreact 9y ago

If this was so cringe-worthy, why wasn't that mentioned in the original coverage? https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/09/vr-zuckerberg-shares-details-on-some-of-facebooks-ai-aid-to-the-red-cross-in-puerto-rico/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/09/vr-zuckerberg-shares-detai...

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
MattBearman 9y ago
From your lined article: "seeing a cartoon avatar in the middle of an NPR-produced 360 video highlighting the situation in Puerto Rico while very real people walk around surveying the devastation of their homes perhaps wasn’t the most appropriate choice."

diogenescynic 9y ago

Zuckerberg really seems to have something wrong with him when he does stuff like this, yet gaslights Congress over Russia's use of Facebook during the last election. I never really like cared for Zuck or Facebook, but don't they have any adults over there saying no to any of this stuff?

mmsmatt 9y ago
Traditional media is chasing social media every day. This was the dream, it just took Trump to bring it into reality. A company that lives and dies by ad analytics couldn't have not known about election influencing purchases. The adults in the room want more Facebook in your life at any cost, totally rational goal for the organization to live on. I would bet a day or two of bad press from Mark's VR stunt is probably worth the bump in engagement and publicity.

romanovcode 9y ago

Still not as cringey as the fact that he wanted Chinese president to name his son which president refused to do!

emodendroket 9y ago
I mean that was depraved in a different way.
WillReplyfFood 9y ago
Would have found a awesome name if i where the chinese president. Cringekotau M. Zuckerberg
- romanovcode 9y ago
  Hehe, or something like "Miantang" which would mean "noodle soup" :)

_pmf_ 9y ago

Let's focus on the positive things: at least he did not call the people "dumb fucks" again.

sergiotapia 9y ago

Fellow humans, I apologize for my lack of tact. Rest assured my borg has assimilated the proper human constructs and all sources of error have been purged. Have a mellow day.

sametmax 9y ago
I'm gona still that. Espacially the mellow day.

bamboozled 9y ago

Really? Talk about out of touch.

clifdweller 9y ago

Perhaps more pr firms need to have some historians in their ranks. This far too much seems like the 19th century slumming by the affluent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slum_tourism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slum_tourism

2g67vupsoknn 9y ago

The headline seems a bit misleading... he didn't actually apologize for the cartoon, but for the fact that some were "offended" and misunderstood his stated goals for the presentation (showing off VR and the partnership with Red Cross). In other words, a classic non-apology. The issue is that people did understand the true goal of the presentation: self-promotion.

srrge 9y ago
This has become an standard PR stunt. I agree with you that journalists should point that out. Also, why public figures could not apologize for real? Like "I am sorry, this was not a great communication campaign after all. We'll do better next time." Is this really difficult?
- QAPereo 9y ago
  Potential liability, and/or massive egos.
  - jermaustin1 9y ago
    I got my "law degree" from watching TV, so take this with a grain of salt, but when you apologize you are admitting fault, which could be legally binding if a lawsuit is brought upon you. So if he were to apologize, Red Cross could then potentially sue over a down tick in donations due to the join campaign, etc. Again, not a lawyer, have no real interest in law, but this has played out on TV shows a few times.
    - ciro_langone 9y ago
      This could be partially true. CA, MA, and a few other states have laws protecting against this kind of liability, but it's still probably a best practice against major liability. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-apology_apology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-apology_apology
    - QAPereo 9y ago

emiliobumachar 9y ago

The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics strikes again.[0] I'm taking the contrarian stance that "visiting" a disaster zone in VR is more engaged than just reading about it in the news, which is more engaged than not taking any interest at all, which is the default. "When you’re in VR yourself, the surroundings feel quite real. But that sense of empathy doesn’t extend well to people watching you as a virtual character on a 2D screen" -Zuckerberg, as per the article I think this effect did most of the damage. The cartoons involved are just the avatars, presumably each participant was not even seeing their own avatar. [0] https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...

sremani 9y ago
Instead of talking the tech and how to apply the tools of technology, the media and their consumers are as usual scoring style points and mounting a lynching expedition. VR is a useful tool, for various parties including for planners to really "see" the devastation in 3D.
- _jal 9y ago
  > the media and their consumers are as usual scoring style points Zuckerberg's stunt was tacky as hell. He clearly demonstrated how laughably out-of-touch he is with the reality other people live in. You may care more about the tech, but it was like watching a spray-paint salesman hawk wares by spraying over masterpieces, except worse because we're talking about humans. Also, calling criticizing an out of touch goofball for being tacky a 'lynching expedition' is ludicrous. It isn't even a VR lynching. > VR is a useful tool, for various parties including for planners to really "see" the devastation in 3D. Stop and think about this for a minute. If you can get sufficiently detailed data for logistics planning (say, by driving Google Cars around), you're past the planning stage.

jijji 9y ago

Lets cut in some video of the rawandan refugee crisis, hey look at all the cute kids running around LOL here we go! this is fun! here is some PR for PR

malloreon 9y ago

America: please do not elect zuck president.

40acres 9y ago

It's events like this one that make me doubledown on the idea that having a more diverse employee base helps buisnesses out, especially when it comes to "optics". Maybe just maybe if someone at FB in the decision chain had lived in an impoverished area struck by disaster, or had relatives who were in this situation, they could have made a convincing argument that this was insensitive. It seems as if every week there are 2-3 companies that have a PR disaster that really seems as if it could've been averted if they had a different perspective "red team" the idea, I guess this week it's Facebook and Dove[0]. 0 - https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/dove-apologizes-racially-insensitive-facebook-advertisement-n808806 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/dove-apologiz...

ryandrake 9y ago
> in the decision chain That's the key, and in the vast majority of companies, the decision chain is going to consist of less than 10 people, all wealthy, mostly white, and mostly whose privileged, elite world views are divorced from "normal human" life.

rdtsc 9y ago

> the tone-deafness of the video was pretty pronounced and even though the content of his video pointed to all of the positive work Facebook was doing in Puerto Rico, People are pretty good at detecting superficial niceness. It's something even babies are good at, it's hard-wired so to speak and it's basically the answer to the important question "does this person really care, or are they just pretending". Sure, some become really good manipulators and can fool others. Somebody else could have done pretty much the same VR tour and it would have had a different effect. The technology itself here wasn't the main problem. > Facebook is generally pretty careful to isolate its CEO from opportunities for bad press, Zuckerberg has an extensive team helping him maintain his manicured public image on the social media site. The manicuring part is the fake niceness. "Someone is making him look like what he is not, what are they really hiding..." kind of idea. That is it is contrasted with his or his company's action, what he did and said in the past (ex. "They trust me — dumb fucks") and then it becomes unsettling and has a negative effect.

ogrisel 9y ago
About manicuring a public image and fake niceness, for some reason, I find the following funny take on his public image quite authentic :) https://twitter.com/BasedDrWorm/status/913282180280934400 https://twitter.com/BasedDrWorm/status/913282180280934400
- rdtsc 9y ago
  I love it! Thanks

thearn4 9y ago

It reads like a script right out of Silicon Valley.

ghostbrainalpha 9y ago

I think Zuckerberg and everyone involved with VR at Facebook have been overly effected by Chris Milk's TED Talk about how VR can be the "Ultimate Empathy Machine". The arguments in that talk are compelling, and they probably felt they were doing a great humanitarian service. I don't think they are bad people at all, but they are definitely in a bubble where a certain awareness of the humanitarian potential for VR has made them blind to the perception of the average person. https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_milk_how_virtual_reality_can_create_the_ultimate_empathy_machine https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_milk_how_virtual_reality_can...

elicash 9y ago
That makes me wonder... If rather than viewing it as a YouTube video I had instead watched their "tour" in VR, would I STILL have been immediately struck by it being tone-deaf? I think I still would be, because the whole point is to have actual conversations with people who are affected by the humanitarian crisis.

throw2016 9y ago

Many here would pass this off as 'growth hacking' and that's a bigger problem. Of course Mark Zuckerberg doesn't need growth hacking. For a social network that prides itself for being on top of things this makes him and the facebook team look completely clueless and disconnected. Maybe some fresh blood ideally not from the software ecosystem who can make the connection back to reality.

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