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How Facebook’s Naive Optimism Built a Toolbox for Totalitarianism (2014)

106 points by imartin2k 9y ago

awakeasleep 9y ago
Is "Naïve" an accurate word here? A lot of hay has been made over Zuckerberg's "They "trust me" Dumb fucks" comment, but however it gets exaggerated, it shows he understood the power of this information in the very early days... a complete lack of naïveté.
- FreakyT 9y ago
  Hard to say; it's entirely possible he was "joking" at the time. It's also completely possible (and this is my belief) that he eventually drunk his own Kool-Aid and came to genuinely believe that Facebook really was about making the world a better place by connecting people.
  - OrganicMSG 9y ago
    Is very hard to know if the promoter of the Kool-Aid has drunk their own Kool-Aid, since the method of getting other people to drink theirs is to first learn to act as though you really, truly believe in the Kool-aid.
  - PolandKid 9y ago
    >>It's also completely possible (and this is my belief) that he eventually drunk his own Kool-Aid and came to genuinely believe that Facebook really was about making the world a better place by connecting people. Possible is one thing, but there's no chance anyone with a micron of common sense could believe in that marketing tag line. Facebook was a better, "cleaner looking" social network in an era of MySpaces, that's all. The user profiling and data collection is the essential part to building audience demographics for better targeting ads, which they needed to compete with Google's PPC domination.
- dfraser992 9y ago
  When I learned Zuckerberg majored in psychology while at Harvard, the reasons for everything he's done and how he's behaved (and the actions of Facebook) became crystal clear - Facebook is little more than a Skinner box, fueled by not cocaine but dopamine.
  - juststeve 9y ago
    source?
    - OrganicMSG 9y ago
      Harvard, presumably.
    - justboxing 9y ago
      Yeah I don't think he officially graduated. Harvard gave him an honorary degree[1] 12 years after he dropped out. [1] Source: Mark Zuckerberg will get his Harvard degree after dropping out 12 years ago https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/7/14847968/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-harvard-commencement-honorary-degree https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/7/14847968/facebook-mark-zuc...
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- Barrin92 9y ago
  >Is "Naïve" an accurate word here? No, it's not at all accurate. It's surveillance capitalism, making money with the attention of people, manipulation and violation of privacy on a massive scale, using addictive mechanisms and networks to keep them engaged. The public is only now recognising how damaging it is to democracy, personal relations and intimacy among other things, but companies like Facebook knew this for a very long time already, it is their business model.
- ihervhtb 9y ago
  Every engineer that accepted a nice paycheck to build trash software at facebook -- naïve? No. Selfish and short-sighted? Yes.
- btilly 9y ago
  I'm not buying naïve. See https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/10/facebook-personal-data-online-privacy-social-norm/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/10/facebook-person... for a 2013 view of Facebook near the beginning of this decade. In 2010 I remember hearing rumor that some of the early investors in Facebook were connected with the CIA. I can't readily verify that, but it fits with everything that I've heard about them. I don't think that we should assume good intentions here.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
apo 9y ago
This revised 2014 article veers off into some strange territory at the end: For the first time in human history, ALL of the philosophical, psychological, and educational frameworks and just about every technology necessary to create and sustain abundant, low-cost access to energy, water, nutritious food, high-quality education, physical and mental health, transportation, and shelter exists at the same time. Right now, in 2018, we already have everything we need to reduce and possibly eliminate nearly all the waste in our systems. And we can do it all in a way that benefits the planet’s environment instead of harming it and possibly destabilizing it. The obstacles to the widespread deployment of these ideas and technologies are misaligned incentives and scale. And thanks to an extraordinary invention by a strange reclusive figure who calls itself Satoshi, humanity may have a path around those obstacles as well No, that invention is not Bitcoin. It is the blockchain, the much more significant technology that makes Bitcoin possible. In a much bigger upcoming guide to the blockchain, we’ll explore these things as well. I've seen all manner of wind-ups to "blockchain," but this one was quite unexpected. If the author is talking about social networks combined with "Blockchain Technology," he can save his breath. This has been done to death.
- ggggtez 9y ago
  I'm just waiting for the "FreedomCoin" ICO. /s edit: of course that's a real coin already. Sigh.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- abhishekjha 9y ago
  > social networks combined with "Blockchain Technology," I don't get the use case properly. Is it the trust issue? How can a distributed voting system fix it? And also, wouldn't that require a lot of processing power?
  - kromem 9y ago
    It's basically what Secure Scuttlebutt is doing. Basically, if you have a cryptographic write only log of social activity, and can exchange that with others, you can create social activity/interactions that are only readable by your social graph (as it should be), and not by third parties/providers. It's a really, really neat concept (in the vein of the awesome stuff happening with distributed cryptographic consensus in general), and simply needs easier entry points for mass adoption.
ggggtez 9y ago
Did he really sneak in Blockchain hype in the last 2 sentences? Why am I even surprised...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

106 points by imartin2k 9y ago

Is "Naïve" an accurate word here? A lot of hay has been made over Zuckerberg's "They "trust me" Dumb fucks" comment, but however it gets exaggerated, it shows he understood the power of this information in the very early days... a complete lack of naïveté.

FreakyT 9y ago
Hard to say; it's entirely possible he was "joking" at the time. It's also completely possible (and this is my belief) that he eventually drunk his own Kool-Aid and came to genuinely believe that Facebook really was about making the world a better place by connecting people.
- OrganicMSG 9y ago
  Is very hard to know if the promoter of the Kool-Aid has drunk their own Kool-Aid, since the method of getting other people to drink theirs is to first learn to act as though you really, truly believe in the Kool-aid.
- PolandKid 9y ago
  >>It's also completely possible (and this is my belief) that he eventually drunk his own Kool-Aid and came to genuinely believe that Facebook really was about making the world a better place by connecting people. Possible is one thing, but there's no chance anyone with a micron of common sense could believe in that marketing tag line. Facebook was a better, "cleaner looking" social network in an era of MySpaces, that's all. The user profiling and data collection is the essential part to building audience demographics for better targeting ads, which they needed to compete with Google's PPC domination.
dfraser992 9y ago
When I learned Zuckerberg majored in psychology while at Harvard, the reasons for everything he's done and how he's behaved (and the actions of Facebook) became crystal clear - Facebook is little more than a Skinner box, fueled by not cocaine but dopamine.
- juststeve 9y ago
  source?
  - OrganicMSG 9y ago
    Harvard, presumably.
  - justboxing 9y ago
    Yeah I don't think he officially graduated. Harvard gave him an honorary degree[1] 12 years after he dropped out. [1] Source: Mark Zuckerberg will get his Harvard degree after dropping out 12 years ago https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/7/14847968/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-harvard-commencement-honorary-degree https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/7/14847968/facebook-mark-zuc...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
Barrin92 9y ago
>Is "Naïve" an accurate word here? No, it's not at all accurate. It's surveillance capitalism, making money with the attention of people, manipulation and violation of privacy on a massive scale, using addictive mechanisms and networks to keep them engaged. The public is only now recognising how damaging it is to democracy, personal relations and intimacy among other things, but companies like Facebook knew this for a very long time already, it is their business model.
ihervhtb 9y ago
Every engineer that accepted a nice paycheck to build trash software at facebook -- naïve? No. Selfish and short-sighted? Yes.
btilly 9y ago
I'm not buying naïve. See https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/10/facebook-personal-data-online-privacy-social-norm/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/10/facebook-person... for a 2013 view of Facebook near the beginning of this decade. In 2010 I remember hearing rumor that some of the early investors in Facebook were connected with the CIA. I can't readily verify that, but it fits with everything that I've heard about them. I don't think that we should assume good intentions here.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

apo 9y ago

This revised 2014 article veers off into some strange territory at the end: For the first time in human history, ALL of the philosophical, psychological, and educational frameworks and just about every technology necessary to create and sustain abundant, low-cost access to energy, water, nutritious food, high-quality education, physical and mental health, transportation, and shelter exists at the same time. Right now, in 2018, we already have everything we need to reduce and possibly eliminate nearly all the waste in our systems. And we can do it all in a way that benefits the planet’s environment instead of harming it and possibly destabilizing it. The obstacles to the widespread deployment of these ideas and technologies are misaligned incentives and scale. And thanks to an extraordinary invention by a strange reclusive figure who calls itself Satoshi, humanity may have a path around those obstacles as well No, that invention is not Bitcoin. It is the blockchain, the much more significant technology that makes Bitcoin possible. In a much bigger upcoming guide to the blockchain, we’ll explore these things as well. I've seen all manner of wind-ups to "blockchain," but this one was quite unexpected. If the author is talking about social networks combined with "Blockchain Technology," he can save his breath. This has been done to death.

ggggtez 9y ago
I'm just waiting for the "FreedomCoin" ICO. /s edit: of course that's a real coin already. Sigh.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
abhishekjha 9y ago
> social networks combined with "Blockchain Technology," I don't get the use case properly. Is it the trust issue? How can a distributed voting system fix it? And also, wouldn't that require a lot of processing power?
- kromem 9y ago
  It's basically what Secure Scuttlebutt is doing. Basically, if you have a cryptographic write only log of social activity, and can exchange that with others, you can create social activity/interactions that are only readable by your social graph (as it should be), and not by third parties/providers. It's a really, really neat concept (in the vein of the awesome stuff happening with distributed cryptographic consensus in general), and simply needs easier entry points for mass adoption.

ggggtez 9y ago

Did he really sneak in Blockchain hype in the last 2 sentences? Why am I even surprised...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]