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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

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.

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.