6 ms·

Now would be a good time for Mark Zuckerberg to resign

66 points by imartin2k 9y ago

jacquesm 9y ago
It would be but there is no way that it will ever happen. Besides that he has things set up in such a way that even the board can't force him out. The only people that can fire Zuckerberg are the users.
- acjohnson55 9y ago
  It's almost as though a corporate structure set up to enshrine its founder as BDFL is a really bad idea. Go figure.
  - adrianN 9y ago
    Doesn't seem so bad for the founder.
    - tim333 9y ago
      Not so bad for the shareholders really either. $500bn isn't a bad market cap for a photo sharing site. The people being hurt here are the general public.
    - CGamesPlay 9y ago
      Or, let's be honest, any of the investors who bought it.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
calimac 9y ago
Mark Zuckerberg has always been incapable. I'm amazed that he has been able to stay at the helm of the network for so long. Negligence gives cause regardless of terms. We all know that claiming negligence would be the softest explanation for his architecture. Outright nefarious and evil is a better description of every move he has made since inception.
brylie 9y ago
This is a good opportunity to join and/or recommend friends to join decentralized networks, like Mastadon: https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/ https://instances.social/ https://instances.social/
cronjobma 9y ago
Rather: Now would be a good time for Facebook users to resign. Zuck is doing exactly the same things when he started Facebook. It’s the users; The users that need to leave the platform. Does anyone really believe that a FB without Zuckerberg will all of a sudden be great for people? Reporters like these should inform users better about how their data is being used and how they can change things for themselves by simply leaving the platform. That’s 1. more practical and 2. the only actual solution to the problem.
- neor 9y ago
  I've been wanting to delete my FB account for years. Stupid me has it connected to a bunch of other services though by using single sign on feautures... Most used of those services is Spotify and they still don't offer a way to disconnect Facebook from the account.
  - dingo_bat 9y ago
    You can use some other streaming service if you really want to ditch fb. And let spotify know why when you cancel.
  - kristianc 9y ago
    Spotify should work absolutely fine when FB is deactivated, just send a 'Forgot Password' email to the email you used to sign up for Facebook.
    - neor 9y ago
      Wow never knew, I had looked into it a year ago and they only said that you could cancel the current FB shared account and register a new one based on e-mail account. However; that would make me lose all playlists, stored music and I'd have to move my subscription around. Too much hassle at the time. Going to try the trick you just posted.
  - jinushaun 9y ago
    Spotify used to be exclusively Facebook login, but introduced email login a long time ago. When that happened, I immediately disconnected my Facebook from Spotify.
_jezell_ 9y ago
Just like it was great for Microsoft when BillG left...
stretchwithme 9y ago
I think that is very unrealistic.
panchicore3 9y ago
> Attempts to make Facebook an infrastructure provider have arguably so far failed Adding to this list how failed to us with Parse.com
- inlined 9y ago
  Yeah.. the feels. For a hot second I thought Parse would get a shoutout when it mentioned Facebook's attempt to be an infrastructure provider.
mjfl 9y ago
This is hysteria. You people are crazy. This is not nearly that big of a deal. I beg my fellow hacker news readers, get ahold of yourselves. This is a stellar opportunity for this community to have some introspection. Are we capable of it? These kinds of posts are a mirror to what we badly want to be true, whether it is actually true or not. We, apparently, badly want Facebook and even moreso Mark Zuckerberg to fail. Why do we want that so badly?
- thedevilslawyer 9y ago
  Because we've allowed facebook, and it's ilk, to run rampant with our personal data and identity. Let's rein them in. With force.
- sleavey 9y ago
  I understand the anger directed at them. Facebook are the spearhead of the closed, privacy-invading web, and this is the straw that broke the camel's back. Most people reading HN probably remember the days when the web was open and free and you actually had to remember URLs to read interesting content on interesting websites, usually run by enthusiastic hobbyists, written as flat HTML sites without JavaScript bloat or supercookies. They're obviously not the only company at fault, but they're one of the biggest.
  - greenyoda 9y ago
    "Most people reading HN probably remember the days when the web was open and free and you actually had to remember URLs to read interesting content on interesting websites, usually run by enthusiastic hobbyists, written as flat HTML sites without JavaScript bloat or supercookies." That open and free web is still out there, and as a non-FB user, that's the web I see every day. OK, my RSS reader remembers the URLs for me, and some of the sites are a bit bloated (which we have browser add-ons to fix), but there's definitely lots of good independent content still out there (and I've found lots of it by reading HN).
- stickfigure 9y ago
  Schadenfreude. This story is old and it does not speak well about the character of the people who embrace it. I personally find it disgusting. If you don't like the service, stop using it and shut up.
shpx 9y ago
At this point I've hidden at least 10 threads relating to this. I'm starting to think that this is a coordinated PR "attack" on facebook.
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  Facebook has made enemies in very powerful entities. News agencies, governments, google. It's not surprising to witness this unjustified onslaught.
- jakebasile 9y ago
  It's getting out of hand. The hate train is running off the rails here. If this was Reddit, I'd suggest the mods pin a megathread to contain it but HN doesn't work that way. I'm generally against heavy moderation but at this point I'd vote for a moratorium like we did with politics awhile back.
  - adventured 9y ago
    Peak post Trump hysteria, hopefully. There aren't very many more entities left to blame, tar and feather for his election at this point.
dblotsky 9y ago
When under pressure, I'd expect a strong CEO to fix things, not to crawl away from the problems and toss them on someone else.
- RandomInteger4 9y ago
  What are you even talking about? His response to this issue was anything but "Crawl away from the problems". Did you even read it?
  - dblotsky 9y ago
    I'm talking about this article, which is calling for Zuck's resignation. I disagree with the article, and I think resigning would be crawling away from the problems.
    - RandomInteger4 9y ago
      Oh, my apologies. I misread your comment.
symbolepro 9y ago
I want to keep Facebook only to be connected with my friends. But I do not want to see their status updates. I just want to be digitally connected with them so that I can contact them. Instead of seeing their photos/posts, I would rather like to talk to them personally. I always think about pre-facebook era and want to go back again to those times.
- vasco 9y ago
  Install the Messenger app, delete the Facebook app. There you go.
- adrianN 9y ago
  Have you tried an address book?
- roadbeats 9y ago
  Get their e-mails and phone numbers. It'll be a significant improvement in your life, trust me.
tomsmeding 9y ago
The article goes on and on to describe how Facebook has tried to do and be many things that it wasn't before, and how it has failed in those attempts to expand beyond a basic social network. Fine, let's assume that that's true. Facebook did indeed do some useless things. But how is this a reason for its CEO to resign? Facebook did nothing wrong! Yes they failed to become better, and their platform became bloated, but so does every other platform in the world at the moment. But since when is failing to become better now suddenly a really good incentive for it to buckle down completely like the article is suggesting? I feel the article's argumentation is completely unsound. Premises I have no say about, but its conclusion definitely doesn't follow from those premises. The author didn't even rein in the privacy stories that are all over the news suddenly. Now that would give their argument leverage, but they didn't. Go hate Facebook all you like, I do too, but this article doesn't make sense and doesn't deserve to give a reason for you to hate the company or its CEO.
ZuckZack 9y ago
I wonder where is the difference on getting hacked and losing 50M user profiles or giving them away for free.
firasd 9y ago
Barring egregious criminality, it doesn't make sense for someone who took a company from nothing (well, maybe a concept pioneered by Friendster and its antecedents) to $500 billion in market cap to suddenly resign. I feel this Cambridge Analytica story is a bit overblown. When the whistleblower says “target their inner demons”, he is just referring to campaigns placing Facebook Ads with certain parameters about who should see them. Now the question of political targeting data being re-purposed from a personality quiz app, and issues of data privacy in general, are worth investigating. But the fall in Facebook stock price is a giant overreaction (unless the story invites legal regulation.) The shock of Trump’s election and Brexit have prompted more scrutiny of social media, which is warranted. But there’s a limit to the benefit of worrying about Youtube algorithms, Facebook targeting, and Russian trolls. Changing the political situation will mostly require old-fashioned door-to-door politics.
- kristianc 9y ago
  > Now the question of political targeting data being re-purposed from a personality quiz app, and issues of data privacy in general, are worth investigating. The data from the quiz wasn't repurposed. The data from the quiz itself has nothing to do with this. The quiz was merely a gateway to get the user to hand over a laundry list of their profile data on themselves and all of their contacts.
- noobermin 9y ago
  Not only that but it ignores the elephant room here. And the ironic thing is the annoying phrase has been used so often it's lost its power, but this is literally the biggest "evidence" for 2016 in front of people's noses. Clinton won the popular vote. She won CA for example, so clearly Cambridge didn't mush people's brains up that much. The swing states in the Midwest she didn't win she didn't campaign in. Is it that hard to understand? Why do we have to constantly relitigate 2016? If you don't like what Trump is doing, why not fight against that instead of this constant reporting and talk of conspiracies? People who peddle/love this stuff are taking away the wrong lessons from 2016.
thisisit 9y ago
While I want him to resign, it is not for the failures of Facebook. But because once things starting to blow up, he was MIA. It was only after, stories about his missing "statements" started to appear that he came forward.
- RandomInteger4 9y ago
  Or maybe he and his team wanted to actually take the time to come up with a useful and intelligent response rather than a vapid response only meant for the spectacle?
  - thisisit 9y ago
    So, you are saying he and his team waited 5-6 days to come up with a useful and intelligence but not a vapid response? Sure, that sounds feasible given how just a day ago everyone went after Zuckerberg for keeping silent and a day later he releases a statement.
kalkut 9y ago
All of this is overreacting. People have the choice to leave Facebook or to accept the terms and deal with them. This is some serious cognitive dissonance to expect to be free to share personal data but to still retain privacy regarding those. Anything you share with your friend can then be shared to a 3rd party. This is even true in "real life" And data is not nearly as powerful as we make it to be. Populism did not win because of social networks, populism won because of increasing inequalities in both wealth and skills in a world where globalisation and automation are making more and more people uncomfortable about the future. All data did is to identify who is who and sell them what they actually wanted. The problem is not about using data to understand audiences. It is about having people lacking enough common sense to actually check if they are told the truth. It is also about the eagerness of politicians to play with tribalism of any kind. Western democracies are responsible of those failures and they are trying to find anyone else than themselves to blame. I left Facebook a few years ago and I don't regret it. I doubt that Facebook is worth it for most people and WhatsApp with SMS is enough for me. People more social that me could leave FB to go to Instagram though. So in any case Zuckerberg is fine. The only way to beat Facebook is to give people an alternative they prefer. It is definitely not to try to scare them with data scandals most of them don't care about.

66 points by imartin2k 9y ago

It would be but there is no way that it will ever happen. Besides that he has things set up in such a way that even the board can't force him out. The only people that can fire Zuckerberg are the users.

acjohnson55 9y ago
It's almost as though a corporate structure set up to enshrine its founder as BDFL is a really bad idea. Go figure.
- adrianN 9y ago
  Doesn't seem so bad for the founder.
  - tim333 9y ago
    Not so bad for the shareholders really either. $500bn isn't a bad market cap for a photo sharing site. The people being hurt here are the general public.
  - CGamesPlay 9y ago
    Or, let's be honest, any of the investors who bought it.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

calimac 9y ago

Mark Zuckerberg has always been incapable. I'm amazed that he has been able to stay at the helm of the network for so long. Negligence gives cause regardless of terms. We all know that claiming negligence would be the softest explanation for his architecture. Outright nefarious and evil is a better description of every move he has made since inception.

brylie 9y ago

This is a good opportunity to join and/or recommend friends to join decentralized networks, like Mastadon: https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/ https://instances.social/ https://instances.social/

cronjobma 9y ago

Rather: Now would be a good time for Facebook users to resign. Zuck is doing exactly the same things when he started Facebook. It’s the users; The users that need to leave the platform. Does anyone really believe that a FB without Zuckerberg will all of a sudden be great for people? Reporters like these should inform users better about how their data is being used and how they can change things for themselves by simply leaving the platform. That’s 1. more practical and 2. the only actual solution to the problem.

neor 9y ago
I've been wanting to delete my FB account for years. Stupid me has it connected to a bunch of other services though by using single sign on feautures... Most used of those services is Spotify and they still don't offer a way to disconnect Facebook from the account.
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  You can use some other streaming service if you really want to ditch fb. And let spotify know why when you cancel.
- kristianc 9y ago
  Spotify should work absolutely fine when FB is deactivated, just send a 'Forgot Password' email to the email you used to sign up for Facebook.
  - neor 9y ago
    Wow never knew, I had looked into it a year ago and they only said that you could cancel the current FB shared account and register a new one based on e-mail account. However; that would make me lose all playlists, stored music and I'd have to move my subscription around. Too much hassle at the time. Going to try the trick you just posted.
- jinushaun 9y ago
  Spotify used to be exclusively Facebook login, but introduced email login a long time ago. When that happened, I immediately disconnected my Facebook from Spotify.

_jezell_ 9y ago

Just like it was great for Microsoft when BillG left...

stretchwithme 9y ago

I think that is very unrealistic.

panchicore3 9y ago

> Attempts to make Facebook an infrastructure provider have arguably so far failed Adding to this list how failed to us with Parse.com

inlined 9y ago
Yeah.. the feels. For a hot second I thought Parse would get a shoutout when it mentioned Facebook's attempt to be an infrastructure provider.

mjfl 9y ago

This is hysteria. You people are crazy. This is not nearly that big of a deal. I beg my fellow hacker news readers, get ahold of yourselves. This is a stellar opportunity for this community to have some introspection. Are we capable of it? These kinds of posts are a mirror to what we badly want to be true, whether it is actually true or not. We, apparently, badly want Facebook and even moreso Mark Zuckerberg to fail. Why do we want that so badly?

thedevilslawyer 9y ago
Because we've allowed facebook, and it's ilk, to run rampant with our personal data and identity. Let's rein them in. With force.
sleavey 9y ago
I understand the anger directed at them. Facebook are the spearhead of the closed, privacy-invading web, and this is the straw that broke the camel's back. Most people reading HN probably remember the days when the web was open and free and you actually had to remember URLs to read interesting content on interesting websites, usually run by enthusiastic hobbyists, written as flat HTML sites without JavaScript bloat or supercookies. They're obviously not the only company at fault, but they're one of the biggest.
- greenyoda 9y ago
  "Most people reading HN probably remember the days when the web was open and free and you actually had to remember URLs to read interesting content on interesting websites, usually run by enthusiastic hobbyists, written as flat HTML sites without JavaScript bloat or supercookies." That open and free web is still out there, and as a non-FB user, that's the web I see every day. OK, my RSS reader remembers the URLs for me, and some of the sites are a bit bloated (which we have browser add-ons to fix), but there's definitely lots of good independent content still out there (and I've found lots of it by reading HN).
stickfigure 9y ago
Schadenfreude. This story is old and it does not speak well about the character of the people who embrace it. I personally find it disgusting. If you don't like the service, stop using it and shut up.

shpx 9y ago

At this point I've hidden at least 10 threads relating to this. I'm starting to think that this is a coordinated PR "attack" on facebook.

dingo_bat 9y ago
Facebook has made enemies in very powerful entities. News agencies, governments, google. It's not surprising to witness this unjustified onslaught.
jakebasile 9y ago
It's getting out of hand. The hate train is running off the rails here. If this was Reddit, I'd suggest the mods pin a megathread to contain it but HN doesn't work that way. I'm generally against heavy moderation but at this point I'd vote for a moratorium like we did with politics awhile back.
- adventured 9y ago
  Peak post Trump hysteria, hopefully. There aren't very many more entities left to blame, tar and feather for his election at this point.

dblotsky 9y ago

When under pressure, I'd expect a strong CEO to fix things, not to crawl away from the problems and toss them on someone else.

RandomInteger4 9y ago
What are you even talking about? His response to this issue was anything but "Crawl away from the problems". Did you even read it?
- dblotsky 9y ago
  I'm talking about this article, which is calling for Zuck's resignation. I disagree with the article, and I think resigning would be crawling away from the problems.
  - RandomInteger4 9y ago
    Oh, my apologies. I misread your comment.

symbolepro 9y ago

I want to keep Facebook only to be connected with my friends. But I do not want to see their status updates. I just want to be digitally connected with them so that I can contact them. Instead of seeing their photos/posts, I would rather like to talk to them personally. I always think about pre-facebook era and want to go back again to those times.

vasco 9y ago
Install the Messenger app, delete the Facebook app. There you go.
adrianN 9y ago
Have you tried an address book?
roadbeats 9y ago
Get their e-mails and phone numbers. It'll be a significant improvement in your life, trust me.

tomsmeding 9y ago

The article goes on and on to describe how Facebook has tried to do and be many things that it wasn't before, and how it has failed in those attempts to expand beyond a basic social network. Fine, let's assume that that's true. Facebook did indeed do some useless things. But how is this a reason for its CEO to resign? Facebook did nothing wrong! Yes they failed to become better, and their platform became bloated, but so does every other platform in the world at the moment. But since when is failing to become better now suddenly a really good incentive for it to buckle down completely like the article is suggesting? I feel the article's argumentation is completely unsound. Premises I have no say about, but its conclusion definitely doesn't follow from those premises. The author didn't even rein in the privacy stories that are all over the news suddenly. Now that would give their argument leverage, but they didn't. Go hate Facebook all you like, I do too, but this article doesn't make sense and doesn't deserve to give a reason for you to hate the company or its CEO.

ZuckZack 9y ago

I wonder where is the difference on getting hacked and losing 50M user profiles or giving them away for free.

firasd 9y ago

Barring egregious criminality, it doesn't make sense for someone who took a company from nothing (well, maybe a concept pioneered by Friendster and its antecedents) to $500 billion in market cap to suddenly resign. I feel this Cambridge Analytica story is a bit overblown. When the whistleblower says “target their inner demons”, he is just referring to campaigns placing Facebook Ads with certain parameters about who should see them. Now the question of political targeting data being re-purposed from a personality quiz app, and issues of data privacy in general, are worth investigating. But the fall in Facebook stock price is a giant overreaction (unless the story invites legal regulation.) The shock of Trump’s election and Brexit have prompted more scrutiny of social media, which is warranted. But there’s a limit to the benefit of worrying about Youtube algorithms, Facebook targeting, and Russian trolls. Changing the political situation will mostly require old-fashioned door-to-door politics.

kristianc 9y ago
> Now the question of political targeting data being re-purposed from a personality quiz app, and issues of data privacy in general, are worth investigating. The data from the quiz wasn't repurposed. The data from the quiz itself has nothing to do with this. The quiz was merely a gateway to get the user to hand over a laundry list of their profile data on themselves and all of their contacts.
noobermin 9y ago
Not only that but it ignores the elephant room here. And the ironic thing is the annoying phrase has been used so often it's lost its power, but this is literally the biggest "evidence" for 2016 in front of people's noses. Clinton won the popular vote. She won CA for example, so clearly Cambridge didn't mush people's brains up that much. The swing states in the Midwest she didn't win she didn't campaign in. Is it that hard to understand? Why do we have to constantly relitigate 2016? If you don't like what Trump is doing, why not fight against that instead of this constant reporting and talk of conspiracies? People who peddle/love this stuff are taking away the wrong lessons from 2016.

thisisit 9y ago

While I want him to resign, it is not for the failures of Facebook. But because once things starting to blow up, he was MIA. It was only after, stories about his missing "statements" started to appear that he came forward.

RandomInteger4 9y ago
Or maybe he and his team wanted to actually take the time to come up with a useful and intelligent response rather than a vapid response only meant for the spectacle?
- thisisit 9y ago
  So, you are saying he and his team waited 5-6 days to come up with a useful and intelligence but not a vapid response? Sure, that sounds feasible given how just a day ago everyone went after Zuckerberg for keeping silent and a day later he releases a statement.

kalkut 9y ago

All of this is overreacting. People have the choice to leave Facebook or to accept the terms and deal with them. This is some serious cognitive dissonance to expect to be free to share personal data but to still retain privacy regarding those. Anything you share with your friend can then be shared to a 3rd party. This is even true in "real life" And data is not nearly as powerful as we make it to be. Populism did not win because of social networks, populism won because of increasing inequalities in both wealth and skills in a world where globalisation and automation are making more and more people uncomfortable about the future. All data did is to identify who is who and sell them what they actually wanted. The problem is not about using data to understand audiences. It is about having people lacking enough common sense to actually check if they are told the truth. It is also about the eagerness of politicians to play with tribalism of any kind. Western democracies are responsible of those failures and they are trying to find anyone else than themselves to blame. I left Facebook a few years ago and I don't regret it. I doubt that Facebook is worth it for most people and WhatsApp with SMS is enough for me. People more social that me could leave FB to go to Instagram though. So in any case Zuckerberg is fine. The only way to beat Facebook is to give people an alternative they prefer. It is definitely not to try to scare them with data scandals most of them don't care about.