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Mark Zuckerberg Is Either Ignorant or Deliberately Misleading Congress
- sigi45 9y agoHe feels lost. Like some dude who had no idea with 19, got the proper idea by chance / zeitgeist, gathered a lot of good people around him who build all of it and now he is unbelievable rich, boss of a way to influencel company and has no clue about it. He doesn't feel like a Bill Gates or Buffet or any other rich known person. /shrug
- waterside81 9y agoTotally agree. Watching his testimony, how he handled himself, the way he spoke, you really get the sense that he's just a kid who got lucky rather then this business savant.
- sametmax 9y agoYou can't get lucky for so long, for so many things. He got poor public facing skills, which just means he has even stronger other talents that he is using where can't see what's happening. Don't underestimate a guy who built a billion dollar empire and sits on the biggest potential dictatorship tool in human history. Now the funny thing is that his presidential ambitions seem to be dead for now. It's interesting...
- sigi45 9y agoIf your luck gives you a billion dollars, yes you don't need any other talent after that.
- sametmax 9y agoLuck can't give you a billion dollar alone, simply because accumulating said money is a long and complicated process. It didn't happen overnight, and it was not a lottery. Plus there are many people with money going broke, or not having power.
- dboreham 9y agoHe's considered a business savant because he somehow outwitted the VCs (and therefore kept a sizable proportion of his company through to IPO).
- dsacco 9y agoDo you think because of his responses and demeanor during the hearing or because of his overall leadership at Facebook? If it's both, which one of those made you consciously think about it first?
- sigi45 9y agoI had this feeling for a while. From a technical standpoint and from a political standpoint. Facebook feels like the small brother of all those big impressive companies who did things, invented things and formed technology like i know it. Google, Microsoft etc. Facebook on the other hand feels strange. Political speaking: they are reacting and not acting. This hearing made it more obvious than ever.
- billfruit 9y agoPerhaps he has got broderline Asperger's/autism spectrum. These may cause a fragmented conversational pattern, where the thoughts are trying to catch up with utterances.
- 908087 9y agoI feel like some friends of mine who are actually on the spectrum would be insulted seeing Mark's blatant lies and question dodging excused in this manner.
- loceng 9y agoHe stole the idea from the twin brothers who hired him and used the leading metric of @university email addresses to create contextual-relational importance for viral growth, so it's not surprising. Makes me wonder if he or someone else came up with/suggested original The Facebook name. I don't think Mark's developed the open pathways for deep critical thinking, say that Elon Musk's thoughts all stem from - foundational principles being something he's commonly referred to.
- dsacco 9y ago> He stole the idea from the twin brothers who hired him and used the leading metric of @university email addresses to create contextual-relational importance for viral growth, so it's not surprising. While uncharitably stated, in my opinion this demonstrates a lot of technical ability and business savvy.
- loceng 9y agoSure, intelligence can exist and people can function and be very successful psychopaths - disconnected from emotion, empathy and the like - disconnected from holistic understanding and having your logic to include how feelings should influence decisions. It's really a difference of understanding right and wrong vs. if you react to the feelings of right or wrong. If you're able to suppress/repress feelings, right and wrong and other, through use of control (usually formed as a coping mechanism of ego mind) then you'll be able to do what others would find more unethical than not; I suppose people will may do a risk/reward analysis. It's heavily why many people find Mark's facial expressions to be quite muted, robotic - giving birth to the Data from Star Trek meme. I don't think he's a lost cause, however he's certainly still controlling and calculating, I think he likely has deep healing that needs to happen, however his ego mind having full control got him this far and so he'll have a lot to process, self-forgiveness and such. This controlling thought and behaviour certainly floods into Facebook's ecosystem of a closed-system; I wrote blog post many years ago relating to controlled vs. managed ecosystems.
- dsacco 9y ago
- 3pt14159 9y agoHe's just under a ton of stress. Talk to anyone who actually knows Zuck. He's a compassionate liberal that gets a bit intense at times, but he's both incredibly intelligent and fully aware of whats riding on his decisions. Bill Gates has a different personality, but he also grew wealthy in a different time. The world was unipolar under American leadership, and Microsoft was a key element to American power. Gates could focus his energy on fighting malaria and studying flu epidemics. The world Zuck lives in is far different. Machine learning is taking off, China is ascendant, and America / the liberal order is asymmetrically exposed.
- nomy99 9y agoBrilliantly crafted; you can write a book on this topic. I never connected Tech with geopolitical and national stances.
- sigi45 9y agoHe had enough time to grow in his position. He has enough money to grow as well. Bill Gates is/was an guy who build Microsoft. Zuckerberg got lucky with facebook. There is not much to build because the whole it world already exists. He as a human being brought more distress to this world as anything he is doing with his money to help, can't fix. Tx to his luck with the Zeitgeist, he is facebook and because of his incompetence, facebook hurts us all.
- _jal 9y agoNah. He's been running the same scam since he started, as exemplified by that famous quote: [Redacted Friend's Name]: 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. He's still doing the same thing.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dsacco 9y agoI think most people would look just as nefarious if private conversations from their college years were selectively publicized. For all of his failings it's unfortunate that at 33 years old, Mark Zuckerberg still has people vilifying him using quotes he made when he was 22 years old.
- TheLegace 9y agoSeems kind of ironic doesn't it?
- _jal 9y agoIf I thought his behavior was materially different (aside from capability) 11 years later, I'd drop it, just like I have with many other people who grew out of or otherwise dealt with their early problems. On the other hand, I also repeat things about a person I know who stole from me many years ago. That person happens to be in jail for, among other things, theft. The problem here is that he was and is rewarded for the bad behavior, so he keeps repeating it.
- M_Bakhtiari 9y agoWhoever's really in charge of Facebook, whether that's Zuckerberg or not, can consider the congressional hearing a resounding success. I recently saw him ridiculed as "speaking from a booster seat" by one commentator, and everyone here knows what "ideas guy" is an euphemism for. The more frivolous commentary and petty insults he gets the less threatening he seems.
- bornonline1 9y agoCould easily be pr work.
- grecy 9y ago> The more frivolous commentary and petty insults he gets the less threatening he seems. And as usual in American Politics and/or debates the focus has shifted to be about the petty stuff of the individual, rather than focusing on the actual topic at hand. Pretty soon everyone will be so busy criticizing Zuck they'll forget why he was even speaking to Congress in the first place. Americans love a good gossip, to the determent of actually getting anything done.
- sgtmas2006 9y agoWhile I expected nothing more than what it has been, the reality was painfully beaten into me when I read "can this guy just go to jail already???" It's a sad state of affairs. I only heard part of the second day, but one of the ladies asked a question about the Obama administration using that survey leading to the huge amount of data gathered. Had it not been only four minutes, I feel this is the question that would have lead to the most important discussion of why it was not against terms for that administration to use Facebook data, but was for Analytica (Other than the fact that it was sold to them, but I believe unless Zuck passed the buck, it could have lead to discussion about the data itself being the problem, not the selling to Analytica.)
- walshemj 9y agoActs of attainder are banned by the constitution
- yosito 9y agoI'm gonna go with B.
- etiam 9y agoYes, that does seem more in line with the track record, doesn't it.
- gm-conspiracy 9y agoI am waiting for his corporate emails to be subpoenaed and then charged with perjury.
- dx034 9y agoNot sure if that'd work. I guess his lawyers told him it's ok to evade questions this way. Esp following up is probably safe since he doesn't give away any details. And playing stupid could also work, even if there was an email a few years back explaining the topic to you.
- arca_vorago 9y agoAs if Congress has any balls. James Clapper perjury case in point.
- gm-conspiracy 9y agoVery true.
- mi100hael 9y agoHe wasn't sworn in.
- meddlepal 9y agoCongressional Hearings are dog and pony shows anyways. I'm not sure what people were or are expecting?
- JoeAltmaier 9y agoRight; its a publicized opportunity to get your sound byte in the press. So everybody is 'on message' and repeating the same points, questions and fake outrage no matter what the topic.
- walshemj 9y agoAh so its like and EDM (Early Day Motions) in the UK
- settsu 9y agoDeliberately misleading Congress by his ignorance. Two words: plausible deniability. Also see: dog and pony show. This was a performance for the various constituencies that will, save for a few minor exceptions, prove to be ultimately a toothless exercise.
- bamboozled 9y agoCan someone talk about the reason MZ didn't need to testify under oath? I understand it's a federal crime to lie to Congress; However, was that out of the ordinary ?
- Consultant32452 9y agoIf you are sworn in you can be prosecuted for perjury if you lie. That's a different statute with different penalties than "making false statements," which is what you get if you lie to Congress while not under oath. Whether or not witnesses must be sworn in vary based on the rules of the particular committee in question, and is often subjectively done.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- drinchev 9y agoI think he did his job. He passed a hearing in front of the congress, while telling as little as he could. What he did, of course, for HN / tech people / journalists was fiasco, because we know what actually happens there. For the average people it was another reassurance, because now they say "Facebook is okay, the guy went in congress and no consequences followed, so it's good." I tend to believe that the questions and the hearing itself was so bad and uneventful, because Facebook probably holds tons of data and collaborates closely with US government. So it will be quite unfortunate for the government and for Facebook if the real questions are being asked. I really enjoyed reading the commend of @DyslexicAtheist [1] from yesterday's thread. > it was a sham because asking hard questions would require them to admit FB being an important asset for US own intelligence operations. 1 : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16811281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16811281
- snarfy 9y agoI found the whole drilling on shadow accounts particularly humorous. He should have turned around and asked her what her credit score was.
- walshemj 9y agoOr the process of how that massive budget proposal with handwritten amendments was handled. And that all the congress persons understood all the motions and that the entire thing 's Consequentials where correct :-) Or is it like a former HOC whip said to me once executives get a way with " a lot of naughty shit"
- mhb 9y agoMaybe there is a revenue-generator/paper clip factory engine running over there and they're just stalling while they try to figure out how to unplug it.
- vinceguidry 9y agoI don't think anyone's getting fooled here. These sessions get fed directly back into the legislative process and, unlike a court of law, Zuckerberg's intransigence is going to be treated as tacit admission of guilt and an indictment of the entire social media industry. Now the legislative sausage has to get made. Social media's lobbyists are going to have a rough time of it, and the telecom industry, who has been nipping at their heels for a decade, are going to lay it on thick, trying to gut them so their data becomes more valuable to advertisers. Expect any law that gets passed to marginally affect privacy, and maximally affect a few pocketbooks.
- tedunangst 9y agoWell, he was ignorant, but a congressman gave him a copy of the constitution so he should be all up to speed now.
- liveoneggs 9y agowhy not both?
- pure_ambition 9y agoPorque no los dos?
- oconnor663 9y ago> When asked by Senator Maria Cantwell whether Facebook employees helped with the Cambridge Analytica work: “Senator, I don’t know.” If someone asks you "did any of your employees ever do XYZ?", and you've never heard of a case where they did, then sure in normal conversation you'd answer "no". But if you're under oath, you'd better damn well say "I don't know."
- bbddg 9y agoI don't think he was even under oath.
- ng-user 9y agoHe definitely was not under oath. If that was a requirement he would of never testified.
- adams_at 9y agoIt doesn't matter if he was under oath — lying to Congress is a crime, oath or not.
- SmellyGeekBoy 9y agoHa! Imagine how many people would be in jail right now if that were actually enforced.
- msrpotus 9y agoHe (or really his team) should have expected that question and found out before these hearings.
- oconnor663 9y agoImagine they interview everyone who conceivably could've talked to CA during those years. And everyone says, no, we never worked with them directly. So then Zuckerberg testifies that, no, no Facebook employees ever worked with CA. But then a few weeks from now, some old emails are discovered that prove otherwise, which one of those interviewees forgot about somehow. Now Zuckerberg is on the hook for having lied to Congress! And literally no one would be satisfied that he "thought his answer was true at the time." Lawyers see this sort of thing happen all the time. Coaching Zuckerberg not to give answers like that, would be one of the first things they'd do to prepare.
- jrobn 9y agoI’m not sure the American public at large cares. I don’t think most folks know how much the hand of someone else controls and guides their everyday actions, assumptions, and opinions. That hand being a foreign power or Jiffy peanut butter. Facebook is an echo chamber. The perfect propaganda tool in an age of critical-less thinking. How many people open the Facebook app 30 times a day and see the same “alternative-fact” or falsehood repeated, in an ever-so-slightly flavor, and eventually believe it? Never realizing they are eating shit pies all day? The most valuable good/commodity/crop today is our attention, because with it outsiders can influence what you think and feel.
- billfruit 9y agoThe way the hearings happened(I only watched the house hearing), it looked to me Z was gaining in confidence as it went on. Most of the congressmen IMO didn't make effective use of their allotted time; most used part of their time to make statements and not to ask pointed questions to Z; some really peripheral things like rural broadband and suspected online sales of restricted drugs and FDA actions on the same took a lot of time and weren't enlightening; and many were demanding yes or no answers to possibly nuanced questions.One female congressmember from Florida, Kathy Castor I think,, hardly gave Z time to respond, and thereby left all answers to her questions in fragmentory state. There was much repetition, in some instances multiple speakers asked questions in very similar vein.At the end of it it remains unclear to me whether any laws has been contravened attracting any kind of liability.
- 908087 9y agoI couldn't help but notice that one of the few genuine-seeming smiles that appeared on Zuckerberg's face, appeared immediately before and during the broadband guy's "questioning". I couldn't help but get the feeling that Zuckerberg knew in advance that that particular person was going to be lobbing praise and softballs.
- madhadron 9y agoBefore you believe anything the press writes about the hearings, go watch the question and answer portions of the hearings themselves. The Intercept tries to paint the senators as having piercing questions that Zuckerberg failed to answer. That is not at all the case. With a few exceptions, such as Orin Hatch, the questions were either bizarre misunderstandings of the basics or verged into word salad.
- 908087 9y agoActually, the tone of the article wasn't that senators asked "piercing questions that Zuckerberg failed to answer", but that they were asking "basic questions that he failed to answer despite the answers being clearly available on his company's website".
- dsacco 9y agoTo be fair to the parent commenter's point, I don't think your restatement of the article's characterization is any more accurate with respect to the hearing itself. There were basic questions he failed to answer, complex questions he did answer, and various questions were not well-founded enough for him to give a coherent answer.
- _jal 9y ago...And various perfectly well-formed questions he clearly did not want to answer, and dodged. His answer about logged-out tracking cookies is the most glaring example from the article, but the most serious one he dissembled over was the questioning from Harris.
- dsacco 9y agoThat's also true.
- 908087 9y agoI wasn't commenting on the hearing, though. I was commenting on the way the parent post attempted to portray the article linked in this thread. That said, I watched the both hearings in full and I can't recall a single complex, non-softball question being answered. Unless, of course, you consider "Senator, this is a very important question" followed by some time wasting non-answer material an "answer".
- vladsanchez 9y agoI always had a gut feeling. Now I know he's an idiot, just like everyone implicated in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. He's a lucky idiot who was in the right place at the right time when he built Facebook. What's more idiotic is that people rank him along Gates, Musk, Bezos, Buffet... He's just a lucky idiot! The Sky is Falling. (facepalm) But don't despair, Robert Mueller will take care of business. Mueller will be more effective than the Congress Circus.
- psyc 9y agoOne of my pastimes is watching hours of video of such people speaking, in order to get a sense of their thought process. Without having any particular motivation to take a shot at Zuckerberg, I honestly agree with you. He simply does not demonstrate any sign of being in the same class as those 4.
- StanislavPetrov 9y agoThe Mueller worship never ceases to amaze me. This is a man who was key to spreading the lies about WMD in Iraq that led to the most disastrous war of the 21st century, who horribly bungled the (still unsolved) anthrax investigation, leading to the suicides of multiple people he wrongly accused of being responsible, and oversaw Bush's construction of the surveillance state. No matter how much you hate Trump or think he is guilty of a crime, you should keep in mind that Mueller has been an incompetent agent of the police state for decades. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTDO-kuOGTQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTDO-kuOGTQ
- anoncoward778 9y agoIt does not matter. More than 40 of the 50 persons on that panel received money from the little boy bot. You want to bring down Facebook, gonna take something else.
- nv-vn 9y agoI think people are really trying hard to get this to fit their narrative. Admittedly, I did not watch the whole thing, but out of the multiple hours I had the energy to watch I can't see how you would blame Zuckerberg. Not saying that he's a perfect guy, but he is not "ignorant" or "deliberately misleading". Many of the questions he was asked were meant to deliberately mislead and create unnecessary hatred for MZ, even if it was something very innocent. 90% of the questions were ignorant of literally all of the technology being discussed, making either outlandish claims (e.g. blaming Facebook for not being able to control how you use downloaded data from the API) or getting caught up on irrelevant details (conflating selling of user data with selling of user data-based ad space). MZ was not adversarial at all and openly embraced the suggestions for new legislation (while acknowledging the shortcomings). When he said his team would get back to them later, the reason was pretty clear. He didn't want any bad sound bites to bear his name. By using his tech team, he was able to avoid answering questions that sound bad to a Facebook user. To be completely fair, it seemed that the whole goal of the hearing was to create outrage rather than get at any truth. He also had plausible deniability here because he doesn't know all the specific technicalities of the millions (billions?) of lines of code Facebook uses, so he can basically argue that he wasn't sure what they were asking was technically true or false. Is this borderline lying? Sort of, but that doesn't mean he did the wrong thing here for either Congress or his own company. He's not trying to protect from Congress, he's trying to protect from public outrage.
- SmellyGeekBoy 9y agoIt's amazing how many people expected Zuckerberg to understand every technical aspect of Facebook in minute detail, and accused him of lying or deliberately dodging when he didn't have an answer immediately available. Facebook stopped being a one-man-band a very long time ago, I don't imagine he's personally touched the code in years. I can't believe I'm defending the guy - I'm really not a fan - but most of the criticism I've seen seems to be based on unrealistic expectations. By all means criticise Facebook's business practises and hold MZ to account for getting them changed... But this circus seems like a meaningless distraction.
- talltimtom 9y agoTo be fair, Zuckerberg likely hasn’t been spending that much time at facebook. Most of his time has most likely been focused on his attempted political carrier. Just because he’s failing miserably doesn’t make it less time consuming.
- pasbesoin 9y agoIt's a dog and pony show. Everyone's going through the motions, to moderate (heh) and deflect public outcry.