7 ms·

"Mark Zuckerberg is a good guy. But his company is a threat to our economy and democracy." "Mark is a good, kind person. But I’m angry that his focus on growth

"Mark Zuckerberg is a good guy. But his company is a threat to our economy and democracy." "Mark is a good, kind person. But I’m angry that his focus on growth led him to sacrifice security and civility for clicks." I always find it difficult to take an argument seriously when someone is defined simply as "good". It glosses over a lot of things, like what motivates a person and how we define "good". For example, if we can agree that Facebook's privacy issues are bad, and that Mark was directly responsible for them, then it seems that either a) Mark selfishly disregards privacy for the growth of the company. (bad) b) Mark does care about privacy, but if he doesn't grow the company, he'll be forced out and someone less good will take the helm. (good) c) Mark thinks that all the good Facebook does outweighs the negatives, and therefore the sacrifice of privacy is a net positive. (good) For reference, that first quote is taken from the NYT front page summary, and the second from the body of the editorial.

oldjokes 7y ago
I'd be ok with calling Zuckerberg a good person if anything he has ever done has indicated he's honest or open to serious change. But he's not. The pattern is pretty clear. Ever since the Beacon fiasco he's been saying that privacy is important and that he's going to take it seriously and make changes, while every action he and those around him take moves blatantly in the opposite direction. He's been lying every time. Year after year, over and over again, just lying straight to our face. It's not innocent, it's not naive, he's not dumb. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Beacon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Beacon
- specialist 7y ago
  "... if anything [Zuckerberg] has ever done has indicated he's honest ..." By way of comparison: Look at Bill Gates' actions independent of Microsoft. If his foundation cures malaria, and so forth, all other sins are forgiven. I'm pretty conflicted about Gates. But I accept that people are complicated. eg Ruthless on the battlefield of business, humanitarian in retirement. I'm still chewing on Zuckerberg San Fran General Hospital's surprise billing. I know it was just a donation, not active control. But it now has his name. So I can't understand how someone with more money than god isn't giving away healthcare. If only for the PR. How is someone so insightful into human behavior simultaneously so oblivious? https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/7/18137967/er-bills-zuckerberg-san-francisco-general-hospital https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/7/18137967/er...
  - Kalium 7y ago
    Given that he donated millions of dollars to fund public healthcare, often delivered for free by a public entity, what should he have done instead that would qualify as giving away healthcare? Bearing in mind that he is not pesonally a medical professional.
    - specialist 7y ago
      I have no idea. I'm just saying how it looks from the peanut gallery. If I were Scott Galloway advising Zuckerberg, I'd probably say better PR, damage control, more puff pieces (below). Once "Zuckerberg General" hit the press, I'd swoop in, apologize to everyone for the oversight & misunderstanding, forgive the debts, set up financial aide for students & other hardships, host a press conference to announce a new study for improving access & simplifying health care. Blah, blah, blah. https://www.vox.com/2017/7/10/15771676/priscilla-chan-facebook-philanthropy-mark-zuckerberg-initiative-cure-diseases https://www.vox.com/2017/7/10/15771676/priscilla-chan-facebo... I guess I'm saying I don't really care that Zuckerberg is a bad actor. (No different than any other titan.) I'm just surprised that he's tone deaf and seemingly unable to adapt. -- This privacy debacle is a long time coming. Per the structure of scandals, there's no new information or revelations. Zuckerberg just ran out of goodwill.
      - Kalium 7y ago
        I suspect a good PR advisor would tell him to keep quiet with SF shitting the bed. There's nothing for him to gain by publicly involving himself in the matter and shockingly little he can do except maybe try to point out that it's not actually his hospital in any way. Any misunderstandings, oversights, or debts are in no way his to have any involvement with.
- nashashmi 7y ago
  Great that you brought up beacon. Beacon was the way to keep privacy in check yet still make money. But when all went against it, they pulled out and then led a silent fooler's march towards tricking people into giving data and making that data available to payers. All made legal with a very broad TOS that they can do whatever they want with the data that they choose. We should have just stuck with Beacon and marketplaces in a privacy rich world.
ForHackernews 7y ago
It doesn't matter, it's just a rule of politesse that the elites don't attack each other personally in public. It might even be beneficial because it allows the focus to be on Facebook's actions rather than the colour of Zuck's soul.
mathgeek 7y ago
"X is a good person, but ..." is simply something that a lot of people have been taught to do when they want to criticize someone but don't want to appear to be entirely negative (without necessarily having anything nice to say about the person). It's a common strategy to try to come off as more polite, especially when your statement is written or will be quoted. A common aphorism that approximates this is "you catch more flies with sugar."
- c0vfefe 7y ago
  Right, it's less a serious moral evaluation and more a rhetorical device to appease his supporters long enough to continue reading his argument.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  This. Soften up (and appeal to) your target.
- username223 7y ago
  I prefer the Southern convention of appending "... bless his heart." "Mark is just a sociopath hell-bent on world domination, bless his heart."
supercanuck 7y ago
Research Confirms: When Receiving Bad News, We Shoot the Messenger https://hbr.org/2019/04/research-confirms-when-receiving-bad-news-we-shoot-the-messenger https://hbr.org/2019/04/research-confirms-when-receiving-bad...
toss1 7y ago
Indeed! Let's be clear, the issues go far beyond clicks, but the ways that Zuckerberg, Dorsey, and the others in similar roles in the industry have, at best, failed to notice (and thereby allowed) how their platforms to be exploited to manipulate society. At best, Zuckerberg is a Useful Idiot (in the Vladmir Lenin sense), easily manipulated into tasks that, in this case undermine democracy and make the world safer for authoritarianism. He's also accepted non-trivial funding from RUS oligarchs with RUS mob links; make of that what you will, but as one learns more about the recent history of the oligarchs, one has far less room to consider it innocent. The story related to Cambridge Analytica, the Russian Internet Research Agency, the Russian GRU is only being reported in a few place,s but it shows the tip of the iceberg that is a critical threat to our society and western democracies -- and a threat that specifically exploits platforms like FB, Twitter, Google, Youtube, etc. To oversimplify for brevity: There is a very long history in the intelligence/counterintelligence world of Active Measures campaigns including dezinformatsiya (targeted disinformation) to influence the political situation of adversaries. These have now been adapted and target specifically the social media networks. The payoff per ruble spent has been enormous compared to straight military spending. The threat is simultaniously diffuse and hard to identify (lack of transparency at the SocMed companies doesn't help), and yet a potentially existential threat to society as we know it. Proper democracy is inherently unstable, and easy to tip into many failure modes. Some useful sources to get basic familiarity with the problem: [1] quick overview: https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1125025951790915586 https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/112502595179091558... [2] More excellent coverage at the Guardian over the last few years: https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/cambridge-analytica-files https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/cambridge-analytica-... [3] Ex-US NSA Analyst, basic primer, and many other well-sourced articles: https://observer.com/2017/03/kremlingate-russia-spy-game-disinformation/ https://observer.com/2017/03/kremlingate-russia-spy-game-dis... [4] Bill Browder 'Red Notice', chronicling the history of his fund investing in Russia, the RUS govt theft/fraud of $230million, murder, and continuing insights into how [5] Garry Kasparov, 'winter is coming' former world chess champion, Presidential Candidate in Russia, now exiled, chronicling the resurgence of authoritarianism in Russia and how & why it is exported to undermine western democracies.
- cat199 7y ago
Kalium 7y ago
> It glosses over a lot of things, like what motivates a person and how we define "good". My interpretation is that the goal is to try to avoid the queston of Zuckerberg's moral character. Do some people think he's evil? Yes. Is that relevant as a matter of public policy? Perhaps not. It's a matter for personal judgments and personal opinion. The question at hand is Facebook, not Zuckerberg's soul. For most readers, this helps them focus appropriately.
nullandvoid 7y ago
I mean this is a childhood friend and co-founder talking about him.. It's obviously going to be a different tone than a whistle-blower / media etc trying to take him down ( and perhaps rightly so but that's a different discussion ).
rfrey 7y ago
Prefacing a criticism with "XXX is an upstanding person, but..." is just shorthand for saying "I am aware of and actively trying to avoid ad-hominem arguments, and genuinely believe my concerns are with the institution/setup/company/regulation and not with individuals." I think it's a legit rhetorical device.
mrlala 7y ago
>a) Mark selfishly disregards privacy for the growth of the company. (bad) You say that as if "disregarding privacy" is.. well.. bad? Most people don't care about privacy as much as you probably do. It's not that he disregards all privacy, just after a certain level most people really don't care about that level of privacy that he's able to extract value from. So I always find it difficult to take an argument seriously when it assumes that everyone should have the same care about privacy as you do.
clairity 7y ago
“good guy” here is social code for “guy i don’t really want to piss off” and is akin to grinning in other primates. the phrase is disingenuous in most cases. this american life did a whole show on “good guys”[0] (including exploiting the “good guy discount”). [0] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/515/good-guys https://www.thisamericanlife.org/515/good-guys
ImprovedSilence 7y ago
Life is a lot more grey than “good” and “bad” people. This isn’t a Marvel movie. Sometimes a persons actions are a positive, sometimes a negative, and perhaps the outcome doesn’t match the intention. So I’ll withhold judgment on a persons character of whom I’ve never met. I won’t ever fully trust a corporation though, and I use Facebook minimally. That said, this breakup Facebook monopoly shit has to stop. It’s not a monopoly as far as ads or marketing go. And that’s what they sell.
markbnj 7y ago
> b) Mark does care about privacy, but if he doesn't grow the company, he'll be forced out and someone less good will take the helm. (good) Can he be? He owns twice as many shares as the next largest holder (Accel I think). I seem to recall reading that he had various governance structures in place that guaranteed him control, but idk exactly what that referred to.
TheTruth1234 7y ago
Mark is a d!ckhead and Facebook should be broken up. You're welcome.

oldjokes 7y ago

I'd be ok with calling Zuckerberg a good person if anything he has ever done has indicated he's honest or open to serious change. But he's not. The pattern is pretty clear. Ever since the Beacon fiasco he's been saying that privacy is important and that he's going to take it seriously and make changes, while every action he and those around him take moves blatantly in the opposite direction. He's been lying every time. Year after year, over and over again, just lying straight to our face. It's not innocent, it's not naive, he's not dumb. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Beacon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Beacon

specialist 7y ago
"... if anything [Zuckerberg] has ever done has indicated he's honest ..." By way of comparison: Look at Bill Gates' actions independent of Microsoft. If his foundation cures malaria, and so forth, all other sins are forgiven. I'm pretty conflicted about Gates. But I accept that people are complicated. eg Ruthless on the battlefield of business, humanitarian in retirement. I'm still chewing on Zuckerberg San Fran General Hospital's surprise billing. I know it was just a donation, not active control. But it now has his name. So I can't understand how someone with more money than god isn't giving away healthcare. If only for the PR. How is someone so insightful into human behavior simultaneously so oblivious? https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/7/18137967/er-bills-zuckerberg-san-francisco-general-hospital https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/7/18137967/er...
- Kalium 7y ago
  Given that he donated millions of dollars to fund public healthcare, often delivered for free by a public entity, what should he have done instead that would qualify as giving away healthcare? Bearing in mind that he is not pesonally a medical professional.
  - specialist 7y ago
    I have no idea. I'm just saying how it looks from the peanut gallery. If I were Scott Galloway advising Zuckerberg, I'd probably say better PR, damage control, more puff pieces (below). Once "Zuckerberg General" hit the press, I'd swoop in, apologize to everyone for the oversight & misunderstanding, forgive the debts, set up financial aide for students & other hardships, host a press conference to announce a new study for improving access & simplifying health care. Blah, blah, blah. https://www.vox.com/2017/7/10/15771676/priscilla-chan-facebook-philanthropy-mark-zuckerberg-initiative-cure-diseases https://www.vox.com/2017/7/10/15771676/priscilla-chan-facebo... I guess I'm saying I don't really care that Zuckerberg is a bad actor. (No different than any other titan.) I'm just surprised that he's tone deaf and seemingly unable to adapt. -- This privacy debacle is a long time coming. Per the structure of scandals, there's no new information or revelations. Zuckerberg just ran out of goodwill.
    - Kalium 7y ago
      I suspect a good PR advisor would tell him to keep quiet with SF shitting the bed. There's nothing for him to gain by publicly involving himself in the matter and shockingly little he can do except maybe try to point out that it's not actually his hospital in any way. Any misunderstandings, oversights, or debts are in no way his to have any involvement with.
nashashmi 7y ago
Great that you brought up beacon. Beacon was the way to keep privacy in check yet still make money. But when all went against it, they pulled out and then led a silent fooler's march towards tricking people into giving data and making that data available to payers. All made legal with a very broad TOS that they can do whatever they want with the data that they choose. We should have just stuck with Beacon and marketplaces in a privacy rich world.

ForHackernews 7y ago

It doesn't matter, it's just a rule of politesse that the elites don't attack each other personally in public. It might even be beneficial because it allows the focus to be on Facebook's actions rather than the colour of Zuck's soul.

mathgeek 7y ago

"X is a good person, but ..." is simply something that a lot of people have been taught to do when they want to criticize someone but don't want to appear to be entirely negative (without necessarily having anything nice to say about the person). It's a common strategy to try to come off as more polite, especially when your statement is written or will be quoted. A common aphorism that approximates this is "you catch more flies with sugar."

c0vfefe 7y ago
Right, it's less a serious moral evaluation and more a rhetorical device to appease his supporters long enough to continue reading his argument.
dredmorbius 7y ago
This. Soften up (and appeal to) your target.
username223 7y ago
I prefer the Southern convention of appending "... bless his heart." "Mark is just a sociopath hell-bent on world domination, bless his heart."

supercanuck 7y ago

Research Confirms: When Receiving Bad News, We Shoot the Messenger https://hbr.org/2019/04/research-confirms-when-receiving-bad-news-we-shoot-the-messenger https://hbr.org/2019/04/research-confirms-when-receiving-bad...

toss1 7y ago

Indeed! Let's be clear, the issues go far beyond clicks, but the ways that Zuckerberg, Dorsey, and the others in similar roles in the industry have, at best, failed to notice (and thereby allowed) how their platforms to be exploited to manipulate society. At best, Zuckerberg is a Useful Idiot (in the Vladmir Lenin sense), easily manipulated into tasks that, in this case undermine democracy and make the world safer for authoritarianism. He's also accepted non-trivial funding from RUS oligarchs with RUS mob links; make of that what you will, but as one learns more about the recent history of the oligarchs, one has far less room to consider it innocent. The story related to Cambridge Analytica, the Russian Internet Research Agency, the Russian GRU is only being reported in a few place,s but it shows the tip of the iceberg that is a critical threat to our society and western democracies -- and a threat that specifically exploits platforms like FB, Twitter, Google, Youtube, etc. To oversimplify for brevity: There is a very long history in the intelligence/counterintelligence world of Active Measures campaigns including dezinformatsiya (targeted disinformation) to influence the political situation of adversaries. These have now been adapted and target specifically the social media networks. The payoff per ruble spent has been enormous compared to straight military spending. The threat is simultaniously diffuse and hard to identify (lack of transparency at the SocMed companies doesn't help), and yet a potentially existential threat to society as we know it. Proper democracy is inherently unstable, and easy to tip into many failure modes. Some useful sources to get basic familiarity with the problem: [1] quick overview: https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1125025951790915586 https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/112502595179091558... [2] More excellent coverage at the Guardian over the last few years: https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/cambridge-analytica-files https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/cambridge-analytica-... [3] Ex-US NSA Analyst, basic primer, and many other well-sourced articles: https://observer.com/2017/03/kremlingate-russia-spy-game-disinformation/ https://observer.com/2017/03/kremlingate-russia-spy-game-dis... [4] Bill Browder 'Red Notice', chronicling the history of his fund investing in Russia, the RUS govt theft/fraud of $230million, murder, and continuing insights into how [5] Garry Kasparov, 'winter is coming' former world chess champion, Presidential Candidate in Russia, now exiled, chronicling the resurgence of authoritarianism in Russia and how & why it is exported to undermine western democracies.

cat199 7y ago

Kalium 7y ago

> It glosses over a lot of things, like what motivates a person and how we define "good". My interpretation is that the goal is to try to avoid the queston of Zuckerberg's moral character. Do some people think he's evil? Yes. Is that relevant as a matter of public policy? Perhaps not. It's a matter for personal judgments and personal opinion. The question at hand is Facebook, not Zuckerberg's soul. For most readers, this helps them focus appropriately.

nullandvoid 7y ago

I mean this is a childhood friend and co-founder talking about him.. It's obviously going to be a different tone than a whistle-blower / media etc trying to take him down ( and perhaps rightly so but that's a different discussion ).

rfrey 7y ago

Prefacing a criticism with "XXX is an upstanding person, but..." is just shorthand for saying "I am aware of and actively trying to avoid ad-hominem arguments, and genuinely believe my concerns are with the institution/setup/company/regulation and not with individuals." I think it's a legit rhetorical device.

mrlala 7y ago

>a) Mark selfishly disregards privacy for the growth of the company. (bad) You say that as if "disregarding privacy" is.. well.. bad? Most people don't care about privacy as much as you probably do. It's not that he disregards all privacy, just after a certain level most people really don't care about that level of privacy that he's able to extract value from. So I always find it difficult to take an argument seriously when it assumes that everyone should have the same care about privacy as you do.

clairity 7y ago

“good guy” here is social code for “guy i don’t really want to piss off” and is akin to grinning in other primates. the phrase is disingenuous in most cases. this american life did a whole show on “good guys”[0] (including exploiting the “good guy discount”). [0] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/515/good-guys https://www.thisamericanlife.org/515/good-guys

ImprovedSilence 7y ago

Life is a lot more grey than “good” and “bad” people. This isn’t a Marvel movie. Sometimes a persons actions are a positive, sometimes a negative, and perhaps the outcome doesn’t match the intention. So I’ll withhold judgment on a persons character of whom I’ve never met. I won’t ever fully trust a corporation though, and I use Facebook minimally. That said, this breakup Facebook monopoly shit has to stop. It’s not a monopoly as far as ads or marketing go. And that’s what they sell.

markbnj 7y ago

> b) Mark does care about privacy, but if he doesn't grow the company, he'll be forced out and someone less good will take the helm. (good) Can he be? He owns twice as many shares as the next largest holder (Accel I think). I seem to recall reading that he had various governance structures in place that guaranteed him control, but idk exactly what that referred to.

TheTruth1234 7y ago

Mark is a d!ckhead and Facebook should be broken up. You're welcome.