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I doubt almost anyone on HN is squeaky clean with what they said and wrote as a teenager.

eitland 7y ago
Correct. Problem is in this particular case it seems highly relevant today as well.
EGreg 7y ago
I don’t see how that’s relevant. Can’t the same thing be said of the OP’s main character? Why have a story at all? The point was that Mark Z had the same attitude about the people who shared their data with FB, and the history is replete with FB abusing that trust in myriad ways. Is Mark Z still a teenager? And furthermore, that other CEO guy reformed. Does that mean the story is pointless? Here is the real point. Both this CEO and young Mark Z were right. They were selling crap and people were buying it. People really did simply share their info and back then Zuck was a little taken aback. The point is that we all collectively as a society buy De Beers and we have collectively begun thinking it’s totally cool to trust some third party with all our private data just so they can connect us. So this is actually a critique of society and how we do exactly the things that they said were pretty dumb - and we really enjoy doing them!
digitaltrees 7y ago
His behavior since then shows very similar contempt for users, privacy, or the rule of law.
digitaltrees 7y ago
He wasn’t a teenager.
- tomhoward 7y ago
  He was 19. Neuroscientists tell us that in most people, the pre-frontal cortex (the rational decision-making part of the brain) doesn't fully form till the mid 20s, which is why everyone says douchey things, well into their 20s. We have no idea what his real thinking/motivation was behind that comment, but a combination of adolescent bravado and incredulity that this stupid little app he'd hacked together was working so well would suffice, at least as well as casting him as a 19-year-old moustache-twirling super-villain-in-the-making would. This is the one-and-only such quote of his from that period that gets invoked. If that's the most scandalous piece of dirt anyone could dig up on him from his entire early life, he's not doing too badly. I sure as hell wouldn't fare so well.
  - digitaltrees 7y ago
    People typically refer to 13-18 as teenage. 18 and over. College in general is referred to as young adult or even adult.
    - tomhoward 7y ago
      It's a pedantic point and it doesn't contradict anything I wrote in the rest of the comment.
      - digitaltrees 7y ago
        Saying he was a teenager to excuse the morally questionable behavior and reduce his culpability is invalid when he isn’t really a teenager based on legal standards. He would be tried as an adult in any legal proceeding and fully morally and legally responsible for his actions. So my point stands. Pedantic doesn’t mean anything relevant to this conversation.
        tomhoward 7y ago
        We're not talking about an act of criminal violence, or indeed anything illegal at all. We're talking about a private, off-the-cuff remark, isolated from much surrounding context or knowledge of what was going on in his mind or heart when he made it. For all we know it was just a dumb 19-year-old joke, so there's not even any clear evidence of immorality, apart from by the person who publicly shared a private conversation. OK, I understand that for a lot of people, it's really important to fixate on this "gotcha" instance, to take the view that the worst possible conceivable motive just has to be the only plausible one, even though there is no possibility of undertaking the kind of forensic or judicial examination that would be required to properly determine such a thing. But seriously, regardless of what it may or may not reveal about Zuckerberg, fixating on it is just not a healthy or productive way to look at the world. I invite you to explore the psychology concept of the shadow [1], and consider that when we fixate on other people's flaws and transgressions like this, there's very likely plenty wrong that we're not seeing in ourselves, but that we could greatly benefit from paying attention to. That's is why I call out this trope whenever I see it on HN. Not because it upsets me that people are saying mean things about Mark Zuckerberg. It's that in focusing on other people's supposed sins, they're likely avoiding looking at what they could pay attention to in themselves, and thus embrace big opportunities for their own personal growth. Say what you like about Zuckerberg and Facebook's current/recent conduct. There's plenty there, and there are plenty of valid and important discussions to be had about the role of Facebook etc in the modern world. But this 15-year-old comment trivialises these present-day issues, and is also just super-boring. By the way, the Oxford dictionary and Wikipedia both define "teenager" as any age ending in "teen", so nobody is wrong to use it in that way. You can apply a different interpretation, but it would only be for rhetorical purposes, not to correct any errant assertions of fact. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_(psychology)

Correct. Problem is in this particular case it seems highly relevant today as well.

I don’t see how that’s relevant. Can’t the same thing be said of the OP’s main character? Why have a story at all? The point was that Mark Z had the same attitude about the people who shared their data with FB, and the history is replete with FB abusing that trust in myriad ways. Is Mark Z still a teenager? And furthermore, that other CEO guy reformed. Does that mean the story is pointless? Here is the real point. Both this CEO and young Mark Z were right. They were selling crap and people were buying it. People really did simply share their info and back then Zuck was a little taken aback. The point is that we all collectively as a society buy De Beers and we have collectively begun thinking it’s totally cool to trust some third party with all our private data just so they can connect us. So this is actually a critique of society and how we do exactly the things that they said were pretty dumb - and we really enjoy doing them!

digitaltrees 7y ago

His behavior since then shows very similar contempt for users, privacy, or the rule of law.

digitaltrees 7y ago

He wasn’t a teenager.

tomhoward 7y ago
He was 19. Neuroscientists tell us that in most people, the pre-frontal cortex (the rational decision-making part of the brain) doesn't fully form till the mid 20s, which is why everyone says douchey things, well into their 20s. We have no idea what his real thinking/motivation was behind that comment, but a combination of adolescent bravado and incredulity that this stupid little app he'd hacked together was working so well would suffice, at least as well as casting him as a 19-year-old moustache-twirling super-villain-in-the-making would. This is the one-and-only such quote of his from that period that gets invoked. If that's the most scandalous piece of dirt anyone could dig up on him from his entire early life, he's not doing too badly. I sure as hell wouldn't fare so well.
- digitaltrees 7y ago
  People typically refer to 13-18 as teenage. 18 and over. College in general is referred to as young adult or even adult.
  - tomhoward 7y ago
    It's a pedantic point and it doesn't contradict anything I wrote in the rest of the comment.
    - digitaltrees 7y ago
      Saying he was a teenager to excuse the morally questionable behavior and reduce his culpability is invalid when he isn’t really a teenager based on legal standards. He would be tried as an adult in any legal proceeding and fully morally and legally responsible for his actions. So my point stands. Pedantic doesn’t mean anything relevant to this conversation.
      - tomhoward 7y ago
        We're not talking about an act of criminal violence, or indeed anything illegal at all. We're talking about a private, off-the-cuff remark, isolated from much surrounding context or knowledge of what was going on in his mind or heart when he made it. For all we know it was just a dumb 19-year-old joke, so there's not even any clear evidence of immorality, apart from by the person who publicly shared a private conversation. OK, I understand that for a lot of people, it's really important to fixate on this "gotcha" instance, to take the view that the worst possible conceivable motive just has to be the only plausible one, even though there is no possibility of undertaking the kind of forensic or judicial examination that would be required to properly determine such a thing. But seriously, regardless of what it may or may not reveal about Zuckerberg, fixating on it is just not a healthy or productive way to look at the world. I invite you to explore the psychology concept of the shadow [1], and consider that when we fixate on other people's flaws and transgressions like this, there's very likely plenty wrong that we're not seeing in ourselves, but that we could greatly benefit from paying attention to. That's is why I call out this trope whenever I see it on HN. Not because it upsets me that people are saying mean things about Mark Zuckerberg. It's that in focusing on other people's supposed sins, they're likely avoiding looking at what they could pay attention to in themselves, and thus embrace big opportunities for their own personal growth. Say what you like about Zuckerberg and Facebook's current/recent conduct. There's plenty there, and there are plenty of valid and important discussions to be had about the role of Facebook etc in the modern world. But this 15-year-old comment trivialises these present-day issues, and is also just super-boring. By the way, the Oxford dictionary and Wikipedia both define "teenager" as any age ending in "teen", so nobody is wrong to use it in that way. You can apply a different interpretation, but it would only be for rhetorical purposes, not to correct any errant assertions of fact. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_(psychology)