6 ms·

Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t understand free speech in the 21st century

47 points by kawera 7y ago

ineedasername 7y ago
The article is probably correct that Zuck can't clearly articulate a logically consistent plan, but the article also doesn't articulate well it's breasons for this conclusion. It repeats and restates its claim that Facebook's policy is incoherent but never actually does much to provide actual examples, much less how it might improve upon it's position. As such it's hard to come away with the impression that Zuckerberg himself fails to understand these things, which is the primary claim here, or if this is simply a thorny and complicated issue that doesn't allow for easy straightforward answers.
arbuge 7y ago
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
dekhn 7y ago
I think the right way to think about Zuck is that he's a libertarian absolute free-speecher who assumes everybody is intelligent enough to decode propaganda and evaluate truth on its merits. He also has a lot of practical experience with actually running a system that has to make controversial calls about information. And he runs a product with >1B users. It's not easy for a person like Zuck to talk to normals, because he's not normal and he has data most people don't have access to. Working inside an internet company that deals with billions of users, you start to see/learn things about how people behave on the internet, you see state-sponsored actors trying to influence elections, etc, and you see it without hte spin and bias of the media. I'm not defending zuck other than to say that at least he's articulated a position that defines the base philosophy of his platform.
mdorazio 7y ago
I think Zuckerberg is out of touch with reality, but so is this article. It's entirely possible to understand and support free speech as a concept and not want to implement it within your own business because it would hurt profits. Businesses are not governments or societies and we need to either stop acting like they should be or start regulating them like they are.
nabla9 7y ago
> But here’s the thing: Zuckerberg was not wrong. He just could not articulate why. This is what makes this discussion so frustrating. Avoiding discussion from the principles. There is the obvious common carrier vs. publication angle. Being common carrier brings regulation, being publication brings legal liability. Facebook want's neither, so the only option is to obfuscate.
buboard 7y ago
What a drivel! An attack by someone who appears to hold the patent on Free Speech (TM) against a billionaire who is uneducated and thus unable to use free speech to talk about free speech, because, frankly, he didn't pay hundreds of thousands to get a degree in the liberal arts of bullshitting like this author did. You could replace zuckerberg with "layperson" in the essay (because, well he is a layperson) and it would read like a very childish sneer about nothing. Still, good job on fulfilling the monthly "FB hate articles" quota.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Please lable satire. Even when obvious, Poe's law applies.
- serf 7y ago
  >well he is a layperson 'Mark Zuckerberg is a layperson on the subject of free speech' You don't see the problem with that statement? He's the major head of one of the largest communications networks on the planet. His opinion is one of the most important to sway for those of us that have any opinion, for OR against, freedom of speech. His ignorance on the topic is pretty unforgivable, given the intrinsic nature of the business he runs and moderates. Personally I tend to think that it's political double-talk rather than ignorance. He's just trying to space his answers away from any 'hard' questions so as to maintain a more vague (and politically enticing) persona.
  - bko 7y ago
    I think he would have more of a formed opinion on this topic than an armchair professor of media studies. He actually has to make real decisions and run one of the largest organizations in the world which he helped build. His decisions impact billions of people on this earth. You may not like or agree with his decisions but to say he's somehow a layperson on this topic is just wrong. Facebook has to implement these policies across 150 different countries while some professor on media can write a snarky article with no substance and make the brilliant observation that some people aren't honest about their online persona and use it to trick people.
- 7y ago
merpnderp 7y ago
"...as if anyone beyond the growing collection of authoritarian dictators seriously argues against it." How can anyone take this person seriously when they seem completely oblivious to the growing movement against free speech? I'll back anyone promoting free speech in this regressive environment we find ourselves in, where a plethora of people are arguing to go back to the pre-20th century understanding of the first amendment where the rich and powerful could crush speech they didn't like.
Barrin92 7y ago
The article is right on that Zuckerberg when giving interviews doesn't seem to be able to articulate what the company's policies are, how they fit into legal frameworks, what the response would be if the model of the company was fundamentally broken, and so on. This was really apparent in the interview he did with Yuval Noah Harari. When Harari asked him what would happen if "connecting the world" wasn't actually a positive thing, Zuckerberg didn't really have a coherent answer other then going on about how free expression is always great and how it's in the American constitution or whatever. That's something that I've noticed when a lot of these CEOs are interviewed or when one reads their books. You expect to encounter some profound insight but it is surprising how shallow, uneducated and out of their depth these people are when it comes to placing their companies in some historical or political context. It's like they've done nothing but trying to make money to the point where they've forgotten why they're doing anything, a bunch of facile PR slogans aside. No self-awareness, no reflection, no ability to consider the broad impact of their behaviour. The most philosophical you're going to get is likely a tract on the AI apocalypse.
- hos234 7y ago
  He is basically the John Hammond character in Jurassic Park. He will continue to cling to his creation well after the power goes out, the kids are missing and the Raptors and T-Rex are loose. Only problem is he hasn't been running this experiment on an island but on 2 billion lab rats. Whether they are Generals, Janitors, Journalists or Teenagers everyone is effected in ways no one fully understands yet. So now we wait for more and more unintended consequences to mount. Because it's not like a Zuckerberg replacement is going to do any better. This is a problem that has only one solution. Eventually the park will be shut down and be rebuilt after we understand the psychological and sociological dynamics such networks produces at scale. Right now his answer to Harari is incoherent because no one knows what the answer is. And it's impossible to figure it out while watching the current experiment gone of the rails. Micheal Crichton however, did provide a possible answer to Harari's question 20 years ago - "I think cyberspace means the end of our species. It means the end of innovation. This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they'll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big continent, and their evolution slows down. Now, for our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behaviour. We innovate new behaviour to adapt. And everybody on earth knows that innovation only occurs in small groups. Put three people on a committee and they may get something done. Ten people, and it gets harder. Thirty people, and nothing happens. Thirty million, it becomes impossible. That's the effect of mass media - it keeps anything from happening. Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok or Tokyo or London: there's a McDonald's on one corner, a Benetton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media world, there's less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity - our most necessary resource? That's disappearing faster than trees. But we haven't figured that out, so now we're planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And it'll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global uniformity"
gaogao 7y ago
Mark Zuckerberg's free speech drive is mostly just a political game to try to stave off the threat of regulation by Republicans concerned about "silencing conservative voices."
dredmorbius 7y ago
For those interested in Zuckerberg's actual comments, which are referenced but not linked, video (dead air & intro skipped): https://youtube.com/watch?v=2MTpd7YOnyU&t=9m https://youtube.com/watch?v=2MTpd7YOnyU&t=9m

47 points by kawera 7y ago

The article is probably correct that Zuck can't clearly articulate a logically consistent plan, but the article also doesn't articulate well it's breasons for this conclusion. It repeats and restates its claim that Facebook's policy is incoherent but never actually does much to provide actual examples, much less how it might improve upon it's position. As such it's hard to come away with the impression that Zuckerberg himself fails to understand these things, which is the primary claim here, or if this is simply a thorny and complicated issue that doesn't allow for easy straightforward answers.

arbuge 7y ago

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

dekhn 7y ago

I think the right way to think about Zuck is that he's a libertarian absolute free-speecher who assumes everybody is intelligent enough to decode propaganda and evaluate truth on its merits. He also has a lot of practical experience with actually running a system that has to make controversial calls about information. And he runs a product with >1B users. It's not easy for a person like Zuck to talk to normals, because he's not normal and he has data most people don't have access to. Working inside an internet company that deals with billions of users, you start to see/learn things about how people behave on the internet, you see state-sponsored actors trying to influence elections, etc, and you see it without hte spin and bias of the media. I'm not defending zuck other than to say that at least he's articulated a position that defines the base philosophy of his platform.

mdorazio 7y ago

I think Zuckerberg is out of touch with reality, but so is this article. It's entirely possible to understand and support free speech as a concept and not want to implement it within your own business because it would hurt profits. Businesses are not governments or societies and we need to either stop acting like they should be or start regulating them like they are.

nabla9 7y ago

> But here’s the thing: Zuckerberg was not wrong. He just could not articulate why. This is what makes this discussion so frustrating. Avoiding discussion from the principles. There is the obvious common carrier vs. publication angle. Being common carrier brings regulation, being publication brings legal liability. Facebook want's neither, so the only option is to obfuscate.

buboard 7y ago

What a drivel! An attack by someone who appears to hold the patent on Free Speech (TM) against a billionaire who is uneducated and thus unable to use free speech to talk about free speech, because, frankly, he didn't pay hundreds of thousands to get a degree in the liberal arts of bullshitting like this author did. You could replace zuckerberg with "layperson" in the essay (because, well he is a layperson) and it would read like a very childish sneer about nothing. Still, good job on fulfilling the monthly "FB hate articles" quota.

dredmorbius 7y ago
Please lable satire. Even when obvious, Poe's law applies.
serf 7y ago
>well he is a layperson 'Mark Zuckerberg is a layperson on the subject of free speech' You don't see the problem with that statement? He's the major head of one of the largest communications networks on the planet. His opinion is one of the most important to sway for those of us that have any opinion, for OR against, freedom of speech. His ignorance on the topic is pretty unforgivable, given the intrinsic nature of the business he runs and moderates. Personally I tend to think that it's political double-talk rather than ignorance. He's just trying to space his answers away from any 'hard' questions so as to maintain a more vague (and politically enticing) persona.
- bko 7y ago
  I think he would have more of a formed opinion on this topic than an armchair professor of media studies. He actually has to make real decisions and run one of the largest organizations in the world which he helped build. His decisions impact billions of people on this earth. You may not like or agree with his decisions but to say he's somehow a layperson on this topic is just wrong. Facebook has to implement these policies across 150 different countries while some professor on media can write a snarky article with no substance and make the brilliant observation that some people aren't honest about their online persona and use it to trick people.
7y ago

merpnderp 7y ago

"...as if anyone beyond the growing collection of authoritarian dictators seriously argues against it." How can anyone take this person seriously when they seem completely oblivious to the growing movement against free speech? I'll back anyone promoting free speech in this regressive environment we find ourselves in, where a plethora of people are arguing to go back to the pre-20th century understanding of the first amendment where the rich and powerful could crush speech they didn't like.

Barrin92 7y ago

The article is right on that Zuckerberg when giving interviews doesn't seem to be able to articulate what the company's policies are, how they fit into legal frameworks, what the response would be if the model of the company was fundamentally broken, and so on. This was really apparent in the interview he did with Yuval Noah Harari. When Harari asked him what would happen if "connecting the world" wasn't actually a positive thing, Zuckerberg didn't really have a coherent answer other then going on about how free expression is always great and how it's in the American constitution or whatever. That's something that I've noticed when a lot of these CEOs are interviewed or when one reads their books. You expect to encounter some profound insight but it is surprising how shallow, uneducated and out of their depth these people are when it comes to placing their companies in some historical or political context. It's like they've done nothing but trying to make money to the point where they've forgotten why they're doing anything, a bunch of facile PR slogans aside. No self-awareness, no reflection, no ability to consider the broad impact of their behaviour. The most philosophical you're going to get is likely a tract on the AI apocalypse.

hos234 7y ago
He is basically the John Hammond character in Jurassic Park. He will continue to cling to his creation well after the power goes out, the kids are missing and the Raptors and T-Rex are loose. Only problem is he hasn't been running this experiment on an island but on 2 billion lab rats. Whether they are Generals, Janitors, Journalists or Teenagers everyone is effected in ways no one fully understands yet. So now we wait for more and more unintended consequences to mount. Because it's not like a Zuckerberg replacement is going to do any better. This is a problem that has only one solution. Eventually the park will be shut down and be rebuilt after we understand the psychological and sociological dynamics such networks produces at scale. Right now his answer to Harari is incoherent because no one knows what the answer is. And it's impossible to figure it out while watching the current experiment gone of the rails. Micheal Crichton however, did provide a possible answer to Harari's question 20 years ago - "I think cyberspace means the end of our species. It means the end of innovation. This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they'll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big continent, and their evolution slows down. Now, for our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behaviour. We innovate new behaviour to adapt. And everybody on earth knows that innovation only occurs in small groups. Put three people on a committee and they may get something done. Ten people, and it gets harder. Thirty people, and nothing happens. Thirty million, it becomes impossible. That's the effect of mass media - it keeps anything from happening. Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok or Tokyo or London: there's a McDonald's on one corner, a Benetton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media world, there's less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity - our most necessary resource? That's disappearing faster than trees. But we haven't figured that out, so now we're planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And it'll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global uniformity"

gaogao 7y ago

Mark Zuckerberg's free speech drive is mostly just a political game to try to stave off the threat of regulation by Republicans concerned about "silencing conservative voices."

dredmorbius 7y ago

For those interested in Zuckerberg's actual comments, which are referenced but not linked, video (dead air & intro skipped): https://youtube.com/watch?v=2MTpd7YOnyU&t=9m https://youtube.com/watch?v=2MTpd7YOnyU&t=9m