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With his characteristic geeky excitement, Zuckerberg described the promising initial test flight of Aquila, a drone with a wingspan larger than a 737 jet that w

With his characteristic geeky excitement, Zuckerberg described the promising initial test flight of Aquila, a drone with a wingspan larger than a 737 jet that was part of his plan to provide internet connectivity all over the world. Though Newton hadn’t witnessed the test flight in Yuma, Arizona—no members of the press were invited—he believed Zuckerberg’s account of it. When his article was published, it reported that Aquila “was so stable that they kept it in the air for 90 minutes before landing it safely.” Months later, however, a Bloomberg story revealed that the flight hadn’t gone so smoothly after all—Aquila had crashed. While the craft had indeed stayed aloft for longer than intended, high winds tore a chunk out of a wing, leading to a crash landing. Interesting episode! It would be interesting to know if this was intentional deception or incompetent ignorance on Zuck's part.

deleted 6y ago
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analyte123 6y ago
Neither, it's just PR speak: the plane landed "safely" in the sense that no one was injured and only some property damage occurred.
- Spooky23 6y ago
  No, that's deceptive and projects weakness and insecurity. You can put a turd in a gold box, but it's still a turd. If a man needs to stretch the language to conceal a trivial event that is publicly known, what else is he hiding? It's weird on many levels, as yakking about the disappointment of a pet/vanity project's stumble on it's ascent to greatness is a great distraction from the substance of Facebook.
  - naringas 6y ago
    what's worse, this is a systemic issue not at all unique to facebook. it all started when every pizzeria became the best pizza in the city; and just goes off from there.
    - catalogia 6y ago
      Saying something landed safely when it actually crashed goes beyond mere puffery.
- BiteCode_dev 6y ago
  So intentional deception.
- mola 6y ago
  Calling deception "PR speak" doesn't make it not deception.
smsm42 6y ago
More interesting, I think, is why a "reporter" reported as fact something that they didn't witness and had no way to verify except from the words of one very biased source. And what added value this kind of "reporting" provides - if we wanted to know what Zuckerberg wants to say, we can read the press release? This is all too common a pattern nowdays - instead of reporting something that happens the press reports something that somebody (usually extremely biased and frequently anonymous) said about something that might happen, or, as frequently turns out later, didn't happen. It's much easier and cheaper, but its contribution to the society is net negative.
- Luechkt 6y ago
  This is such an insightful comment. I worked as a reporter for a little outside-of-Philly paper in the 2000s and it was the extreme taboo to report on something you couldn't independently verify. Even then pay was bad and younger folks were bailing ship. Now newsrooms are so gutted that there is no staff left to do this kind of reporting.
- devindotcom 6y ago
  When it comes to things like internal R&D projects, military and government matters, and a huge amount of the tech industry's goings-on, the only source is the company itself. This is a serious challenge facing press in many industries. How do you propose Casey should have challenged or verified whether the Aquila flew as well as claimed? Any data about the craft would come from FB, any paper describing it would be published by FB, any researchers who worked on it would work at FB. Anyone else who might be an "objective" source would be under NDA. Companies are very thorough about this sort of thing. A journalist doing an investigative piece on the Aquila would not take Zuckerberg's words as gospel, but that doesn't mean those words are unimportant. This was a news piece, and CEOs speaking publicly about an R&D project, and answering questions and so on, is an opportunity to provide a different kind of value. Readers are curious about details companies don't always provide, and also require context that isn't always obvious. Reporters do this work too - it's not all cloak and dagger stuff, whistleblowers and top-secret dossiers. Aquila was a solar-powered drone that FB wanted to use to create a laser-powered internet for developing countries. That's an interesting story that should be told - and not just by the company, which would leave out important parts like opposition to Internet.org or indeed the unfinished nature of the aircraft. That's important work for reporters as well - filling in those gaps so that readers' understanding of a topic or event is more full than it would be had only people with a stake in it done so. I also have not seen the pattern you describe and am not sure it's as endemic as you suggest.
pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
You mean whether the decision not to invite any members of the press to the test flight was intentional or incompetence?

deleted 6y ago

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analyte123 6y ago

Neither, it's just PR speak: the plane landed "safely" in the sense that no one was injured and only some property damage occurred.

Spooky23 6y ago
No, that's deceptive and projects weakness and insecurity. You can put a turd in a gold box, but it's still a turd. If a man needs to stretch the language to conceal a trivial event that is publicly known, what else is he hiding? It's weird on many levels, as yakking about the disappointment of a pet/vanity project's stumble on it's ascent to greatness is a great distraction from the substance of Facebook.
- naringas 6y ago
  what's worse, this is a systemic issue not at all unique to facebook. it all started when every pizzeria became the best pizza in the city; and just goes off from there.
  - catalogia 6y ago
    Saying something landed safely when it actually crashed goes beyond mere puffery.
BiteCode_dev 6y ago
So intentional deception.
mola 6y ago
Calling deception "PR speak" doesn't make it not deception.

smsm42 6y ago

More interesting, I think, is why a "reporter" reported as fact something that they didn't witness and had no way to verify except from the words of one very biased source. And what added value this kind of "reporting" provides - if we wanted to know what Zuckerberg wants to say, we can read the press release? This is all too common a pattern nowdays - instead of reporting something that happens the press reports something that somebody (usually extremely biased and frequently anonymous) said about something that might happen, or, as frequently turns out later, didn't happen. It's much easier and cheaper, but its contribution to the society is net negative.

Luechkt 6y ago
This is such an insightful comment. I worked as a reporter for a little outside-of-Philly paper in the 2000s and it was the extreme taboo to report on something you couldn't independently verify. Even then pay was bad and younger folks were bailing ship. Now newsrooms are so gutted that there is no staff left to do this kind of reporting.
devindotcom 6y ago
When it comes to things like internal R&D projects, military and government matters, and a huge amount of the tech industry's goings-on, the only source is the company itself. This is a serious challenge facing press in many industries. How do you propose Casey should have challenged or verified whether the Aquila flew as well as claimed? Any data about the craft would come from FB, any paper describing it would be published by FB, any researchers who worked on it would work at FB. Anyone else who might be an "objective" source would be under NDA. Companies are very thorough about this sort of thing. A journalist doing an investigative piece on the Aquila would not take Zuckerberg's words as gospel, but that doesn't mean those words are unimportant. This was a news piece, and CEOs speaking publicly about an R&D project, and answering questions and so on, is an opportunity to provide a different kind of value. Readers are curious about details companies don't always provide, and also require context that isn't always obvious. Reporters do this work too - it's not all cloak and dagger stuff, whistleblowers and top-secret dossiers. Aquila was a solar-powered drone that FB wanted to use to create a laser-powered internet for developing countries. That's an interesting story that should be told - and not just by the company, which would leave out important parts like opposition to Internet.org or indeed the unfinished nature of the aircraft. That's important work for reporters as well - filling in those gaps so that readers' understanding of a topic or event is more full than it would be had only people with a stake in it done so. I also have not seen the pattern you describe and am not sure it's as endemic as you suggest.

pwdisswordfish2 6y ago

You mean whether the decision not to invite any members of the press to the test flight was intentional or incompetence?