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In fact Zuck _was_ a hero back then, as was Elon. People with power tend to change. With being in power, their perspective on the world shifts, often for the w
by nuancebydefault 2y ago
In fact Zuck _was_ a hero back then, as was Elon.
People with power tend to change. With being in power, their perspective on the world shifts, often for the worse.
Zuck originally wanted fully free speech, this is in fact what everyone wanted in that time. Then appeared the massive abuse in the unavoidable echo chambers. Zuck was hence forced to be the judge between good and bad speech/content, up to being in court. The filtering had to happen with advanced algorithms since fully manual was impossible to pull off. The funding happened by advertising, so the move to algorithms upping engagement was only logical.
Elon on the other hand went all the way from the nerd being bullied at the playground, via the acceleration of electrical transport, up to buying the world's biggest software playground and obtaining a large part of world's communication and transport hardware infrastructure. He's more convinced than ever of the power of capitalism, for the good and the bad.
- estebank 2y ago> Elon on the other hand went all the way from the nerd being bullied at the playground Elon wasn't bullied. He was pushed down a flight of stairs by one kid after Elon made fun of that kid's father's suicide.
- nuancebydefault 2y agoWe were not at the site when it happened. I only recall the various sources that I read and try to make a consistent/plausible model and narrative. I never met Elon nor Zuck in person.
- Earw0rm 2y agoWell, it's what everyone wanted apart from all the people warning them about it. (I'm not taking credit. I was militantly pro free speech at the time, the anti-free-speech position was mostly held by Christian Conservatives and other fun-free types. Free speech was borderline _sexy_). What I don't think Zuck or any of his peers realised was what they were connecting. Sure, connect all the bright young things on college campuses, and maybe their nice extended families, good things will happen. I don't think he'd have done it if he knew just how much of the population was deplorable, deplorable-adjacent or highly susceptible to being turned that way. And I don't recall ever seeing that discussed at the time. "But if we connect all the people... you realise we're connecting all the angry, ugly, bitter, nasty, broken ones too. And have you considered just how many of those there are?"
- RGamma 2y agoZuck, a hero? The first time I saw a fellow student post something utterly irrelevant (to our local group's real lives) rage bait thing into the then-new FB feed I knew we were in trouble. Surely, FB and Zuck must have had an idea what was going on. Then I deleted my account and successfully ignored all of the generic, commercial asocial media fads that happened afterwards (at least to the degree they're directly ignorable). Feels nice to have it all pass me by. Mixing online and real life in this uncontrolled manner and scale was a huge mistake for our collective moral and mental health. And for the record: I don't blame him for everything that happened, but he certainly helped open the doors to a much more unpleasant VC-powered internet and we're struggling to reboot the cultural forces that made the time before it so great.
- sydbarrett74 2y agoAgreed on the mixing of worlds being detrimental to society. Boundaries exist for a reason.
- sydbarrett74 2y agoI don't think Zuck's motives were ever pure or noble. We must remember that Facebook (original name: Mashbook) was originally created to rate the fuckability of the females residing in Harvard's co-ed dorms. Basically, it was Hot Or Not for a very targeted population. The concept of a social graph was stolen lock, stock, and barrel from the Winklevoss twins. Zuck's talent is unabashed brashness and chutzpah. He thinks the rules simply don't apply to him. He is not an original thinker, but rather very intellectually derivative. The fact that he grew up wealthy opened many doors for him, even despite the Winklevoss twins' sentiment that he comes from new money and is thus irremediably beneath them, and even worse in their WASPy blueblood minds, Jewish new money. ('How dare a Jew steal our idea!') Shady actors all around, with not an admirable figure amongst them.