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Thiel and Zuckerberg on Facebook, Millennials, and predictions for 2030 (2019)
- lotsofpulp 11mo ago> One theme we've discussed is that many important institutions in our society (eg education, healthcare, housing, efforts to combat climate change) are still run primarily by boomers in ways that transfer a lot of value from younger generations to boomers themselves. I do not understand the reason for assuming any successive group of old leaders to behave differently than boomers? Millenials are going to have an even more disproportionate old age population, and presumably will seek to squeeze the younger generations even more than the boomers: https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2024/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2...
- scarmig 11mo agoIt will be an endless whinge "the Boomers screwed us over, so we need to screw over everyone else just to get by."
- Mistletoe 11mo agoThe era you experienced growing up can influence how you are when you get older quite a bit. The generation before the Great Depression tried to create a more progressive equitable world but of course that was eroded eventually. Everything goes in cycles and the next generation coming that experiences the fallout from all our recent excesses will be different as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Era
- iwontberude 11mo agoInteresting perspective. Anecdotally, the people I met who lived through it were traumatized into a scarcity mentality and would spend the rest of their lives hoarding anything and using it to gain a sense of control. Certainly FOX news knew how to get to them with fear, formative fear.
- lotsofpulp 11mo agoThe key parameter that has changed all over the world is there are more net benefit recipients than net payers in (i.e. far more old people relative to young people). By far, the largest wealth transfer that happens is young to old, via defined benefit pensions (such as social security), healthcare, and asset price increases (via decreases in purchasing power of the currency). In a democracy, most voters will vote for these policies, because most voters are or will soon be beneficiaries of these policies. I am betting that Millenials, once they are in their 50s, will continue voting for the same policies that Boomers have for the past 20 years, since they will have the same incentives.
- code_for_monkey 11mo agonah, I think by the time millenials are old we'll all still be working for our boss: an 160 year old cyborg demon AI
- elzbardico 11mo agoThe current oligarchs plan on dispensing all together with the need for the blood of the young by replacing them with AI and robots.
- tekbruh9000 11mo agoAlso much more addicted to service economy with little survival and self sufficiency instincts. Anecdotally, very briefly dated a 40 year old who claimed she only ever cooked boxed food; had never even baked or microwaved a potato. Her words! They’re the Gizmodo and Ars Technica journalist crowd exploiting slave labor while bitching about social justice. The 1984 double speak is strong with them. America is a passive investor society. Like Trump thinking factories will just appear because he wishes it, Millennials wish to be enriched without giving a shit about externalities. I base this entirely off their actual effort on the ground. Their "thoughts and prayers" may be cranked to 11, but my lived experience is they're even more disconnected from obligation to themselves than Boomers and GenX who at least spent some part of their life solving their ground truth problems. They prefer socialism (which I am not against) because they realize they're screwed as individuals, they need help. Many probably expect they'll be served by it, not serving it.
- tedivm 11mo ago> While our company has a special role in the lives of this generation, this is likely particularly important for how I show up because I am the most well-known person of my generation. They really are up their own asses so much in this thread. Just the arrogance of these people absolutely kills me.
- xp84 11mo agoWell, it’s probably true only if you consider sports and media celebrities as not people, which would be a stretch.
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- saubeidl 11mo agoI've never seen Zuckerberg fill up a stadium the same way Messi, Ronaldo, Taylor Swift or Beyonce have...
- throitallaway 11mo agoMusk tried that once at a Dave Chappelle show. It didn't go so well for him.
- notahacker 11mo agotbf they haven't been the villain in a movie (yet...)
- tristanMatthias 11mo agoSo “The Social Dilemma” doesn’t count?
- quantified 11mo agoNot as much as "The Social Network", probably.
- butterfi 11mo agoZuckerberg as generational representative made my millennial and Gen Z kids lol
- tsm 11mo agoPreviously (2024-07-07; 136 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40898654 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40898654
- badcryptobitch 11mo agoI didn't know that. I encountered these emails recently from the Tech Emails X account and figured I'd share here because 1) it's very timely considering the NYC mayor elections and 2) HN is a great place to read about people's thoughts on topics like these outside of where I usually hangout.
- iwontberude 11mo agoThis article flame bait. No point in keeping it up.
- buellerbueller 11mo agoSatire, by definition, is flamebait. That this particular of satire is nigh on indistinguishable from reality/so believable indicates how good a satire it is.
- DrewADesign 11mo ago** maybe edit of un-shame: ... is it? * edit of shame: it's satire. Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug. > there is a certain sense in which Mark Zuckerberg has been cast as 'the spokesman' for the Millennial generation — as the single person who gives voice to the hopes and fears and the unique experiences of this generation, at least in the USA That is an absolutely bananas read of Zuck's place in American culture.
- iwontberude 11mo agoI just realized it’s satire now that I’m actually reading their thread further.
- DrewADesign 11mo agoWhoopsie. Bizarre that it's this plausible but it shows how prone I am to confirmation bias. I'm adding an edit to the comment but leaving it up as a reminder.
- iwontberude 11mo agoI’m actually not sure yet, I was more being tongue in cheek.
- tedivm 11mo agoThis is not satire. This is a website that has been around for years that has an email archive from emails released in lawsuits against tech companies. The page literally sites the specific case ("Tennessee v. Meta (2024)") that this came from and is easily verifiable. Not satire. They really are just that up their own asses.
- silverquiet 11mo ago> They really are just that up their own asses. I remember perhaps a decade ago, a coworker and I were watching a clip of Zuckerberg walking up to a group of employees and they started clapping for him. I mentioned how odd it was to see, and he thought it was perfectly natural to applaud the CEO of your company. We never applauded when our boss showed up, and I've never really been sure where the line is for which authority I'm supposed to cheer for merely from being in their presence. I haven't thought about it too much since then, but obviously it's stuck with me. As a society, we've all had our lips pretty firmly pressed onto the asses of the oligarchs for quite awhile, so it seems pretty natural that they think it's the natural order of things.
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- code_for_monkey 11mo ago> there is a certain sense in which Mark Zuckerberg has been cast as 'the spokesman' for the Millennial generation — as the single person who gives voice to the hopes and fears and the unique experiences of this generation, at least in the USA Fucks sake... that is an absolutely bananas read of Zuck's place in American culture.
- nextworddev 11mo agoAre we sure these guys didn’t actively contribute to creating this future?
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- hypeatei 11mo agoIsn't Thiel the one that believes democracy and freedom are incompatible and also a co-founder of Palantir? Why do we give these people any legitimacy? Because they have money?
- buellerbueller 11mo agoWe don't give them legitimacy. The people who govern us do; they don't actually care about democracy, the second it causes them to lose elections. Look at Trump: lost an election, incited a riot to overthrow the peaceful transfer of power, pardoned those who were complicit in it. The sad thing is, because the Dem playbook is now "fight fire with fire" (cf. the gerrymandering wars), it is only a matter of time until they stoop to the same level of overthrowing legitimate elections, in the name of fighting fire with fire...
- karmakurtisaani 11mo agoPeter Thiel knows about the antichrist.. Sorry, this song has been in my head since I saw the South Park episode. Highly recommend anyone to watch the 2nd Trump era episodes, they sure rid these people of any legitimacy they might have.
- noir_lord 11mo ago> Thanks Peter – hugely thought provoking! Excuse me while I throw up in my mouth, I never liked Clegg much even when he was in office but bleh.
- cjs_ac 11mo agoThe most striking thing about this exchange for me is how abstract it is: until the last email from Clegg, there's no reference to any of Facebook/Meta's products. It sounds more like political strategists trying to find out how to appeal to Millennials, but by pandering to Millennials' pre-existing political views rather than trying to push a political view.
- lm28469 11mo agoThey're parasites, data parasites, political parasites, economical parasites, ...
- hamdingers 11mo ago> Millennials remain our most active users. Even in back in 2019 I have a hard time believing this was true. As a millennial, my facebook feed was overtaken by my parents generation in the early 2010s and the handful of peers I know who still use it regularly use it to communicate with that generation. Maybe he's counting Instagram usage as part of Facebook?
- drivebyhooting 11mo agoFacebook and instagram are a disease. Time and again Meta’s properties have been shown to be detrimental to children’s (and adults’) mental health. Even by Meta’s own research! The whole thing stinks of the same foul reek as big tobacco. When their reckoning comes we will wonder how we could have let one megalomaniac’s scam go so far. > They trust me. Dumb fucks. > Zuck aut nihil. He never changed.
- jimbokun 11mo agoAlong with every other social network.
- drivebyhooting 11mo agoYou’re probably right. That doesn’t exonerate Zuck from his crimes.
- theideaofcoffee 11mo agoDo these dweebs ever let up on huffing their own farts? I can only hope that the actual measurements of their declining platform influence and use are true and we see FB peter out at some point. Sadly, it'll be replaced by something even more banal, but at least Zuck will fade away, here's hoping Thiel does as well.
- HardCodedBias 11mo ago"One example of such an "iron grip" from my colleague Eric Weinstein: Of the 67 top research universities in the US, 62 have Baby Boomer presidents (three are Silent Generation and only two are Generation X). Today, the median age of these 67 university presidents is 65 years-old... And this is very different from the recent past. Only thirty years ago, in 1990, the median age of these same university presidents was a much lower 52-years old;" Got to admit that's very interesting. That was January 5, 2020, I wonder how it looks today. I asked chat: Boomers: ~13 of 20 (~65%) Examples: Princeton (Christopher Eisgruber, 1961), MIT (Sally Kornbluth, 1960), Harvard (Alan Garber, 1955), Duke (Vincent Price, 1957), Brown (Christina Paxson, 1960), Johns Hopkins (Ron Daniels, 1959), Columbia’s acting leaders across 2024–25 were also Boomers. Gen X: ~7 of 20 (~35%) Examples: Stanford (Jonathan Levin, 1972), Yale (Maurie McInnis, 1966), Dartmouth (Sian Beilock, 1976), Rice (Reginald DesRoches, 1967), Vanderbilt (Daniel Diermeier, 1965), WashU (Andrew D. Martin, 1972), Notre Dame (Rev. Robert A. Dowd, 1965). Millennials/Silent: 0 in this Top-20 (today). (A few large publics just outside the USNWR top-20 have Boomer or Gen-X chancellors as well; e.g., UC Berkeley’s Rich Lyons, 1961.) The boomers are still holding on to power. Amazing! What's it like in the private sector? Gen X: ~53% (Microsoft/S. Nadella 1967; Alphabet/S. Pichai 1972; Amazon/A. Jassy 1968; Tesla/E. Musk 1971; Eli Lilly/D. Ricks 1967; Walmart/D. McMillon 1966; Tencent/Ma Huateng 1971; Visa/R. McInerney 1975; Mastercard/M. Miebach 1968; ExxonMobil/D. Woods 1965; plus Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters 1970.) Boomers: ~43% (Nvidia/J. Huang 1963; Apple/T. Cook 1960; Saudi Aramco/A. Nasser 1958; Broadcom/Hock Tan 1951/52; TSMC/C.C. Wei 1953; JPMorgan/J. Dimon 1956; Oracle/S. Catz 1961; plus Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos 1964.) Millennials: ~5% (Meta/Mark Zuckerberg 1984.) Silent Generation: ~5% (Berkshire Hathaway/Warren Buffett 1930 — slated to hand CEO role to Greg Abel, b. 1962, at year-end 2025.) A little better, but my gosh they are really holding on. I'm sure it is unprecedented. Certainly heath is better than any time in history, but this seems extreme.
- HardCodedBias 11mo agoUpdate: It looks like there has been some turnover at the universities since the quote from Eric Weinstein. I quick survey (could be incorrect!) says it is now more around 63. That's still high but not as high as what Eric Weinstein was quoting. Would be a great time series.
- ireadtheemail 11mo agoNo matter how hard I try I fail to see why would anyone mentally stable dislike Peter Thiel.
- throitallaway 11mo agoBesides hating immigrants and Palantir contributing to the surveillance state? Just like drug dealers, I guess someone else would do it if he weren't.
- ireadtheemail 11mo agoI think he's beyond the childish "hate" phase. He argues against unbridled immigration but why shouldn't he.
- motoboi 11mo agoThanks for this. This helped me understand Zuckerberg’s recent change of style. It is now clear that he made a repositioning, and not that was fruit of some psychological breakthrough or something like that. At the same time it’s scary to think about to what extent that men can go for business and also, given his pathetic behavior at the White House dinner, who is actually controlling that man.
- fidotron 11mo ago> Of course, there are numerous ways in which this role (Mark as Millennial spokesman) is both pretty unfair and highly inappropriate. It is unfair because this much of a burden should not be placed on any single person; and it is inappropriate because Mark is a highly unrepresentative example of the Millennial generation, for a whole range of reasons that we do not need to enumerate. But even with these caveats, I believe that we might be better served by understanding that something like this is going on and trying to think about what it would mean for Mark to think of himself as a Millennial spokesman... and perhaps to contrast this with what I take to be our current policy (at least implicitly) — of Mark as a Baby Boomer construct of how a well-behaved Millennial is supposed to act. If forced to make a choice, I would always rather win popularity contests with Millennials than with Boomers! That entire paragraph is mind bending. I really wish he had enumerated for a wider audience what was there because you could read something quite profound into it.
- joeldg 11mo ago[dead]
- exogeny 11mo agoIt's extremely telling that as Thiel is talking about Zuck's speech at Harvard, he is using the pronoun "we", as if Thiel was also giving the speech. Zuck is Thiel's mouthpiece, through and through. And it explains everything about Meta.
- seydor 11mo agoWell if the changeover happens it seems it will happen in the 2030s. Amd millennials found their replacement for housing bubble with the stocks / crypto bubble. And democracy is good for boomers, because they are too many and outnumber everyone else in battle. So millennials and genz are not unsympathetic to less democracy (a view that Thiel shares). Thiel in this context could be considered a boomer, and his interests lie with them
- jimbokun 11mo agoI would like to see a poll showing that Millennials as a whole are unsympathetic to Democracy.
- triceratops 11mo agoSurprisingly self-aware and empathetic from Thiel: > I would be the last person to advocate for socialism. But when 70% of Millennials say they are pro-socialist, we need to do better than simply dismiss them by saying that they are stupid or entitled or brainwashed; we should try and understand why. And, from the perspective of a broken generational compact, there seems to be a pretty straightforward answer to me, namely, that when one has too much student debt or if housing is too unaffordable, then one will have negative capital for a long time and/or find it very hard to start accumulating capital in the form of real estate; and if one has no stake in the capitalist system, then one may well turn against it. But when he gives examples of the "iron grip" boomers have on power, he only talks about their control of universities and the government. He leaves out wealth and capital.
- HEmanZ 11mo agoIs “techmails.com” a trustworthy source? This seems like a made up thread. Although plausible enough to seem real.
- planewave 11mo agoYes, this site usually publishes emails released into the public record via court cases. This exchange is cited as: [This document is from Tennessee v. Meta (2024).]
- HEmanZ 11mo agoAnd where is that document? I can claim this document is from wherever if there is no way to find that document. Sorry this just reads way too much like fiction and if I have two hypotheses about its origin: 1. Real court document that I can’t find the source for and have to trust a random substack is telling me is real. 2. AI generated conversation for views. I’m inclined to the second these days. But if it’s real: the fact that guys real life conversations read like satire is telling…
- wtfwhateven 11mo agohttps://www.tn.gov/attorneygeneral/news/2024/1/10/pr23-03.html https://www.tn.gov/attorneygeneral/news/2024/1/10/pr23-03.ht... https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/attorneygeneral/documents/pr/2024/pr24-03-unredactedcomplaint.pdf https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/attorneygeneral/documents/...
- hereme888 11mo agoReminder to millennials: Socialism in real life = Biggest Government, Biggest Tech monopoly, forced uniformity, no self-agency, no authenticity for anyone who slightly disagrees with any aspect of the agenda, etc. Source: I fled Venezuela because I lived in it.
- lm28469 11mo agoNo offence but Venezuela is a political meme and one of the most corrupt country out there lol, given your natural resources you should be doing way better regardless of where the government leans. Socialism brought a lot of good things all over Europe in the 1900s
- svieira 11mo ago> Socialism brought a lot of good things all over Europe in the 1900s Just ask Poland!
- lm28469 11mo agoI forgot to mention that 280 iq individuals who think socialism = communism = USSR = gulags can refrain from commenting No wonder we can't have any serious discussions on these topics...
- svieira 11mo agoWell, socialism also includes the National Socialists of various nations ... perhaps we should clarify our terms rather than using an ambiguous word?
- hereme888 11mo agoMy IQ is not 300, but it's sufficient to understand reality: - Union of Soviet Socialist Republics: operated under the Communist Party's centralized control, with state ownership of production, suppression of dissent, and looked more like communist authoritarianism than democratic socialism. - CCP, Cuba, North Korea: they call themselves socialists while being led by communist parties. - Democratic socialism like Sweden, Norway, Denmark: very different from the above.
- xg15 11mo ago> We have a team working on an ambitious long term project on loneliness/isolation which, again, has the potential to hold particular appeal to the Millennial sentiments set out in the paper. The latest plans will be presented to Mark next week. With the goal to reduce it, right? ...right?
- disambiguation 11mo agoWow am I reading this correctly? To recap: - They're going to run Zuck for president to beat the millennial socialist zeitgeist. - They're going to use generational warfare to stage an institutional coup. > we need to do better than simply dismiss them by saying that they are stupid or entitled or brainwashed Classy.
- jimbokun 11mo agoPlease point me to the above quotes in the emails.
- tru3_power 11mo agoI did not get him running for president from this. Which part made you think that?
- disambiguation 11mo agoGranted I'm taking creative liberties reading between the lines and mapping to other context. I'd give it low odds overall, but I'm gleaning a non-zero likelihood worthy of consideration: 1. "Mark Zuckerberg has been cast as the spokesman for the Millennial generation." 2. "I am the most well-known person of my generation" 3. "we'll even see a millennial president within the next few cycles by 2032." 4. The direct comparison to Pete Buttigieg. 5. He's signaled a presidential bid in the recent past. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/mark-zuckerberg-not-running-for-president https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/mark-zuc... Some additional interpretation of mine from the exchange: 6. The expressed need to "win" in the policy arena in the next few years. 7. The imminent "transfer of value" (and power) from boomers to millennials, and the explicit urgency and intent to "position" themselves to capitalize on this "rapid shift." Further real world context: 8. Thiel's track record of hands on political involvement with Trump, Vance, and Yarvin. 9. Thiel's recent "antichrist" lectures which articulates a fear of being "scapegoated."
- benrutter 11mo ago> When Mark and Priscilla commit to giving away 99% of their wealth during their lifetimes I hadn't heard this before but googling it seems like a genuine commitment at the time[0]. I mostly feel like Zuck isn't making the world a better place, but this sounds really impressive as a commitment - any idea if this commitments been stuck to now we're around 10 years on? [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-34978249 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-34978249
- thatguy0900 11mo agoHow kind of him to give his wealth away after intentionally using his company to fracture society as much as he could to earn the money in the first place
- jimbokun 11mo agoSigh. No, Zuckerberg did not set out consciously trying to "fracture society". He started out trying to provide a way to rate women at Harvard by how attractive they were, then by just trying to optimize revenue without any consideration for unintended consequences. Then kept going. Not understanding the failure mode is going to just lead to repeating the same mistakes at even grander scales, like what's happening now with AI. Nerds obsessed with creating "AGI" without the capability or willingness to think through the potential consequences.
- thatguy0900 11mo agoThis is like the oil companies that hid the internal climate change studies for as long as they could. Zuck knew what he was doing long before everyone else did. Acting like he was just dumb and uninformed is wrong. When they started he might not have realized how bad optimizing for engagement was but it doesn't take a genius to realize what was happening with the data they have. He's not some starry eyed kid who accidentally made a monster, he found out he could become one of the richest men in the world if he made his monster vicious enough. This is a guy that started buying the land for his survival bunker 10 years ago.
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- NalNezumi 11mo agoThe thing that most surprises me in these emails are that those two people care about housing price or student debt, or millennials in general. And cynical me can't brush of the feeling that this is satire or that I need to read between the lines. A dude that buys all houses around him just to get privacy and "fuck off" others (Zuck) cares about housing? A guy that think Greta is antichrist and think anyone that blocks AI advancement is antichrist, somehow thinks "we should look at why millennials choose socialism" as a thought process? A more realistic, "what they mean" interpretation of this emailing is: "FB product have influence over millennials (Instagram) and Boomers (Facebook). Boomers are dying out, so we should double down on our grip over millennials and tune the algorithms so we can manipulate them more than ever. We should lobby and push out the boomers and set millennials in the position of institutional power, and no other cohorts, so that we have a direct pipeline of controlling the public discord and communication between this generation "
- jimbokun 11mo agoOr maybe it shows that The Bad Guys have complicated and unexpected and nuanced thoughts sometimes?
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- haunter 11mo agoThis site needs better links to sources. Hard links to the case files + Archive.org mirror too. "This document is from Tennessee v. Meta (2024)" ain't cut it in the age of LLMs anymore
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