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People can say what they want about Zuckerberg, maybe he doesn't have the amazing charisma of Jobs, or the genius of Torvalds, and Facebook gets constantly hamm

People can say what they want about Zuckerberg, maybe he doesn't have the amazing charisma of Jobs, or the genius of Torvalds, and Facebook gets constantly hammered in the press (and him as well), but this is a great gesture on his part, I applaud him.

meaty 14y ago
Well he deserves the hammering. The guy is clearly immoral and has damaged people's privacy and the world wide web forever. $500mil doesn't suddenly make that ok, especially considering the charity is basically a quango.
- jfoster 14y ago
  Why do you think he's immoral? If you equate "enabled people to share more of their lives more broadly" with "damaged people's privacy" then I agree, but I'm not sure even a majority would agree with a sentiment of that necessarily being a bad thing. People share what they feel comfortable with, don't they?
  - meaty 14y ago
    It's not about what but to whom. To whom is hard to control and is made harder on purpose as after all, their entire model is based on encouraging sharing legitimately or otherwise. Don't underestimate the power of the majority to make a crap decision. That's why we have privacy and data protection laws in the EU: to protect people from predatory information gathering and sharing.
- VMG 14y ago
  Who's privacy was damaged in a way where the victim didn't voluntarily give it up?
  - patd 14y ago
    Guys like these maybe : http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2012/10/facebook_bobbi_duncan_taylor_mccormick.php http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2012/10/facebook_bobbi_d...
- natural219 14y ago
  Are you joking? You have got to be joking. What have you contributed to society that amounts to 1/100000th of Mark's recent contribution? You're going to sit here and write an internet comment about how a guy who just donated $500 million dollars to charity is evil because you don't like the way he handles privacy settings on the $100 billion dollar company that he started single-handedly You have some serious soul-searching to do, guy. Go out there and build something, or do anything useful with your life. Then come back and tell me who you think is good or evil.
  - nixy 14y ago
    Do you have to be successful in order to be allowed an opinion?
    - natural219 14y ago
      If your opinion is as boneheaded as the parent's, then yes. Edit: This was uncalled for, and I apologize. What I mean to say is that anybody who builds things of value for a living quickly develops a more nuanced sense of morality than the parent displays. I do think that, when talking of the moral character of great people, the experience of having gone through the struggle yourself is rich with perspective. The fact that the parent deems Mark "clearly immoral" because Mark changed the parent's Facebook UI is absolutely the most revolting type of perspective in my eyes.
      - hnriot 14y ago
        You've just lost any credibility by saying this.
        natural219 14y ago
        You're right. Thanks. People like the parent bring out the worst in me -- people who judge others without lifting a finger. I'm not sure what I was trying to accomplish with the name-calling, though.
veidr 14y ago
Yeah, he deserves kudos for this, but he also deserves much of the shit that people talk about him. Facebook is a company that is loathed roughly in proportion to the degree that people understand what they actually do to make their money: adorn your baby or wedding photos with fart app ads, put your own face on various ads that you know nothing about, make you play whack-a-mole with their settings UI to preserve what little control of your information they allowed you to have last week, sell your instagram sexts, etc etc. And he's the guy who calls the shots.
- mikedmiked 14y ago
  > And he's the guy who calls the shots. When a child grows into a teenager it becomes harder to blame the father for their actions.
  - veidr 14y ago
    Right. That is indeed a more difficult and nuanced judgement than holding a corporation's CEO responsible for its major business decisions.
- jfoster 14y ago
  I haven't seen evidence that the average facebook user cares that much about the things that you've mentioned. I fully accept that some of their users (or ex-users) do. I have seen plenty of blog posts and outraged media stories. Yet I haven't noticed any great attrition among my friends on facebook, which is what I would expect to see if people cared much about this stuff.
  - flyinRyan 14y ago
    What on earth does "what most people feel" have to do with anything? Nobody in Germany seemed to care that much about what Hitler was doing until they lost the war.
    - phn 14y ago
      Off-topic but: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwins_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwins_law
001sky 14y ago
this is a great gesture on his part, I applaud him. == Why? Can you explain? How is this not a PR exercise: Oopps. Here's $500MM.
- jfoster 14y ago
  Investment of $500MM is going to result in very poor ROI if this is a PR exercise. It's going to be roughly a few days (perhaps a week) of "Zuck is nice" news stories and then be mostly forgotten.
  - 001sky 14y ago
    $1Bn was not material enough for FB bod to even be briefed on instagram. this is 1/2 that for scale. Furthermore, after tax shields, this is only $250 out of pocket. Spending $250 to protect a $10-50bn asset base is actually good math. Same as instagram purchase logic. BTW, $250m is also the amount that evaporated from the instagram deal for instagram shareholders during the 6m it took to close the deal (FB stock portion decreased in value). At the scale of FB, these numbers are not so impressively generous, in other words. While I don't think its a one sided discussion, its certainly open for debate if you are looking at the maths.
    - jfoster 14y ago
      It's not so much that I would consider $250MM too much to spend on a PR exercise. I think there would be much more effective PR exercises available for that price.
    - clarky07 14y ago
      This isn't Facebooks money, it's Zucks money. It is roughly 5-7% of his entire net worth, so I'd say it is fairly material.
loceng 14y ago
It depends - does he benefit personally from a tax writeoff from this? From all of his previous behaviour it would seem that this would more likely be the motivating factor here.
- jsmeaton 14y ago
  Giving away $500 Million is giving away $500 Million. The charity is receiving $500 million. Zuck doesn't get anything for it at all. If he earnt so much that he was able to write off $500 million, that just means he pays less tax on the rest. But at 30% tax rate, and if the whole lot was deductible (it wouldn't be), it's still $350 million out of his pocket. He's not benefiting (financially) in any way.

meaty 14y ago

Well he deserves the hammering. The guy is clearly immoral and has damaged people's privacy and the world wide web forever. $500mil doesn't suddenly make that ok, especially considering the charity is basically a quango.

jfoster 14y ago
Why do you think he's immoral? If you equate "enabled people to share more of their lives more broadly" with "damaged people's privacy" then I agree, but I'm not sure even a majority would agree with a sentiment of that necessarily being a bad thing. People share what they feel comfortable with, don't they?
- meaty 14y ago
  It's not about what but to whom. To whom is hard to control and is made harder on purpose as after all, their entire model is based on encouraging sharing legitimately or otherwise. Don't underestimate the power of the majority to make a crap decision. That's why we have privacy and data protection laws in the EU: to protect people from predatory information gathering and sharing.
VMG 14y ago
Who's privacy was damaged in a way where the victim didn't voluntarily give it up?
- patd 14y ago
  Guys like these maybe : http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2012/10/facebook_bobbi_duncan_taylor_mccormick.php http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2012/10/facebook_bobbi_d...
natural219 14y ago
Are you joking? You have got to be joking. What have you contributed to society that amounts to 1/100000th of Mark's recent contribution? You're going to sit here and write an internet comment about how a guy who just donated $500 million dollars to charity is evil because you don't like the way he handles privacy settings on the $100 billion dollar company that he started single-handedly You have some serious soul-searching to do, guy. Go out there and build something, or do anything useful with your life. Then come back and tell me who you think is good or evil.
- nixy 14y ago
  Do you have to be successful in order to be allowed an opinion?
  - natural219 14y ago
    If your opinion is as boneheaded as the parent's, then yes. Edit: This was uncalled for, and I apologize. What I mean to say is that anybody who builds things of value for a living quickly develops a more nuanced sense of morality than the parent displays. I do think that, when talking of the moral character of great people, the experience of having gone through the struggle yourself is rich with perspective. The fact that the parent deems Mark "clearly immoral" because Mark changed the parent's Facebook UI is absolutely the most revolting type of perspective in my eyes.
    - hnriot 14y ago
      You've just lost any credibility by saying this.
      - natural219 14y ago
        You're right. Thanks. People like the parent bring out the worst in me -- people who judge others without lifting a finger. I'm not sure what I was trying to accomplish with the name-calling, though.

veidr 14y ago

Yeah, he deserves kudos for this, but he also deserves much of the shit that people talk about him. Facebook is a company that is loathed roughly in proportion to the degree that people understand what they actually do to make their money: adorn your baby or wedding photos with fart app ads, put your own face on various ads that you know nothing about, make you play whack-a-mole with their settings UI to preserve what little control of your information they allowed you to have last week, sell your instagram sexts, etc etc. And he's the guy who calls the shots.

mikedmiked 14y ago
> And he's the guy who calls the shots. When a child grows into a teenager it becomes harder to blame the father for their actions.
- veidr 14y ago
  Right. That is indeed a more difficult and nuanced judgement than holding a corporation's CEO responsible for its major business decisions.
jfoster 14y ago
I haven't seen evidence that the average facebook user cares that much about the things that you've mentioned. I fully accept that some of their users (or ex-users) do. I have seen plenty of blog posts and outraged media stories. Yet I haven't noticed any great attrition among my friends on facebook, which is what I would expect to see if people cared much about this stuff.
- flyinRyan 14y ago
  What on earth does "what most people feel" have to do with anything? Nobody in Germany seemed to care that much about what Hitler was doing until they lost the war.
  - phn 14y ago
    Off-topic but: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwins_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwins_law

001sky 14y ago

this is a great gesture on his part, I applaud him. == Why? Can you explain? How is this not a PR exercise: Oopps. Here's $500MM.

jfoster 14y ago
Investment of $500MM is going to result in very poor ROI if this is a PR exercise. It's going to be roughly a few days (perhaps a week) of "Zuck is nice" news stories and then be mostly forgotten.
- 001sky 14y ago
  $1Bn was not material enough for FB bod to even be briefed on instagram. this is 1/2 that for scale. Furthermore, after tax shields, this is only $250 out of pocket. Spending $250 to protect a $10-50bn asset base is actually good math. Same as instagram purchase logic. BTW, $250m is also the amount that evaporated from the instagram deal for instagram shareholders during the 6m it took to close the deal (FB stock portion decreased in value). At the scale of FB, these numbers are not so impressively generous, in other words. While I don't think its a one sided discussion, its certainly open for debate if you are looking at the maths.
  - jfoster 14y ago
    It's not so much that I would consider $250MM too much to spend on a PR exercise. I think there would be much more effective PR exercises available for that price.
  - clarky07 14y ago
    This isn't Facebooks money, it's Zucks money. It is roughly 5-7% of his entire net worth, so I'd say it is fairly material.

loceng 14y ago

It depends - does he benefit personally from a tax writeoff from this? From all of his previous behaviour it would seem that this would more likely be the motivating factor here.

jsmeaton 14y ago
Giving away $500 Million is giving away $500 Million. The charity is receiving $500 million. Zuck doesn't get anything for it at all. If he earnt so much that he was able to write off $500 million, that just means he pays less tax on the rest. But at 30% tax rate, and if the whole lot was deductible (it wouldn't be), it's still $350 million out of his pocket. He's not benefiting (financially) in any way.