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Mark Zuckerberg, In It To Change the World?
schmidt349 submitted a story about Zuckerberg that might fly in the face of what you've heard of the guy in the past. "Award-winning New York Times journalist David Kirkpatrick's new book The Facebook Effect presents readers with a complex view of Facebook's founder and CEO. Primed by hours of conversation and research deep into the history of the social network, Kirkpatrick reaches the conclusion that money isn't a primary motivation for Zuckerberg, 'a coder more than a CEO, a philosopher more than a businessman, a 26-year-old who has consistently avoided selling out because he sees Facebook as his way to change the world.' Kirkpatrick deftly handles the controversy surrounding Facebook's sometimes cavalier attitude toward user privacy, and the result is a much more balanced and less sensationalist account of Facebook's past, present, and future."
...who has consistently avoided selling out because he sees Facebook as his way to change the world
Yeah, if you overlook Facebook Ads, the massive support framework for extracting personal data and giving it to third parties under the guise of 'gaming', the Beacon program, and extending the API so any website can add things to your profile through IFRAMES if you don't delete your cookies/logout. No, Mr. Zuckerberg has a very clear vision of how he intends to change the world: He recognizes the incredible value of having personal information on the majority of people connected to the internet, and he wants to capitalize on that.
He intends to sell the information to the highest bidder, while keeping the market where these exchanges take place to himself. That's his brave new world.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Dr. Evil isn't motivated by money either, and he wants to change the world too.
As parent points out, he's out to change HIS world. He might have more credibility if he hadn't stole the code, and wasn't compromising user's data, but, hey, he's got the stage so why not try a little spin on the truth.
Best regards.
Just when everyone is thinking "Zuckerberg, what an ass!" we get a book purporting that Zuckerberg is in fact a genius coder and philosopher. And here I thought his philosophy boiled down to "fucking idiots tell me things about themselves that I can sell." When are we going to stop this sycophantic worship of sociopaths who happen to get rich by screwing over others?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
but if their advertising practices are any indication, they are in it for the money. I'm pretty happy with many of the security changes they made a couple of weeks ago after the furor over privacy reached the boiling point, but to claim they have benevolent intentions is ignorance at best.
Living With a Nerd
Sorry, but this just stinks of a payola article.
For an example of what happens when people forgo money.
I just don't trust the guy. Sleaze-ball comes to mind.
I can't get into his method of profit--selling our private info to others.
I'm careful about my private information. I'm sure others aren't so well versed on what to disclose to Facebook. I like the site, seriously, as it has let met get in touch with so many friends and family
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
So is the book based solely on interviews? Because interviewing the subject himself with no other sources will nearly always give you a favorable picture of the subject. We all craft our own favorable narratives, consciously or not, and that's even more so what we share with the world.
The Time article doesn't really delve into the other research that Mr. Kirkpatrick might have done, so it's very difficult to judge the quality of the book.
Zuckerberg is clearly doing what he does in order to change the world. I can't imagine how that would even be a question.
However, his image of the future seems a bit dystopian in my mind. Bring the consumers together, lead the dumb ones to the slaughter, and then force-herd the stubborn ones down the same path. Everything is marketing, everything is sales. Social interaction cannot exist, if not for the sake of making a profit. "There is no privacy" - unless you're one of the powerful elite.
By all appearances, he's trying to increase the class spread, and turn the entire world into marketing. O brave new world, that has such people in't!
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
It won't be popular unless braindead retards can use it unassisted, and social networking is all about the popularity contest.
am i the only person that hasn't signed up for facebook?
No, but I wonder sometimes if communicating by email with people these days is perceived analogous to communicating by fax machine, or telegram. I *like* email dammit.
the actual application is trivial save for the scaling to millions of users...
Exactly.
Now, You can spout that your independant framework is the best way to go, and even if you manage to master the untrivial task of scaling to millions of users, when you get offered large sums of money for your product, lets see you not sell out.
I may not like what Zuckerberg is doing, but I can't honestly say I wouldn't do the same were I in his position. I think a small bit of the hate directed towards him is generated by the jealousy that his product is on top.
Which is a bit like saying that traveling to the Moon is trivial save for building a Saturn V rocket.
Read my blog.
Getting the code to work right is not the tough part. Hell, making the code scalable to millions of users isn't even the tough part. Getting enough people to use your social network so that you reach the critical mass Facebook has is the tough part.
No, fuck off with your updates, your farmville, your "Jimmy likes this comment!", your photo-tagging, and updated ToS (now with more caveats!) and forcing default settings to the most open option.
It's easy to say that you're not primarily motivated by money once you're already a billionaire several times over.
Hell, give me a mere couple of million and I'd show you what it's like to not be motivated by money...
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I believe you mean a world in which he has all the money. If he sells out, that opportunity is lost.
What was the author smoking when he wrote this?
Not out for the money? "avoided selling out"? What about the phrase "monetizing information" that so often comes up in Facebook's conversations?
What the interview with the 19 year old Zuckerberg who called his users "stupid" for making their information available to him? Yes, he was 19, but I have seen articles on the internet claiming he has said similar things like that in what he thought were confidential conversations.
What about Facebook making defaults public, when it is obvious private would be preferred and doing so without notice?
Is that lack of respect for other people consistent with a "philosopher" who wants to change the world for the better?
That and the fact he is a colossal d-bag
No sig for you!!
get real. you're just too lazy to make something better or easier.
Give me an example. please. name me one person who wanted to make the world a better place, and gave less of a fuck about money.
Buddha. Gandhi. Mother Theresa.
That's three. Google yourself some more. All of these people were successful, too. Moreso than Zuckerberg.
stop thinking with your wallet for a second, and start thinking like a human being.
Capitalist pigs and all that aside, I'm thinking with my brain. People get painted by their behaviors. MZ doesn't even admit to his crimes, let alone begin to atone for them, and you want to anoint him a saint. He has yet to do one decent thing for humanity, as far as I have seen.
You're attributing to a single slimeball the entirety of the internet's value while simultaneously blathering on about the limits of materialism.
In short you're not having a conversation, so have a nice day!
He never said he had benevolent intentions, he said he wanted to change the world. He dreams of being atop a world changing company, just as Bill Gates, J P Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and the railroad barons of old all have done. He wants to be the great. He wants to be respected. He sees 'changing the world' as a means to that end, but no moreso than being rich.
Qxe4
People who say "post something on the internet and then complain about privacy" are missing a key point: Access Controls. Facebook has them. Just like many web sites do. The problem is that Facebook has a habit of either removing or neutering certain controls and making available information that they shouldn't.
This is similar to having a HR web site at work where people can access their own records to update emergency contact, children, addresses, etc. This site probably has lots of info on you (national ID number, etc.). Now imagine the admin of the site made a change that neutered or removed the access control list so that everyone in the company could see each other's information. Well, you posted it on the intranet so it's your fault? Not really - it is the fault of that admin. In Facebook's case it is the fault of them changing their model and changing items that had an access control list to public.