Zuckerberg's Side of 'The Social Network'

Zuckerberg is a douche by Anonymous Coward · 2010-10-19 00:52 · Score: 3, Insightful

Enough said.

Zuckerberg is so full of shit. by kuzb · 2010-10-19 00:53 · Score: 5, Interesting

He didn't build it because he "likes building things". He built it because he wanted to make money. Facebook is designed from the ground up to do just that - violate your privacy and make the company money in the process.

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Re:Zuckerberg is so full of shit. by binkzz · 2010-10-19 00:56 · Score: 3, Funny

He didn't build it because he "likes building things". He built it because he wanted to make money. Facebook is designed from the ground up to do just that - violate your privacy and make the company money in the process.
To be fair, his initial motivation wasn't money but to make something that let him share all the nude pictures of the girls at college.

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Re:Zuckerberg is so full of shit. by L4t3r4lu5 · 2010-10-19 01:00 · Score: 4, Insightful

If you believe what the multi-billion dollar worth guy who owns the company which is making cash hand-over-fist while violating your privacy says about the roots of the website.

You couldn't get a more biased source.

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Re:Zuckerberg is so full of shit. by kuzb · 2010-10-19 01:06 · Score: 3, Insightful

I don't mind that people make companies to make money. I just find it sad that he has to get up and lie about his own motivations. He's attempting to put a positive spin on his motivations when all his recent actions suggest just the opposite.

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Re:Zuckerberg is so full of shit. by kevinNCSU · 2010-10-19 01:10 · Score: 5, Insightful

Speaking as someone who was in college when facebook first started being used I have the strong feeling it started out as just an application he was building that he thought was cool. You generally don't put such hard limits on your user-base if you're simply interested in money right off the bat. Of course, once it started getting used and taking off the natural question is how do I best make money of this, and the natural answer is advertisements and data. Then your little hobby project turns into a profit driven company. I really don't think he had the foresight to sit down and say "How can I best create an internet phenomenon that everyone will use in order to get everyone's user data and information and sell it to advertisers to make millions?" and then immediately bang out facebook. That's generally not how people/life works. There's a natural progression and a shifting of goals/values, the world is not binary.
Re:Zuckerberg is so full of shit. by phoenixwade · 2010-10-19 01:11 · Score: 2, Insightful

You couldn't get a more biased source.
You must be new here..... You post a summary on Slashdot, you get 30 more biased sources within 30 min.

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Re:Zuckerberg is so full of shit. by btcoal · 2010-10-19 01:29 · Score: 5, Insightful

I completely agree.
First, some claim Zuckerberg didn’t build Facebook. Zuckerberg was actually hired by fellow Harvard undergraduates to build a website similar to Facebook. The more accurate accusation as that he stole the idea of Facebook. All articles on the inception of the website clearly state that Zuckerberg wrote the code himself. No one is going to claim that Zuckerberg was the next Don Knuth, Facebook was mainly hacked together using PHP over a couple of nights.
Second, some claim Zuckerberg is just in it for the money. If that were true he could have sold out a LONG time ago for around $1 billion. I think the subtext about building things just because you like to build things is that Zuckerberg is building his company not just for the money. I seriously doubt most of the posters on Slashdot, at the age of 22 would not have taken $1billion for a side project they worked on at school. It takes a special kind of person to have that resolve. Those are the people we should venerate in this country not vilify.
Third, some claim Zuckerberg is a douche. This is largely irrelevant. Most of us geeks aren’t the nicest guys in the world, let’s be real. Borderline Asperger’s/autism is rampant as is narcissism and a complete lack of humility. Find me a geek without a major personality flaw and you haven’t found a geek.
Moreover, I find it ironic that men like Bill Gates and Zuckerberg are constantly shat on here, but Steve Jobs is lauded as the second coming of Christ. If you read about the early history of Apple, you could make perfect parallels between the criticisms leveled at Zuckerberg and Jobs’s rise and fall and rise. Steve Jobs is megalomaniac clearly demonstrated sociopathic tendencies, has questionable tech credentials and could not give two shits about his customers’ opinions. And Apple is all the better for it.
So why does /. hate Zuckerberg so much? I think it is largely a generational divide. Many of you come from the gold old days of tech (command lines, walking five miles in the snow to get your code to compile, etc) and don’t really understand that just because something wasn’t challenging in a technical sense it is still HUGELY useful to millions of people. I was basically part of the first generation to use Facebook in college. It has been a great service for keeping track of friends from high school and family on the other side of the country/world. I can share pictures, stories, articles, links, lolcats and memories on one unified platform. The interface has always been super user friendly and clean. For the vast majority of college students (and increasingly everyone else) Facebook is as essential and important as Wikipedia or YouTube (the latter’s founders sold out for around $165million to Google, I should remind you). So let’s chill with the hating on Zuckerberg’s success. It’s all just a bit tacky and hypocritical.
Re:Zuckerberg is so full of shit. by betterunixthanunix · 2010-10-19 01:40 · Score: 3, Interesting

it started out as just an application he was building that he thought was cool
Perhaps, but I have to wonder why, then, did he ignore calls for interoperability, even early on before he was a billionaire. Perhaps he didn't think interoperability was cool?

The way I see things, he saw how profitable social networking websites were becoming, and thought he would give it a shot. I doubt he knew that it would become so popular, but he certainly knew the concept was popular (or should I say, the people who thought up ConnectU saw the concept was popular, then Zuckerberg ran with the idea).

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Re:Zuckerberg is so full of shit. by betterunixthanunix · 2010-10-19 01:45 · Score: 5, Interesting

So why does /. hate Zuckerberg so much?
Perhaps because the boy doesn't believe that privacy is a good thing? He is on the record as saying that anyone who wants privacy must be unethical. He uses Facebook to try to undermine the very concept of privacy in our society, and he is doing that at a time when the 4th amendment is being attacked by the government.

Or maybe we were all perfectly content with communicating with our friends and families using interoperable systems that are not designed to lock us in. Everything about Facebook is designed like the Hotel California, and Zuckerberg knows that but refuses to make any meaningful changes.

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Palm trees and 8
Re:Zuckerberg is so full of shit. by Dhalka226 · 2010-10-19 02:07 · Score: 2, Interesting

He is a biased source, yes. He's also the only source capable of 100% knowing the truth of why he decided to do something. It's up to the readers to decide if they prefer first-hand information from a biased source or second-hand information, guesses and suppositions from other, potentially also biased sources, or better yet, a mix of both.
Your simply dismissing somebody because he has a potential bias and, from the sounds of your post, runs a website you don't like isn't exactly the smartest thing in the world. Especially when you bring up things like him being a multi-billion-dollar-worth-guy (that is both debatable and entirely imaginary right now) and how the site is making cash "hand-over-fist" despite only being profitable for about the last year, which is questionable in general and totally unrelated to whether or not he is telling the truth about his original motivations.
I have no trouble believing that Zuckerberg is an ass. I have no trouble believing that his primary motivation now is money. But there is also good evidence that that was not always the case, such as the fact that Facebook used to be a fairly closed community available only to college students with a .edu email address.
Re:Zuckerberg is so full of shit. by RazorSharp · 2010-10-19 02:09 · Score: 2

I disagree. If he wanted to make money, the site would have been crawling with ads, and would have imploded. In the absense of other believable data, I believe he wanted to build it because he liked to build things, and that he wanted to make something successful.
Off topic, what is with all the Zuckerberg hate on Slashdot? He is a techie made good. He is living most coder's dreams. Is it that he invented it, and you didn't?
Here's a question: How did he make billions without the site crawling with ads?
Answer: Selling your personal information without your consent.

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Re:Zuckerberg is so full of shit. by icebraining · 2010-10-19 02:16 · Score: 2, Insightful

Why should we venerate him because he didn't sold? I'd understand if he hadn't sold to prevent an "evil company" from taking over, but Facebook is already data mining people's private data. Selling wouldn't make it worse.

Third, some claim Zuckerberg is a douche. This is largely irrelevant. Most of us geeks aren't the nicest guys in the world, let's be real. Borderline Asperger's/autism is rampant as is narcissism and a complete lack of humility. Find me a geek without a major personality flaw and you haven't found a geek.

An obnoxious guy can be avoided. At most he's somewhat a pain for the few people who have to interact with him.
Zuckerberg is data mining the private data of millions of people, introducing protocols and formats incompatible with the standards (see OpenGraph), sucking info frm other websites while at the same time not providing themselves, and more.
He and his company has a stronghold over the web that no average geek has.

Steve Jobs is lauded as the second coming of Christ
Ok, here you're talking about a different Slashdot.

So why does /. hate Zuckerberg so much? I think it is largely a generational divide.
Bullshit. /. has plenty of "fresh blood" (myself included) and lots of new technologies are well regarded here by both old and young.

just because something wasn't challenging in a technical sense it is still HUGELY useful to millions of people
Plenty of stuff is well regarded even if it isn't challenging in a technical sense. Stack Overflow isn't exactly rocket science and yet every programmer I've read likes it (or at least, doesn't hate it).
We simply value privacy more than the general people, who in many cases don't even understand the concept. We don't like being tracked, data mined, followed, spied upon, logged.
We also don't like releasing control of our data over to others, to do as they please. We know the perils of that.
Most people are ignorant about it, just like I'm ignorant about many other stuff less related with my interests.
But don't get me wrong: I don't "hate" Zuckerberg. But you won't find me on Facebook, and it's not because it's not useful.

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Re:Zuckerberg is so full of shit. by icebraining · 2010-10-19 02:25 · Score: 4, Funny

I'll allow you and all the rest
Oh thank you good sir, how can we ever repay your generosity?

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Re:Zuckerberg is so full of shit. by ObsessiveMathsFreak · 2010-10-19 02:44 · Score: 4, Insightful

At least Zuckerberg knows whether what he is saying is the truth or not. All the people here who post definitively that he was only in it to make money are just giving their gut feeling and they cannot possibly be basing it on fact.

The facts we know are that Zuckerberg has made his fortune on selling Facebook users up the marketing river. That speaks to his character, and many people will conclude from his actions--not without some justification--that he lacks credibility in matters of truth.
I realise it may come as a shock to some, but just because you've done nothing legally wrong doesn't mean people will be inclined to think you're very trustworthy. PR will only take you so (very) far before people start connecting the dots.

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Re:Zuckerberg is so full of shit. by owlnation · 2010-10-19 04:25 · Score: 2, Interesting

"So why does /. hate Zuckerberg so much? I think it is largely a generational divide. Many of you come from the gold old days of tech (command lines, walking five miles in the snow to get your code to compile, etc) and don't really understand that just because something wasn't challenging in a technical sense it is still HUGELY useful to millions of people"
I'd guess the reasons why people hate Zuckerberg here so much, are indeed due to an age difference, and experience. The current generation who grew up with Facebook, such as yourself, have a very different set of values and ethics from any previous generation.

Geeks, generally, tend to be quite ethically-minded. Most sci-fi, for example, has core ethical values. Zuckerberg barely qualifies as a geek -- his technical achievements are insignificant. He simply created a fashionable me-too product -- useful, but which none of us really NEED. It's not life-changing, and it will not last a lifetime -- give it another 5 years max. However his marketing abilities, or those of whom he's worked with, are exceptional. He's sold us something we do not need, and privacy-raped everyone not smart enough to check the privacy settings on the site at least once a week.

His ethics are most certainly questionable. I'm not naive enough to believe for a second that this was some hobby of his, and he just liked building things. Capturing the University demographic was a cold-calculated move -- students are a very richly-prized target market. There was still enough dot.com stupidity around for him to figure out that Facebook would either make money itself, or that some bigger firm would eventually buy it out for its database alone.

The current generation is not as obsessed with privacy as any previously. This may be due to naivete, desensitization, or an increased narcissism, arrogance and self-obsession that typifies the current generation. It's therefore not a surprise that they are not as concerned about the dark side of Facebook as any previous generation. Most older geeks are paranoid enough to know that privacy matters. Zuckerberg has therefore committed the cardinal sin.

Zuckerberg is a Barnum of the Internet world -- much like Cuban and Wales and others before him. He's become very rich through smoke and mirrors, and the worst crime of all -- marketing.

Indeed it's actually very hard to see why Facebook is discussed here at all. It's not really news for nerds -- it's news for ad execs, spin doctors and marketing droids. The fact that it's a coded site on the web doesn't make it any more relevant to nerds than TMZ, mlb.com, or cosmopolitan's website.
Re:Zuckerberg is so full of shit. by BJ_Covert_Action · 2010-10-19 04:26 · Score: 2, Insightful

Maybe he didn't want to bother with implementing interoperability because he had other aspects of the website he wanted to focus on. I know that if I had a pet project going, and some outsider insisted that I should do X, Y, and Z because it is right and just makes sense, I might respectfully tell them to piss off because I would rather work on U, V, and W. It is my project after all, right?

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Re:Zuckerberg is so full of shit. by Dishevel · 2010-10-19 07:48 · Score: 2, Insightful

Well done. Calm, insightful, thought out and simply put.
You have no business here on /. Get out

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No shock there. by jimicus · 2010-10-19 00:54 · Score: 2, Interesting

[the movie-makers] “can’t wrap their head around the idea that someone might build something because they like building things.”

No kidding. We've seen evidence of that from lots of big corporations - particularly in the entertainment business - for ten years or more.

It wouldn't surprise me if someone replies to this post with some sort of evidence of that mindset being so heavily entrenched that goes back much further - decades or even centuries.

poor guy by colmore · 2010-10-19 00:55 · Score: 2, Funny

I really feel for these poor misunderstood billionaires.

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Re:poor guy by binkzz · 2010-10-19 00:58 · Score: 2, Funny

I really feel for these poor misunderstood billionaires.
We should set up some form of charity fund for them.

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'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7

I still can't understand how this all came to pass by spiffmastercow · 2010-10-19 01:02 · Score: 5, Insightful

Facebook was nothing new or revolutionary. There was Friendster way before it came along, Granted, FB was a lot better than MySpace (it's biggest competitor at the time), but that was more due to a failing on the part of MySpace than on the merits of FB. Social networking sites are not really complicated.. Why so much worship, hatred, and jealousy over this?

Re:No matter what he says... by Jimmy+King · 2010-10-19 01:03 · Score: 3, Interesting

I'm sure he's in it strictly for the money now, but it is possible that initially he built it just because it would be fun. I've started a number of projects just to see if I could do it, what kind of difficulties come up that I haven't thought of, etc. and then later realized that it was actually kind of useful and I could probably make money off of it with some marketing and time spent maintaining it. The difference being he wanted the money bad enough to follow through on that thought while I have decided it was going to be way too much work with a high risk of failure in the end to be worth quitting my stable day job to try.

Impressing girls by O'Nazareth · 2010-10-19 01:06 · Score: 2, Funny

a fictional Mark Zuckerberg builds the site in order to impress a girl

This is a silly idea anyway to think that writing some PHP code will get you laid.

Re:Impressing girls by Smallpond · 2010-10-19 01:14 · Score: 3, Funny

Yes, everyone knows you need python for that.
Re:Impressing girls by Carewolf · 2010-10-19 05:28 · Score: 2, Insightful

This is a silly idea anyway to think that writing some PHP code will get you laid.
I think Zuckerberg managed to do exactly that... though that doesn't mean it is good idea.

Re:I still can't understand how this all came to p by oodaloop · 2010-10-19 01:07 · Score: 2, Interesting

Yeah, Mark knows about friendster. Check out his profile.

http://profiles.friendster.com/950378

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Is noone here aware of the actual history of Fb? by gblackwo · 2010-10-19 01:13 · Score: 5, Insightful

All the comments say that he was in it for the money from the start. Facebook didn't have a real financial model for years. Facebook, which started at a single university, and spread to a few more, eventually opening up to anyone with a .edu address was a different Facebook than the one we know today. Maybe the percentage of slashdotters that were in college when Facebook was strictly for .edu user is so small you are unaware. Trust me, alotta people were pissed when Fb opened up to everyone and started commercializing- it has been downhill ever since- But to say that it has been a privacy violating money maker since the get go is complete bullshit.

Re:I still can't understand how this all came to p by Timmmm · 2010-10-19 01:14 · Score: 5, Insightful

It's extremely simple. Before Facebook, it was still considered weird to use your real name on a website. Most names on MySpace were like "johnnys123" rather than "John Smith". Obviously using real names is much more desirable, and one of the main reasons Facebook became popular. And the reason people were willing to use real names on Facebook was because you needed a .ac.uk or .edu email address to get an account, and only people from your uni could see your profile.

In a nutshell:

1. It was much more secure than the alternatives.
2. So people felt ok using real names and details, and allowing other people to see their profiles (because only people from the same uni could).
3. The use of real details made it much more friendly and useful.

There were other reasons too:

1. It didn't look like shit like MySpace.
2. Due to the .ac.uk/.edu requirement it wasn't filled with idiots.
3. Luck.

That doesn't really jive... by damn_registrars · 2010-10-19 01:24 · Score: 2, Insightful

cant wrap their head around the idea that someone might build something because they like building things.

If someone just wanted to build something, why wouldn't they build something useful, instead of just profitable?

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Re:That doesn't really jive... by Combatso · 2010-10-19 01:57 · Score: 2, Funny

If someone just wanted to build something, why wouldn't they build something useful, instead of just profitable?
Whats the difference? Seems to me he built a money-making machine... seems pretty useful to me,,,
Re:That doesn't really jive... by Abcd1234 · 2010-10-19 02:29 · Score: 2, Insightful

If someone just wanted to build something, why wouldn't they build something useful, instead of just profitable?
Yeah, you're right! Obviously those millions and millions of people on Facebook are just, I dunno... dups or something. I mean, it can't *possibly* be useful, 'cuz a Slashbot said so.
Of course, now that I think about it, the answer is quite simple: subliminal brainwashing and an alien conspiracy.

Re:Lapdogs by netsharc · 2010-10-19 01:32 · Score: 4, Interesting

A few years ago people were batshit insane about Second Life... and now it's disappeared from the headlines. Hopefully this will be the Year of Facebook, i.e. next year it'll be yet another niche company.

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Re:Lapdogs by Dunbal · 2010-10-19 01:38 · Score: 3, Insightful

We never had "Second Life: The Movie"... I think only nerds and pedophiles actually played second life, whereas facebook is full of middle-aged divorcees suffering from empty nest syndrome.

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Next he'll be saying computers don't go beboop by DrXym · 2010-10-19 01:48 · Score: 5, Funny

Hollywood strives for accuracy. The Social Network shows Zuckerberg as a precocious 9 year old. He sweeps his hands across the glass wall showing a flyover of facebook in 3D. When an adult asks if he knows what he was doing, he replies "Don't worry this site's password is only protected by fourth polynomial encryption, I'll break it in a few seconds!". With blur-like typing he sets off and the wall fills with a sea of random digits that appear to be crawling along a rotating DNA helix. All of a sudden the screen goes blank and is replaced by a big flashing ALARM sign and a wailing siren. "They must have traced my virus back to the mainframe" he says. "Run!". Then all the magnetic locks on the dinosaur enclosures are tripped and the rest of the movie seems them trying to escape the velociraptors. And that's exactly how it actually happened.

Re:Next he'll be saying computers don't go beboop by TerranFury · 2010-10-19 04:22 · Score: 2, Funny

Is that you, William Gibson?

Re:Is noone here aware of the actual history of Fb by liquiddark · 2010-10-19 01:52 · Score: 2, Interesting

This is a fallacy. Lots of internet sites don't have a financial model at the outset; that was practically the defining trait for dot-coms during the bubble. That does not mean the people building and running those sites do not have a financial incentive in mind, it simply means they're following a get big fast, Amazon-style growth model.

Re:Lapdogs by Combatso · 2010-10-19 01:55 · Score: 2, Funny

Turn on CNN - Facebook stories. Read slashdot - Facebook stories. Go to the movies - Facebook the fucking movie.

What a fucking coincidence...... Zuckerberg is a GOD! Put him on an altar!

Seems you are obsessed with Facebook... You watch it on TV, read about it on forums and go see movies about it? Wow man, you must be hella-good friend-stock

Re:Is noone here aware of the actual history of Fb by xtracto · 2010-10-19 02:10 · Score: 2, Informative

Jeez, that is actually what they show in The S.N. movie! Even, the way they paint it, Zuckerberg stopped his friends ambitions of putting advertising for a long time!

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who cares why? he's still a douche by bouldin · 2010-10-19 02:35 · Score: 2, Insightful

Who cares why he does anything? He's not a remarkable person. Why do you think the book was called Accidental Billionaires?

More notable is his lack of character. He got where he did by screwing over friends, breaking contracts, and treating FB users with contempt.

Despite some other posts here, not all geeks are like that. The Google guys actually invented something incredible, revolutionized the world, created whole industries, and seem to still have a bright future ahead. Fyodor of NMap created a tool that deserves more geek cool cred than FB + Google combined, yet he manages to remain modest, describing himself as a benevolent steward of his project, even as he makes money from the project and contributes back to the open source / security communities. I can respect those guys.

I fail to see any kind of genius in FB or zuckerberg. PHP ain't rocket science.

Re:I still can't understand how this all came to p by Hatta · 2010-10-19 02:49 · Score: 2, Insightful

It's still weird to use real names on websites.

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Re:Is noone here aware of the actual history of Fb by Monkeedude1212 · 2010-10-19 02:50 · Score: 2, Insightful

This is a fallacy.

What part? All he is trying to convey is that the claims of Zuckerberg being in it for the money from the start are not true. If that's the case for every website out there, it still makes the parents claim true.

And I think you are a little confused about it. Facebook wasn't designed with a "Let's be free to grow as fast as possible" scheme in mind. It didn't have financial incentive UNTIL it got big, but Amazon had financial incentive all along, but didn't invoke any of its plans until it got big. There is a difference.

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