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Poole To Zuckerberg: You’re Doing It Wrong
An anonymous reader writes "At South by Southwest Interactive 2011 in Austin, Texas this week, 4chan founder Christopher Poole (also known as 'moot') took the stage to talk about various online issues. One of these was how important anonymity is on the Internet and how Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg doesn't get it."
Shame he'll not be able to hear how wrong he is through his insulating walls of billions of dollars. In fact it's surprising moot isn't aware of this issue given his similarly vast wealth.
The one who spread internet attention-whoring face-to-face with the one who spread anonymity...
disgunbegud.gif
All of that is based on people as people, not as ideas.
If you want ideas to predominate, come to slashdot or, I guess, 4chan.
Remember Clasmates.com? Sounded like a great idea, but they charged money to use it. Facebook is free, and is for people who want to know their other real life friends/family. You just gotta treat Facebook with the tact of if you were running for public office... Because if you run for public office, they'll certainly look at what you said on Facebook. To me, it is a win because we won't have future politicians of America to have talked all sorts of drunken fratboy chat on Facebook in their younger years. Once this happens, people might go,"Oh, wow, I gotta monitor what comes out of my mouth instead of being a non-stop idiot"
God spoke to me.
Maybe Zuckerberg never heard of pen names when he was busy with more important things in school? His FB policy was always a bit of a puzzle to me, but not one big enough to look into until I saw this on /.
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Mark Zuckerberg is getting it. lots of it. billions actually.
He also gets anonimity. He just does not care about (other people's) anonimity.
moot on /. ? a 1st page article about 4chan ? /. introduces image attachements for each reply ? :)
How long until
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facebook 4chan userbase may naturally overflow from one to the other, but I see the two sites as representing two sides of online communication. One is all about building lingering connections managed by the site, the other is about ephemeral connections (managed by memes?).
argan0n
Zuck is after one thing, a giant vault of money to swim in and do $5000 an hour hookers on. If anyone thinks he care about anything but money and profits they are incredibly disillusioned.
Money and profit are the only motive.. Period.
He got to be worth $13.5 billion by being an asshole, so what reason would he have to stop being an asshole?
How anybody could not understand that, particularly an internet veteran like moot is rather mind boggling.
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Society is a balance between privacy and sharing. When a so-called "social" website decides that everything that goes in the website should be "public by default" that really violates the public/private social balance.
In the absence of strong information/data privacy laws, only a fool would use Facebook to put more than even the basic public details about themselves; you only need take a look at the growing legal, workplace and criminal ramifications to see the end results.
The real tough part is that rabid facebook users can get you listed on Facebook just by "tagging" your photo. So you have to join to even purge the stupid... this is anti-social.
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Most people who use it do so to commit crimes, from trolling to murder.
Two things:
1) Do you have numbers to quantify "most"?
2) Since when is trolling a crime?
Are you trying to suggest that we shouldn't have anonymity because the bad side of it outweighs the good? I'd take the assholes, criminals and general wankers all day long as long as it means that people can have the ability to let the world know what is really going on in their various industries, countries, whatever-elses. If we were to have the ability to be anonymous removed then the world would be a far, far worse place. Anonymity is like everything else - what it achieves depends on what you decide to do with it - good or bad.
Many (perhaps most) people do not want to be anonymous. This is Zuckerberg's market.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
... that Zuckerberg gets it just fine and knows his users don't care.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
You sound too far in the middle. Are you from Neutropolis, the capital of Neutral Planet by chance?
... simple economics suggest that in fact Zuckerberg is "doing it" exactly right IF his goal is to enrich himself.
Guess what Zuckerberg's goal is?
Are we a wee bit jealous of Zuckerberg's success?
Given the ridiculous amount of success Facebook has seen over the past 5 years, I'd say you're talking out of your ass.
I love all these idiotic comments that Facebook MUST be right because they are successful. Would you stand up for an evil dictator with the same brevity? Well, he's in charge and all who opposed him are in anonymous graves SO HE MUST BE RIGHT!!1!1
These are good points. That facebook snookered everyone about privacy and is headed by a cocksure asshole who doesn't care about HIS privacy (possibly BECAUSE he is privileged) doesn't make it right just because all the lies about privacy, all the broken promises, still haven't acted to sink facebook in any way.
But he's rich herpderp doesn't stop you from critiquing, say, George Bush, does it? Or is it just that the Bushes aren't rich *enough*?
I wouldn't say 4chan is worthless, but that 99% of what it produces is worthless by almost any definition. However, the remaining 1% is probably more valuable than 99% of what other communities put out. The main problem is that 4chan as a whole unfairly gets lumped in with /b/, which is similar to judging an entire ethnicity based on the actions of its most maladjusted members.
One of my very first bosses said to me, back when I was still a teenager, that if you have something to say, you should be able to stand behind it. Even if all you're doing is dropping a note into the cash register saying "we keep running out of nickels," you should have enough character to sign it and date it. If you feel like you can't do that, maybe you shouldn't bother saying what it is you were planning to say. I still mostly agree with him about that.
Sure, I understand there are many cases where it would be preferable, or even essential, to remain anonymous: when you're acting as a whistleblower, for example, or working against an oppressive government. But for most exchanges that we have on a day-to-day basis -- the kind of thing Facebook is good for -- I think anonymity just spoils it.
Compare MySpace to Facebook, for example. On the former, you're inundated with friend requests from "DarkLordSeth79" and "PowrGrrl," where their photographs are screen grabs from anime or movies. I haven't used MySpace in a long time, but ultimately I found the only meaningful exchanges I had on there were with the dozen or so close friends whom I knew well already. Anybody whom I didn't know came off as a troll cloaked in MMORP wish-fulfillment. (See also the people who post on YouTube videos.)
So I guess in summary, 4chan has its place, and maybe that should remain the place for it. Facebook is a place for something else, and I for one am thankful.
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They are different at ends of the spectrum, but too much of either is bad. 4chan is worthless, plain and simple (that includes so-called Anonymous). Facebook is a not worthless, but abuses what they have/know.
Much like politics, you never want someone too far right or too far left.
Yep yep.
Republican: Society needs less sharing in order to create incentives!
Democrat: Society needs more sharing in order to create a middle class!
Me: Shut up, you're both right.
Likewise, we need anonymity in some contexts, and identity in others.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
If he thinks people should be anonymous on the Internet, why does law enforcement get any of 4chan's logs when something illegal is posted? Putting aside arguments over whether a post was, was not, should be, or should not be illegal, the information was handed over and IMHO that's not anonymity.
Not trying to troll; it just seems a bit off.
Most people who use it do so to commit crimes, from trolling to murder.
Am I using the anonymity afforded by an opaque slashdot account to commit crimes? Are you really saying I'm some sort of weird exceptional case? Really?
And he doesn't give a flying fuck. His business is making sure people are not anonymous, tracked, and well documented.
moot may have a valid point, but his goals are entirely different than Zuckerberg's.
Facebook is all about selling the data for people who are easily manipulated, Zuckerberg knows EXACTLY what he's doing, and he doesn't care that its 'A Bad Thing'. He's probably rather proud of it actually. You gotta admit, Facebook throws in its users face on a monthly basis that they are idiots and they keep on loving it.
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For those of us with a sense of privacy, and who are a bit schooled in history, we realize just how silly and dangerous such a position is. So please, blair1q, before you go spewing more opinionated bile around Slashdot, could you back up some of your claims that:
Most people who use it do so to commit crimes, from trolling to murder.
Mind you, I count such practices as keeping sexual orientation, religious beliefs, political stances, and thoughts regarding your opinion of coworkers and/or bosses secret a form of anonymity, in the sense that you are keeping your personal details regarding those matters anonymous in the eyes of the public.
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I don't think 4chan is worthless.
Vulgar, irreverent, mob mentality... Can you honestly say facebook is none of those things? Wouldn't you say that it is all of those things, if you were honest? Is the veneer of "manners" and censorship really so important for its own sake?
Maybe your mom would feel more comfortable in the lie (see what I did there?), but 4chan's /b/ is just as valid a form of human interaction and expression as facebook -- it merely operates by different rules, with different norms, and a different history. To deny that 4chan is important as a feature of the human condition is to deny that anyone has a mental life: the life that we don't blurt out in public for fear of social repercussions. Nevertheless, this aspect of humans does still exist, and you won't make it disappear just because you get rid of 4chan and other anonymous modes of communication. Repression makes things worse, never better.
You do need both -- and you can't assert that 4chan is "worthless" and be self-consistent. Facebook, in all its corporate data-farm glory, is no more legitimately "good" no matter how much less child porn, no matter how much less gore, no matter how popular it is, and no matter how wealthy its owners.
You're a a soft-skulled, sophomoric, self-righteous hypocrite. It doesn't say anything good about /. that you were modded up (why expect an enlightened, objective moderation response from the anonymous internet, though).
Still. Parent remains profoundly inane.
That when building a tool for the masses you go by their preferences, not your own valid-but-uncommon ones. And the plain fact of the matter is that most people do not mind the Facebook privacy model as evidenced by their enthusiastic uptake of the system and their lackadaisical attitude towards all these "ZOMG Facebook is the devil" news stories.
I get it, the /. and 4chan crowds have a different set of preferences than the average consumer. This has been beaten to death so many times that there's scarcely anything more to add there except to remind you guys that not everyone must have the same preferences as you. In fact, many prefer the convenience of Facebook over the loss of privacy. We keep hearing the refrain of "if they knew the truth they'd change their minds" and yet they continue to not change their minds not matter how much bleating goes on, probably because they know and don't change their minds. I know this is an odd thing to the partisan/zealot, but really some people understand your position, heard the arguments and just aren't convinced. Try not to take it too personally.
Heck, I've got a Facebook page that shares all sorts of banality. And truth is I wouldn't at all be upset if everything on there was printed out and handed to every person I've ever known (I would feel sorry if they decided to actually peruse through that banality, to be honest). Is is "authentic" as Moot wants it to be? No and I bloody don't want that in the first instance. The fact that he thinks I give a fig about his preferences for the content and tone of my communications is really astounding, roughly equivalent to me thinking that he should consult me on whether he should have jam or cheese on his toast (cheese, with a tiny bit of Marmite).
TL;DR version: Not everyone is like you. This is a good thing, the world would be boring if everyone was the same. Quit projecting your own values onto others, at least in such cases where they have taken clear and unequivocal steps to demonstrate that they do not share those values.
its a moot point!
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
There's pictures online of Mr. Poole nude that apparently were found by "anonymous" members of his beloved site. For someone so concerned with anonymity, it hasn't worked out so well for him. 4chan is the asshole of the internet (and yes, every once in awhile it farts to humorous results). Say what you will about Facebook, it has lots of popular time-wasting online games and it's a great way to share (family friendly) photos with your friends and relatives. To top it off, Facebook seems to have a business model that's working, as well.
To use a car analogy*, this is like the guy who owns the local scrap yard commenting on how Toyota runs their business.
* Wikipedia has portmanteaus, /. has car analogies
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Most people who use it do so to commit crimes, from trolling to murder.
Damn, there's laws against trolling now? I always thought people were joking about the internet police thing, but I guess it's all true then.
Oh shit, what have I done. Quick guys... HELP ME DELETE THE INTERNET!
You're presuming your opaqueness.
Hello, the consumer does not care. This is pretty much like the android vs apple riots, again the consumer does not care about walled gardens and or privacy.
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Because I'm really Facebook friends of Admiral Viscount Nelson, who hasn't been alive for over two hundred years.
That's your choice, I guess. But as TFA points out, this is discouraged on Facebook, and the vast majority of my friends on there use their real names and an identifiable photograph. Most of the abstract ideas/dead people/companies/products that you can "be friends with" are actually pages, not user accounts, and the distinction between the two is pretty clear. For example, I don't believe pages can send you friend requests -- only the other way around.
Breakfast served all day!
lol. what are you gonna do, arrest me for trolling?
*opens legs*
most ACs here post AC to avoid getting their karma destroyed by stating an unpopular opinion (or trolling someone leaving themselves open to it).
maybe 1 in 50 AC posts are overtly racist or whatever. certainly seems the good is outweighing the bad here.
also, modding is anonymous.
I base my claims on the comments you have previously made in this thread, amongst others. You might have do dig a bit to find your comments there, as many of them have been modded troll, but your position regarding anonymity is there for all to see. There were a few other threads in your comment history where I found similar positions taken, that anonymity is useless to most people other than criminals, but I really can't be bothered to dig through your comment history just because you are suffering a case of amnesia.
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You could say the same thing about any means to acquire authenticity/anonymity. Can you prove that your RSA-encrypted comms are unbreakable?
I'm not sure it isn't that Zuckerberg doesn't get it. I think it's more that he is paid millions and millions of dollars to *not* get it.
The goal of the website is to connect people. Wouldn't maintaining anonymity preclude that? It seems like anonymity is actually the antithesis of Facebook, in which case I'd say Christopher Poole is the one who doesn't get it.
i don't see me going AC to post an unpopular opinion
my karma's fine. excellent, even.
and if someone decides to karma-bomb me, i can point it out to the staff and they'll look behind the magic AC curtain and fix it.
but, i don't share your observation that there's a 50:1 ratio of good:really bad; nor did i limit the bad to "overtly racist or whatever". i still like my n_good n_bad estimate.
Of course not. Which is why if I ever did find a need to be anonymous, I wouldn't be so stupid as to leave a trail of neon paint leading back to my bucket and expect everyone else to be colorblind to that hue.
The value of Anonymity of course depends on the value of what you're doing with it.
Most people who use it do so to commit crimes, from trolling to murder.
Most people vote in democratic elections anonymously. Do you think voting is a crime, or do you consider it trolling?
You're presuming your opaqueness.
Not really. I know how thin the veil is, but if I wanted more ... I could get one pretty arbitrarily impenetrable with sufficient effort.
But this is anon enough for my needs.
Would it be too much to expect that everyone to realize it is both corrupt and fallacious to claim that Zuckerberg's ideas are superior because of his vast wealth? Anyone who jumps to defend Zuckerberg purely on his wealth alone, without addressing the arguments, is defending corruption itself. Ignoring the merits of the arguments, if anyone is right, wouldn't it be the one whose ideas are not tainted by the corruption of wealth? (Unless of course the subject is how to most efficiently accumulate wealth, but that is not what Moot is trying to do.)
My hope for the end of anonymity is that people will someday realize that everyone makes mistakes. Everyone does things that we may find objectionable. Pretending not to is no way to bring people together. My hope is that one day we will learn to accept others for who they truly are.
What? Why are you laughing?
I don't understand why anybody would want anonymity on the internet, unless they were a coward or something.
since when isn't it?
Are you fucking stupid?
Oh, I get it, you are metatrolling. Well played!
What Zuckerberg gets is that LACK of anonymity is an essential part of his business model, so whether or not it is good "for the internet" is irrelevant.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I'm not going to bother reading through your, no doubt insightful, comment history, but the phrase "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" comes naturally from "Most people who use it do so to commit crimes, from trolling to murder". Your unstated premise being that murderers and trolls hide their 'crimes' with anonymity for fear of retribution.
I called you a troll in another thread. I apologize, I now believe that you actually believe the shit that you say. Whether that is an improvement or not is up for you to decide.
read the TOS.
harassing other people will get you booted.
in this shire, that makes it a crime.
the phrase "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" comes naturally from "Most people who use it do so to commit crimes, from trolling to murder".
Only if your "naturally" includes "illogically".
MODS = FAGS
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
First, a ToS is not a law, it is not even really a contract, it is only a way to outline what the user should expect. Secondly, even if it were a contract, it would be a tort, not a crime.
You sure do know quite little about the law for someone who plays the big bad internet lawyer on slashdot.
I've noticed recently that a lot of places have suddenly switched to the Facebook commenting system for their websites with that assumption that forcing people to post with their real names will cut down on trolling.
It may well do that, but it certainly comes with a cost to non-troll posts as well. I, for one, have stopped visiting Techcrunch as a result -- let alone stopped posting there. People censor themselves when they know their friends will read their comments. This is not always a good thing, this includes keeping valid and valuable opinions to themselves simply because they don't want to offend anyone. Not to mention the number of people who will simply choose to say nothing at all. What Techcrunch and anyone who switches to this new commenting system has done is throw the baby out with the bathwater, then pat themselves on the back for getting rid of that pesky bathwater. It makes me kinda sad. The Facebookification of the Internet is the death of the internet. Go down that road at your own risk.
I think we underestimate peoples stupidity. Take the recent case in Australia - invitations to a open house party go viral on facebook and tens of thousands sign up. You would think that the young girl would have got the message, but if you RTA you will see that afterwards she made a journalist her friend. WTF? http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/teens-facebook-party-cancelled-as-200k-threaten-to-show-up-20110314-1btsl.html
As much as I hate it when people who do things I think are dumb become fabulously successful, I have to say that Facebook has made its creator a billionaire and has 500 million users. How is that "not getting it"?
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
I think I have yet to read one of these 'useful and creative' opinions on 4Chan. Its drivel. Its all 'Fag this' and 'Nigger that' and 'Fap the other'. 4Chan is little more than a source for new internet memes - which are a textbook example of group-think. Not exactly independent and free-thinking, as m00t's rhetoric suggests.
The only really credible opinions I read these days are signed. Listen to some Geroge Carlin stand up comedy. There's a man who's prepared to put his lawyers where his mouth is.
Whilst I don't like Zuckerberg, and I don't agree with what he's doing, it doesn't give m00t's concept of anonymity any credibility. There is nothing wrong with anonymity. The problem occurs when a mob starts voicing a vitriolic opinion. And that 'Lord of the flies' mentality is what 4Chan promotes. It is dangerous stuff, and it is sociopathic. We tend to sit around and joke that 4Chan is just a bunch of nerdy teenage boys living in their mum's basement - but, what those teenage boys are really doing is reinforcing thought patterns and psychological behaviours that are very destructive to society. When they come out of their basements, god help the society that tries to integrate them.
Well, uh, you seeeee.... gp has apparently bought into the whole 'virtual world' thing and that includes pretend laws, etc.
Poole completely misses the point of Facebook.
People go there for lack of anonymity. You go there to make and keep contact with your friends, family and acquaintances. Pretty sure a clear identity is required for that to work. You use Facebook because everyone uses their real name, and you can thus easily track down people you may want to find.
But as TFA points out, this is discouraged on Facebook
Sure, it is. There are enforcers and mechanisms in place on FB to actively discourage fakes and made-up identities.
That mechanism, however, only serves to increase the value of said fake and made-up identities.
The only reason I have my (several) Facebook accounts is for several games I decided to spend a little time fooling around with. I sincerely feel sorry for the people I encounter while playing said games who 'choose to only play the game with people they really know.' Then they whine a lot about how few 'neighbors' they have and how it means they don't get many of the various 'share this' bullshit items that said games are all about passing around.
Jesus H. Christ. If you want to play a little game with just people you know in real life, go get a card table, dumbasses.
He'd have to care about the anonymity of others to be wrong.... He just doesn't.
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Face book is a good thing.
http://lyricsbus.net
But proportionate to the membership numbers, more people are getting laid through Craigs List than either of the two.
But if you want to get Zucked, theres just one place to head.
I have three. I highly recommend you get some. If everybody just took a few minutes to do their civic duty and seed Facebook with two or three fake 'identities' it would be taken down in short order.
There's no better way of saying 'fuck you Zuck' than to open a few new fake accounts.
Zuck has a bigger userbase, but I think moot serves his userbase better.
Channers get exactly what they want from 4chan. Sheep get *almost* what they want from facebook, except facebook keeps messing with their privacy settings, pulling the rug under their feet, taking away rights users used to have etc. --but still-- serves them mostly what they want.
Both are right, they create different things. moot participated in the inception of an global culture that has taken a life of its own and is ready to try and change the world for better or worse, Zuck helped people reconnect with old friends, connect tighter with relatives, inflate egos and generate enough grief and collateral damage to make Anonymous seem rather nice and positive in comparison.
They are different men with different goals. Zuck measure of success won't necessarily be the same. Zuck is a billionare and will be forever remembered as a brilliant and ruthless businessman that got million by creating one of the most evil[1] interfaces ever that most people use because everybody else is using it.
moot is simply the guy who popularized image boards in the west. Maybe that's enough for him.
1. Evil interfaces as described by the EFF, quoting: "[...] a good interface is meant to help users achieve their goals as easily as possible. But an "evil" interface is meant to trick users into doing things they don't want to."
But... the future refused to change.
Law is the set of rules to regulate anti-social behaviour within a community.
Breaking the law has consequences. These are, for serious breaches of the community rules (law), removal from that community (imprisonment).
Therefore, banning someone from an online community for breaking the ToS is akin to imprisoning (banishing, as was?) someone for breaking the law. You "jail" their ability to contribute to, or abuse the members of, that community.
Nobody is playing internet lawyer, they're offering analogy. Lern2grok.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No....U don't get it, my friend, you are the one still in yesteryear, I have billions and you don't, so who really gets it....
I am not surprised Zuckerberg never bothers to spit back at these people, he's too busy spending his money...
I think they both have value, but for different reasons.
Facebook allows the expression of what Jungians might call the persona, which is the face we all present to the world. Whether we know it or not, we construct our personas as a mask to protect our real selves. We show the world what we want others to believe about us. Clever people who realize this can quite convincingly construct an almost completely artificial self. Think politicians, business executives, and high-functioning sociopaths.
What I think is more interesting about 4chan and /b/ in particular is that complete anonymity allows for expression of the shadow aspect. I think it's this idea that moot expresses when he describes /b/ as "the internet's dark heart." The thing I find fascinating is that many attributes that we hide from others, that we fear and dislike about ourselves, are common to the human experience.
We conceal things about ourselves in order to form communities and we do it according to what we believe are the standards of that community. /b/ is important because it allows us to explore what we have in common without fear of punishment or ostracization.
Poole To Zuckerberg: You’re Doing It Wrong
That's what she said.
But then again, I never understood why anyone ever registered on FB. I think the answer is probably Al Pacino's favorite sin.
+1 Reference, even if the movie is a total mindfuck...
Did the AC reply above me break any laws in your jurisdiction?
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
You're reading awfully charitably into "commit crimes", in my humble opinion.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!