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The Expensive Education of Mark Zuckerberg and Silicon Valley (nytimes.com)
Kara Swisher, writing for The New York Times: I kept pressing Mr. Zuckerberg on how he personally felt about the damage his creation had done. [Editor's note: Ms. Swisher is referring to her recent interview with Mark Zuckerberg.] Was he beginning to understand the power that he held, and that the world that he controlled was not such a rosy place? Facebook was "probably," he admitted, "too focused on just the positives and not focused enough on some of the negatives." Fair enough. But it was impossible to get him to acknowledge any personal pain as both the creator and the destroyer. "I mean, my emotion is feeling a deep sense of responsibility to try to fix the problem," said Mr. Zuckerberg. "In running a company, if you want to be innovative and advance things forward, I think you have to be willing to get some things wrong. But I don't think it is acceptable to get the same things wrong over and over again."
It was a classic Silicon Valley engineer's roll-up-your-sleeves answer, which leaves many cold when it comes to, say, the manipulation of democracy. Fending off bad actors like the Russians has been and will be increasingly expensive; it may even be impossible. But Facebook could have done much more than it did, and it certainly needs to do more than it's doing. Mr. Zuckerberg is now trying to fend off talk in Washington of regulating his company like the thing he once told me it was: a utility. He has also spent the last month meeting over dinners with a range of academic experts on free speech, propaganda and more to try to understand where to go from here. Call it the education of Mark Zuckerberg and Silicon Valley, but on the world's dime. How much that has -- and will -- cost is probably immeasurable.
It was a classic Silicon Valley engineer's roll-up-your-sleeves answer, which leaves many cold when it comes to, say, the manipulation of democracy. Fending off bad actors like the Russians has been and will be increasingly expensive; it may even be impossible. But Facebook could have done much more than it did, and it certainly needs to do more than it's doing. Mr. Zuckerberg is now trying to fend off talk in Washington of regulating his company like the thing he once told me it was: a utility. He has also spent the last month meeting over dinners with a range of academic experts on free speech, propaganda and more to try to understand where to go from here. Call it the education of Mark Zuckerberg and Silicon Valley, but on the world's dime. How much that has -- and will -- cost is probably immeasurable.
maybe there are some talented people there but mostly they are all retards who shove things up their ass to see if they fit
His shallow denial of culpability doesn't change his legal responsibility for control. Facebook itself must be destroyed if it can't be controlled.
All facebook is doing is letting stupid people be stupid.
This just exposes how dumb the average person is and how stupidly they make decisions on who to vote for.
Also, it was never proven that the Russians have had *any* impact on the outcome of the election.
So what damage are we talking about exactly?
What damage has facebook done?
Conspiracy nuts have always existed. Racists have always existed. Election propaganda has always existed.
Remember when the president of Mexico told americans not to vote for Trump?
Why isn't he arrested for election hacking?
It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye.
Or a Billion Dollars.
Or gets called out for doing something they believe and would rather no one knew.
Or gets called out for doing something they would never ever accept if it were done to them.
Mark, welcome to the real real world, where you can indeed lose everything, and have no one else to blame but yourself. You are not too big to fail.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
The world would not know the deep state exists, and needs to be extinguished with all due haste. The George Clooneys and the Hillary Clinton child sex rings, and demonic worship, needed to be exposed. We are safer. Stronger. Trump is the light. Worship his light.
Is anyone forcing you to use Facebook? Is using Facebook required to accomplish any task or job? Are there not alternatives to Facebook?
No?
Then WHO CARES.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
It's more that they keep fucking up and that everyone else has to foot the bill for their blunders.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yes facebook basically took a blind eye to this but it is not necessarily their fault. It is the Marketing/Online Ad industry's greed that lead to this problem. They allow anyone with a "cash" to display ads. It doesn't matter if it is for legit reasons like porn ads, gun ads, selling a home ads, etc. It is all the same. Fake news, or some would could say satire news is basically the same because people paid for those to be displayed. The big target is facebook because they didn't try to stop damaging fake news or propaganda. However they are not the only ones, the whole online market space would have the same problem. It's just that facebook is a bigger target and they should have had more filters in place to slow down this stuff but they didn't because they saw dollar signs.
But he is not a Leftard.
So, he's not that bad.
talk about #s, est. 100 million natives were murdered while being discovered by us.. population maintained around 1 million ever since.. we go on like it never happened, while being required to mourn other less horrid stories of our history of hysteria.. we're all natives now.. cease fire stand down.. like bruce says; if it's not fair for everyone, it's not fair for anyone.. truth+mercy=justice.. (leaves the violent punishment 'feature' out) turd flinging is as violent as we should ever get.. phewww
Ultimately that's the problem.
Facebook is a data harvesting engine designed for maximum privacy violation.
It is designed to make money off the flow of information regardless of whether it is "true" or not.
There is far too much information to censor it reliably, and censorship carries it's own set of problems.
About the best they can do is go after fake accounts who's whole purpose is to relay false infomation. But that will be an arms race and FB will be behind most of the time.
Ultimately, they will make decisions based on the money they are making and will do whatever is legal. He's only worried about reputation as it directly affects the bottom line, which can be a little difficult to gauge.
Absolute statements are never true
Sounds like a people problem if Russia's campaign is credited for so easily enhancing the divisive environment created by our bipartisan political system. Most important part of education is learning how to educate yourself. Obviously a majority did not do that; now they are all credited as victims regardless. MERRICA!
Don't you love it when everything's back to normal? Us old folks who remember the good ol' days of the 70s and 80s were kinda miffed at those newfangled enemies. The only boogeyman that could hold a candle to the Russians were the terrorists, and they were kinda bland. Faceless, nameless, not something you could point at. The Russians were different. You knew where they were, you didn't have to wage war with them and lose young guys, but the cold war kept the military industrial complex well funded. Perfect war, great for the economy and nobody has to die.
Far better than that war with the terrorists where people actually get killed.
Plus, the Russians never sent anyone to our country, neither to blow shit up nor as refugees. They even made sure that everyone stayed where they belonged.
Yes, I long for our old, beloved enemies. It's good to see that they're coming back in style.
Could we phase out those other ones, those terrorists? I mean, we don't really need them now anymore, now that the Russians want to play again, and they get kinda pesky. Plus, they're SO completely nuts that our government doesn't have to pretend to be the good guys with them. That's something the Russians always managed to do really well for us.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Most people who lead large organizations of any type don't spend a lot of time hand wringing about problems and emotions. If they did, they would never get anything done.
This is one of the reasons I never wanted to climb the management ladder. I hate disciplining and firing employees. I realize it is necessary for companies to function, but I really don't like doing it.
A CEO who can layoff a whole division or a general who can have a 1000 men charge a hill knowing many will die is not going to break down in tears base on some Barbara Walters level questions.
A side effect of this is that many people who accomplish 'great things' are jerks: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Thomas Edison, George Patton, etc.
Your scientist were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.
....and...
I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here, it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it, you wanna sell it.
...applies to social media just as much as it does cloning dinosaurs. Silicon Valley is all about "can we do it" and "can we sell it", nothing else.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
He could just drop a few well positioned target ads and presto-chango, we'd all stop questioning him.
I dunno... billions of people keep logging into that obvious trap. Some people even think it's a utility. They think it's like, somehow necessary. If the thing wasn't effective at brainwashing, then why would so many people believe such a ridiculous thing?
... hilarious
But it was impossible to get him to acknowledge any personal pain as both the creator and the destroyer.
I'm no Zuckerberg fan, but sheesh.
He's actually on your side politically, and he's saying that he wants to address your concerns, but you are in a tizzy because he won't say the "right" things about how he feels and he won't emote the way you want him to??
All facebook is doing is letting stupid people be stupid.
This just exposes how dumb the average person is and how stupidly they make decisions on who to vote for.
I can't find the cite, but this minister said - when asked why he still supports Trump even though everything he does is a slap in the face of Christian values - "Clinton wouldn't allow someone like me to exist. Trump protects people like me."
1. Where does this guy thinks he lives where a President can do anything like that?
2. Where did he get that idea? Clinton never -EVER - said anything that was anti-religious. Ever.
I think that moron got that impression from the bullshit propaganda on facebook. Something with Clinton's name on it that played into the many conservatives' delusion that they are being persecuted for their beliefs - especially Christians. And they completely ignore the fact that Clinton is a regular church goer herself.
Stupidity indeed.
...including this one. The NY Times never complained when FB "manipulated" the election of Barak Obama in 2012 by letting the DNC volunteers send their friend graph to a vote analysis service which then recommended get-out-the-Democrat-vote messages back. Back then FB was hailed to high heaven as this digital force of nature and Republicans were clueless against the onslaught of the hip, digital natives.
And look where we are now. The hypocrisy just abounds.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
The single most important issue with Spybook (and the rest of the spying industry) is the destruction of privacy. Somehow, they've managed to relegate that to a minor detail among all the talk of security, elections, and other bullshit.
America was built on constructive and liberating agendas, not destructive or controlling agendas.
#WalkAway
In short - we'd make up an enemy if required to keep the status quo in power.
I think HL Mencken had something to say about it:
"Civilization, in fact, grows more and more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary."
Yep, that describes our (and most other) governments. Russia's done the same using us as the boogyman, North Korea...maybe it's why we don't like looking in the mirror much. It's the oldest trick in the book - hey, look, a bear is even more attention-getting than hey, look, a squirrel.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
That's what my grandkids will ask. Their user base will just get older. Their platform isn't compelling or even interesting to the younger generations.
Hitler did really great things too. Awful things, but great things.
Yeah Trump sure is going down! Oh wait, I have been hearing that daily since the day he announced running, so I wonâ(TM)t hold my breath. This article is absurd, Facebook did not threaten democracy. Facebook is for fucking idiots to share Kim Kardashian news and selfies, a few thousand dollars in dumb Russian troll posts did not change any votes. If Hillary and her billion dollar campaign could not beat 100k in laughable Russian ads, she deserved to lose.
So it's not possible to add a little spice to the crazy soup and then stir it up a bit without having placed all the ingredients in the pot yourself?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
So, someone won an election that liberals do not like. They can't understand how anyone would have been so stupid and unenlightened to vote for him. The obvious solution to the Left is to squelch free speech so that ideas they don't agree with cannot be heard. Liberals need to make sure only the truth as they think it is discussed. They need to protect you from yourself and your friends that think incorrectly.
Deceit and propaganda have always been part of geopolitics. Trying to subvert your adversaries has always been part of the game between nations. The US has quite the history of such campaigns in other countries. A free society will always be more vulnerable than those that are not free. But the alternative is to not be free. I'd rather open ourselves up more than to restrict the populace and have government (run by a political party) be in charge of deciding what can and cannot be said. The best defense is an educated populace (and not one that's indoctrinated with political bias) as well as a robust and honest press. The more we balkanize ourselves politically, the more susceptible we become as wild claims are met with less suspicion. The anti-Trump crowd are fanning the flames and making us more at risk. They're making it easier for foreign actors to make wild claims and divide us. They're making it easier for a nation that wants us to distrust our government and weaken us internally to create mayhem. The rabid anti-Trump crowd is doing more for Putin and the like than they could have ever dreamed of.
Oh cut the crap Trump has absolutely nothing in common with Hitler and you know it
While I was reading this I was wondering, "What pain has Mark Zuckerberg caused anyone? Was it the 30+ year olds he had a policy AGAINST hiring? Was it the blatant political censorship his platform was running?"
... the reporter is claiming most people in this country felt personally harmed because he caused Donald Trump to get elected".
"Oh
Probably he wanted it manipulated to his preferences instead of against it.
Given that FB's stock dropped so, so long after the election and that Trump is polling higher than Obama was at this point, I don't think ordinary Americans feel harmed because Zuckerberg had influenced the election in a way that left them "cold" or desperate or barren or whatever.
But, you know, maybe that is false. Maybe the DNC should push Hillary on their constituents against their will again. Since it was all just a Facebook fluke and people now realize how awful terrible this economic growth is that far exceeds anywhere the last administration got, it shouldn't happen again, right?
I don't think that will satisfy the reporter because his guys don't control Facebook as much as they do inside the government with partisans like Mueller running multi year witch huntsn without turning up evidence of anything (unless you count allegations as evidence).
Which is nonsense because Russia is very weak compared to the US, both economically and militarily. Still it's good for Russia that the left pushes the story how Russians have the power to influence the US elections. Just as it was for Cambridge Analytica founders and employees.
So Zuck doesn't say what you want him to say. And what exactly do you want him to say? Do you want Zuck to suddenly fall to his knees and cry profusely, confess his wrong doing, and to repent? Maybe even slit a wrist or two to demonstrate contrition? Jeezus H. Christ, what the f**k do you want him to say??? He's the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company, not some four year old who faces a spanking if he doesn't admit wrongdoing, so expect him to behave accordingly. Grow the f**k up Swisher.
Oh look, it's the NYT crying about the Russians again!
F A K E
N E W S
I lost all interest in this when I saw the words "kara swisher".
nothing in /. summary clues me in on what the hell is being talked about inr elation to its title
Why is no one in a tizzy about all of the many carefully planned protests for illegal immigration? That's 12 million unregistered foreign agents currently in country, actively demonstrating for governmental action. Mueller would call it a conspiracy and start issuing subpoenas, if they were Russians and helped the current narrative that Hillary should have won.
Go back a little further and notice no one complained when the Soviets were sending millions to fund the anti-Vietnam war effort. The Soviets sent more money to the US left during the Vietnam war then they did to the Viet-Cong. Not a whataboutism, just trying to educate.
The press has more to blame for 2016 by giving Donald so much screen time and then declaring Hillary the victor when the votes hadn't even been cast. Their certainty in a landslide probably did more to suppress the vote than anything else.
Too much hypocrisy in all of this. Too much irony as well, but it is bitter. Hillary lost twice by not understanding the process. She lost to Barrack in her first Presidential nomination run by not realizing how delegates get counted, which she fixed in the stupidest possible way in her second run. Then she lost to Donald because she couldn't grasp how the electoral college works.
Totally from a different perspective.
A social network could be viewed as a big pipe carrying information. Most of time, it does not "create" content. Then, does "Net Neutrality" imply a "Social Net Neutrality"?
^(oo)^pig~
..."in running a company, if you want to be innovative and advance things forward, I think you have to be willing to get some things wrong. But I don't think it is acceptable to get the same things wrong over and over again." sounds good until it becomes "Oppsss. Accidentally created AI that wiped out humanity. At least we can't make that mistake again." -or- If at first you don't succeed, so much for skydiving!
Ridicule has its uses.
He's more popular and approval numbers are higher than Obama.
Well, leave it up to the nitwits to excuse anything ass ociated with Trump.
It doesn't have to be "changing votes." It can be deterring voters from actually going. But don't let any truth get in the way of the (Russian-supported) narrative of 'corrupt bitch'. We should treat Russian ads on Facebook just like the rain: something that depresses Democratic turnout but we're willing to accept because we have no control over it.
Wait, or we could take control over it...
You don't have to radically change squat to affect an election system like ours. A few hundred votes (or 5 if you like Supreme Court jokes) determined the outcome in 2000. Are you saying the Russians wouldn't even have tried to influence anything because it was unlikely they'd succeed? You're aware that millions of people buy lottery tickets, right?
The reason that Facebook has a problem isn't that it allowed the Rooskies to bamboozle us. The reason that Facebook has a problem is that it's a pro-social advertising and data-mining platform.
There are some marginal improvements with the different reacts, but Facebook encourages spreading things people like over stopping things people don't like. That, along with the bubble effect, make it a series of big circlejerks instead of a conversation, where things like 'nuance' can reside. As it turns out, circlejerks tend to be less productive and more sensationalist. Color me surprised.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
In fact he is not even anything, academically speaking, because he chose to drop his studies in psychology (!) in favor of building Facebook. Well, in other times sociopaths would start wars, this time they get to control the world from behind a computer screen. That's (!) the really scary part.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg
Looks like Facebook needs to learn a little bit from China, who has done a bang up job of filtering offensive content in their country. I hear North Korea has a pretty good handle on locking down "problematic" content from the hoi polloi.
Those decrying the free speech rights of russian trolls might want to think about babies and bathwater for a while.
despite that said premise is not yet supported by hard evidence.
It is supported by hard evidence, but it points to Hillary and the DNC being behind it all.
The "Russians" needed fending off for decades. The stoked America's racial strife, and sponsored the "peace" movement. Yes, the butchers of Budapest and Prague, the destroyers of Afghanistan were arguing for "peace" and the American Left where lapping it all up! Quite possibly, these efforts cost us victory in Vietnam — the war was no less justified than the earlier Korean one, but met much higher internal opposition...
Only back then the same NYTimes — and all the rest of the Left-thinking Americans — mocked any attempts at the fending off as "Red scare" and denounced it as "evil McCarthyism". And now the same people are trying to convince us, the President is illegitimate, because his son once met with a Russian lawyer.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I can't blame people for thinking it is - media blaring it, influential social media sites frequented by people paid to promote the narrative ;)
I'm sure that if you're even remotely interested in history of IT - and kept an eye on how things have evolved over the last couple of decades - you know that we've been given nothing that can't be faked in the way of evidence and this Russia interfered (come on now.. read the DNC emails..) narrative is not believable.
They certainly gave people places where they could speak freely, leading to a more informed public. Infuenced the election... i guess being informed could be called that :D
Insightful? Yes. Informative? Yes. But not funny. I stopped laughing at this clusterfuck long ago.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Foreigners trying to influence people in other countries or trying to steal from them, via the Internet??? OMGZ!
Oh wait, I'm not new to the internet. This stuff has been happening since the beginning. We, as a society, have disregarded this spam and trolling for decades now.
No damage was done. There is no evidence for it. Most people probably just dismissed what they didn't agree with as usual. They probably threw an "idiot" in there while they were at it for fun.
Anybody who thinks Russia should be banned or otherwise prevented from "manipulating" our elections while also supporting the US government is a hypocrite. Our government has and continues to manipulate democratic governments all over the world and has been doing it for hundred+ years already. Have you ever looked at how many overseas military bases the US has (and those aren't exactly just deceptive but using threat of actual violence)? You would have to be retarded to think that our elections have been and aren't being manipulated by everybody all the time. Every political message you post online is manipulation. That is how democracy works. If we didn't/don't have freedom of speech (and I'd argue we don't really) then our democracy is a farce.
If he had any "feelings" before getting caught paying his employees to spread disinformation to deliberately throw the election to Trump, then he should have just done nothing instead. Zuckerberg, Its too late for feeling sorry. It would be bad enough for him to let other people spread lies and disinformation, but actually paying your own employees to do it for you is just inexcusable.
TreasonBook(tm) anyone?
https://www.youtube.com/result...
I'm sure Obama is super high now that he can enjoy cannibis in the places where it's been legalized.
It's almost like Zuck simply cannot bring himself to say, or believe, that Facebook did something wrong, or might even be a complete waste of time.
It's almost as if, say, the President, was brought proof that Russians helped, let us say, get him elected. And that President might find a way to NOT believe that evidence, no matter how strong, who presented it, what that evidence actually was, or what the later consequences for disbelieving were.
It's a good thing we don't have to worry about that here. Whew! Dodged another bullet...
It's unrealistic to expect empathy from the sort of people ho helm Internet companies. But it's realistic to expect them to change their ways when their ways cost them money.
He's not stupid, just evil. And evil can be reasoned with. All we had to do was hurt him enough.
would have been a ho-hum nothing burger if the American news media (who self-identify as less than 8% Republican and have reported over 90% negative on Trump) had been honest journalists honestly doing their jobs.
IF Russia hacked Podesta's email (by discovering that his password was "p@assword"), then the crime's primary effect was to expose the rampant dishonesty of the Hillary campaign and the DNC rigging their primary. None of the facts that were exposed to the American people were debunked as false. If the American press had been accurately reporting on the Hillary team, not one damned thing in those emails would have been a surprise to Americans and the leaking of them would have had no kick to it.
As it is, there's no evidence a single vote was changed by "Russian hacking".
Personally, I'm offended that the government of Mexico has urged millions of its citizens to move into America illegally and to vote in our elections, with each one of those who manage to cast a vote having the effect of nullifying the vote of an American citizen. This is, be definition, a foreign government meddling in our elections. I think we need a special prosecutor to investigate Democrats colluding with Mexico.
was because of various friends and groups that did everything through Facebook because it never occurred to them not to. They just couldn't grasp why I was so reluctant. They didn't see the problem.
In order to free myself from Facebook, I had to blow them all off. Let the hostages fend for themselves.
You can't just blow off a cultural institution. You have to count the cost and chew off a limb of your social life.
Society is other people. And most other people are morons.
Go fuck yourself, Jew York Times
We have had CIA operation mocking bird since 1965 which has manipulated the media to influence elections.. and someone assassinated JFK and yet people are scared of some FACEBOOK POSTS like its the end of the world.
I'm now waiting to see those meme's 'One does not simply post on facebook and influence an election'
Also Noam Chompsky has recently given his take, pointing out that Israel has more influence over the elections than Russia ever has. When will people realise elections do not occur in a vacuum.
Cite.
A German comedian put it best: If you know who the enemy is, your day has structure.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Call it the education of Mark Zuckerberg and Silicon Valley, but on the world's dime.
What? Were Zuckerberg and Silicon Valley supposed to predict ahead of time what all the outcomes of doing something new? Is anyone with a new business or idea supposed to whip out a crystal ball first to make sure there's no potential downside? Should we preemptively lock up bold entrepreneurs lest they come up with something brilliant but imperfect?
What a jerk.