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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.
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
a fluke in our electoral system
It's not a fluke. It's deliberate design. The system is intentionally biased against large states. Rhode Island has two senators, for example. All the deliberate rounding errors, from the distribution of representatives to the structure of the electoral college, have this same bias. The superhuman wisdom of our founders is why NY and CA don't yet have tyrannical control over this country.
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.