14 Years of Mark Zuckerberg Saying Sorry, Not Sorry (washingtonpost.com)

Do you trust Mark Zuckerberg? The Washington Post: From the moment the Facebook founder entered the public eye in 2003 for creating a Harvard student hot-or-not rating site, he's been apologizing. So we collected this abbreviated history of his public mea culpas. It reads like a record on repeat. Zuckerberg, who made "move fast and break things" his slogan, says sorry for being naive, and then promises solutions such as privacy "controls," "transparency" and better policy "enforcement." And then he promises it again the next time. You can track his sorries in orange and promises in blue in the timeline by The Washington Post. Mark Zuckerberg, in an interview with CNN Business on Tuesday: Zuckerberg resisted growing calls for changes to Facebook's C-suite, reiterated Facebook's potential as a force for good, and pushed back at some of the unrelenting critical coverage of his company after a year of negative headlines about fake news, election meddling and privacy concerns.

"A lot of the criticism around the biggest issues has been fair, but I do think that if we are going to be real, there is this bigger picture as well, which is that we have a different world view than some of the folks who are covering us," Zuckerberg told CNN Business' Laurie Segall at Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, California. "There are big issues, and I'm not trying to say that there aren't," he said. "But I do think that sometimes, you can get the flavor from some of the coverage that that's all there is, and I don't think that that's right either."

Comments

People still won't care.

[Anonymous Coward]

Plenty of people openly admit to not caring about privacy, because they don't think anything bad is going to happen because of all the shit they post on facebook.

Zuck is not the left

[rsilvergun]

Bernie is the left. Liz Warren is the left. Alexandria Ocasio-cortez is the left.

Zuck is a member of the ruling class. He's not one of our own. He and the left might occasionally see eye to eye on social issues, but where it matters (economics) he's as far right as any member of the American ruling class.

On a side note, the left does not eat it's own, but we don't have Reagan's 11th commandment. That's because our goal is to make the world a better place. The right, OTOH, have a different purpose. They're goal is to shift as much money to the top as they can, taking some of it for themselves along the way. You can see this in their economic policies. In how they talk about "Job Creators" instead of higher wages. In their emphasis on strong men (like our current president). In their support for corporate welfare (re: Amazon's HeliPad) and constant opposition to social programs like Medicare of All.

The left squabble over how best to improve the world. The right don't have that problem because, well, they're not trying to do that...

Re:Zuck is not the left

[forkfail]

One of the problems today is that the right and left talk past each other.

For example, I very much want the world to be a better place. I spend a considerable amount of my time doing unpaid work to that end.

What I do not want, however, is for the government to be in charge of those efforts. I believe that power corrupts, and there is so much power centralized in government that anything they touch becomes inefficient at best. Yes, we need government, but outsourcing all our efforts to that institution to improve the world leads not to a better world, in my opinion.

This isn't to say that many on the right, as well as the left, are simply taking advantage of the same corrupt power structures. But at least on the right, there is some chance of a reduction of the scope and scale of The Machine. On the left, I don't believe that there is any.

Oh, and by the way: It was Governor Amazon Cuomo and Mayor "Let the taxpayers pay the" Bill de Blasio who shelled out the $3B for Amazon. I suspect that both would be rather offended to be called "the right".

Re:Zuck is not the left

[RightwingNutjob]

You're nuts. The stated goal of the left is to knock everyone down a peg. Bernie Sanders opining on the beauty of bread lines and AOC's word salad about the middle class not existing anymore are but one example of that.

The stated and acted goal of the right in America has always been to remove governmental obstacles from the path between where we're at now and where we could be. Historically that has included both regulation and deregulation, with an emphasis on the latter. It's all predicated on the idea, more or less borne out by history, that people who are empowered to be responsible for their own well-being in ways both big and small will generally create prosperity by themselves without a Dear Leader to guide them along.

The left rejects this view. The left believes that people are not capable of being responsible for themselves and will always be victimized by something, unless the white knight of government rides in to help. This is an echo of the belief in the divine ordination of kings, the feudal system, and slavery. It's probably hardwired in everybody. There's a Darwinian explanation for it too. Premodern societies of humans in places like Papua New Guinea are very territorial. A few hundred yards up or down the river and you're on someone else's turf. Live like that for a few hundred thousand years and the notion of strongmen and warlords to keep your turf yours can arise quite naturally. Individual liberty is what's new, what's radical. And given the baggage of the human mind, it's hard to carry through. It requires continuous mental effort to suppress the instinct to relinquish responsibility to a strongman who promises to take care of it all for you. That's what the left is. It's not radical, it's an atavism.

Re:Zuck is not the left

[serviscope_minor]

It's interesting, with Republicans you've quoted what they said. With democrats you referred to what they did. Why didn't you refer to what those Republicans actually did?

I don't trust any member of the ruling class

[rsilvergun]

ever. I might occasionally see eye to eye with them. But anyone with that much raw power shouldn't be trusted.

We need to realize that past a certain point money isn't money anymore. It's power. And by allowing the 1% to have that much wealth we've given them the bulk of the power in this world. We've made them an aristocracy. Kings and Queens. This is one of the reasons why we had a top tax bracket of 90%. That power has to go somewhere. Ignoring that is naive to the point of madness.

Re:Seems that the Left...

[Shaitan]

You do know the biggest chunk of funding for left candidates comes via PAC support from billionaires (just like 'right' candidates)? Even alleged "don't take PAC money" and "grassroots" themed candidates like Beto were actually aided by millions in billionaire backed PAC money that paid for things like "voting report cards" in carefully selected districts and official sounding notices with absentee ballot forms sent to districts likely to vote against with the catch being that sending in the form disqualifies you to vote on election day and means your vote likely won't be counted.

But hey, if you really think the ends justify the means and these are honest practices, by all means keeping on voting for those R's and D's! Keep on supporting publicizing a handful of absolute quack candidates as strawmen of what an alternative would look like. And most definitely keep supporting the same people who conspired to keep the only experienced politician with a proven track record of integrity out of the game.

Re:WP is owned by Bezos, Do we trust Bezos?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

I'm not listening to anything from Washington Post that isn't pure and incontrovertible fact, Opinion pieces of any kind from such a biased and corrupted outlet are very close to propaganda.

First, the WP seems to have a lot of voices from both the liberal and conservative side (e..g. George Will.) Second, you think the fact that Zuckerburg doesn't care about privacy is in dispute??? I have a large amount of beachfront property in Arizona to sell you.

Sorry, I'm not speaking past you,

[rsilvergun]

I'm speaking in context.

When you speak "right" and "left" what you do personally doesn't matter. You're talking about politics and how the government is run. It's all well and good that you do good things. Keep it up. But your actions don't happen in a vacuum, and your good deeds are dwarfed by the horrors that are routinely committed in your name by your government.

As for the government taking over your efforts to do good, I'm sorry, but the government needs to be in charge of those things. That doesn't mean you can't work in parallel with the government, but ask yourself this: When in the entire history of human civilization has personal charity been enough to solve systemic problems in a society?

Again, the good you do isn't worthless, but it gets drowned out by the evil done in your name. It's like trying to pay for retirement by skipping a cup of coffee in the morning when you make $2 bucks an hour. You need a broader solution. And going by history those solutions have always come from government.

Lastly the trouble with trying to live in a world of "small government" is that the ruling class just won't let you do that. If you don't build power structures to improve your life and the lives of your community others will. Well, except without the "community" part.

Re:Seems that the Left...

[Shaitan]

Bernie Sanders, whether you actually agree with his policies or not is beside the point. The man has been consistent and on point with his positions for decades despite pissing into the wind for however long it took for political winds to change. That is called integrity.

That is a pretty stark contrast to your typical politician who jumps on board when the right combination of public support and corporate donors comes around. That is exactly the opposite of integrity.

A magical combination of actually having experience AND not acting like a career politician... Trump had one of those and got elected, Bernie Sanders is the only one I know of at the federal level and certainly the only one in the Senate who has both in the US.