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Mark Zuckerberg's Resolution Is To Talk About Tech's Place In Society (engadget.com)
In the past, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg challenged himself to create an AI assistant for his home and committed to learning Mandarin. This year he's planning to hold a number of public discussions about how technology plays a role in the future of society. Engadget reports: "I'm an engineer, and I used to just build out my ideas and hope they'd mostly speak for themselves," he wrote in a Facebook post. "But given the importance of what we do, that doesn't cut it anymore. So I'm going to put myself out there more than I've been comfortable with and engage more in some of these debates about the future, the tradeoffs we face, and where we want to go." Zuckerberg plans to hold talks with "leaders, experts, and people in our community from different fields" every few weeks. He'll make the discussions available on his Facebook and Instagram feeds or elsewhere. Engadget suggests Zuckerberg "might be best served to directly focus on restoring trust with Facebook's two billion users and fixing the vast array of problems with which his platform is struggling, including privacy screwups and a tanking stock."
I challenged myself to learn more about the Cortex M7 and pick up Russian.
What? Isn't that the thread about stuff people do nobody gives a fuck about?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If Facebook had a proper MEPR (Multidimensional Earned Public Reputation), then I would look at Zuckerberg's MEPR and adjust my filters so that I would NOT see him anymore. The trolls, too, of course. (Actually, it should be easy to pre-block trolls with a slight adjustment to the default visibility threshold.)
Of course it will never happen. MEPR would require sharing some of the information that Facebook has collected about each of us, and Facebook is going to hoard that information. Only way Facebook would consider sharing the MEPR data would be if there was legislation forcing them to or if there was a credible competitive threat.
Time's up, but I bid you ADSAuPR, atAJG.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Now that he has learned to speak Mandarin I wish he'd keep to it.
Mr Zuckerberg has been repeatedly ask to attend meetings in the UK and Brussels to explain the practices undertaken by his company and the way that those practices impact the citizens of the UK and the broader EU.
Now that Mr Zuckerberg has made this fresh commitment to going and meeting with people, I'm sure that his administration staff are already in the process of reaching out to make his appointments on the other side of the Atlantic.
What's that you say? No? Well, this is just more drivel then.
Actions speak louder than words.
The natural state of technology is to advance by becoming more efficient, effective, and to encompass and sometimes replace more of what we do.
We're near (perhaps already past) the point where we should ask ourselves: how much DO we want technology to take over our lives? Cyberpunk posits a possible future where technology has degraded the value of humanity, but we should ask ourselves what aspects of technology lead to such degradation, and how can we reap the benefits of technology while avoiding those aspects?
For an example, I'm reminded of a virtual reality conference in Las Vegas a few years ago, where a local brothel encouraged conference-goers to have sex in reality rather than in virtual reality. It's easy to snicker at that now, but imagine when the difference becomes blurrier, that might not be such a preposterous plea. If sex in virtual reality becomes more convenient, safe, and pleasurable than real-world sex; what kind of side-effects could that have to society, or to gender relations? Such VR sex (with NPCs) would arguably degrade the value of human sexual relationships.
I'm not saying society can (or should) stop technological development, just that people may want to go through 'technology planning' (a la family planning) at some point in their lives, to decide how much they want it to pervade their personal lives. Banning usage of degrading technology will become increasingly futile over time, as deployment becomes easier; it's more plausible that society will change to accept what they must and avoid what they can and want to.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
should be to make everyone's lives better (happier, easier, richer, less hassled, ...), not to make a few richer at the expense of everyone else.
Everything this man does is focused on his business in making money. In this case, one should focus on this statement:
"the tradeoffs we face"
This is just a continuing damage control tour where he will very careful phrase things to make government officials believe that he should be allowed to do what he does because it's necessary for his business model. The reality of the situation is there may be trade offs, but it should be a decision left up to the consumer. The consumer should has the easy, straightforward ability to opt in of every type of data collection. Otherwise they are by default opted OUT. The problem right now is that by default, every person on the planet is opted IN and has no way to tell the corporations and governments to stop collecting data on them.
He'll even try making the point that they have to know who you are and what you are doing so that they won't collect the data. This is the famous "send us all your nude pics so we can make sure we don't post them somewhere". Again - the reality to that situation is to enforce a stop on all anoonymous data collection as well that ties back to any single entity. Because even that can easily be distilled back down to the individual through geolocation and other means.
Stop collecting data on us you assholes.
The deathrow.
Learning the language of Communist China.
Lots of ads.
More bans for people trying to publish their own content online.
How about going back to the American idea of the freedom of speech and freedom after speech?
The freedom to publish and the freedom of the press?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
... should be the last person to discuss tech's place in society.
Then again, with what he's done with facebook.... maybe just talking IS better than him doing anything.
I just saw this article this morning. Didn't realize it was about Zuck. Area Man’s Intelligence Probably Just Too Intimidating For Most Women
This is what I saw when I was skimming:
Mark Zuckerberg challenged himself to create an AI assassin for his home
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Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
...as to why you need Facebook. Would have been a simpler title.
Does anyone consider Zuckerburg an authority on anything? The truth is that he got lucky. He used the money from some rich fellow students to clone another social media app at a time when the world was ready for social media apps. It had been quite a while since Citizen Band radio had declined, and most people had forgotten what a pointless clusterfuck of people with nothing to say that was. They were once again ready to parade their narcissism, and Zuck got lucky that they chose his from among several competitors, MySpace being the most well known. There wasn't a technical reason that FB was superior, it was initially because it was seen to be composed of a more exclusive club.
What exactly in that category qualifies this dufus to be an expert on anything other than getting lucky at the right time? I'm just as interested in hearing about the social impact of rehabilitating the buffalo population from lottery winners.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Mark Zuckerberg’s resolution is to try to anything he can to resurrect his reputation.
Whenever I see Zuckerberg opining about some generic tech topic, It seems immediately obvious he’s in the same boat as Nathan Myhrvold - he’s gotten filthy rich by screwing over other people, but desperately wants that to not be his legacy.
#DeleteChrome
I would much rather see how he would justify [intrusive] advertising and targeted propaganda’s place in modern society.
So much hyperbole on facebook recently in so many directions.
Zuckerberg is not a saint or a devil, not a megalomaniac, not intent on ruling the world, not all that intent on changing it. He's very intelligent and hard working, but no more so than hundreds of thousands of other people. He's not a genius and has no particularly unique vision. He is neither evil nor especially good.
Zuckerberg is a guy who dropped out of college to develop a web app. There were (at least) thousands of other people doing exactly this in the late 90s and early 2000s. His app wasn't (and isn't) particularly original - lots of people had ideas for social networking apps. Through a bit of savvy business strategy and a lot of pure dumb luck, he wound up as one of the very few people who made it big from that wave of app developers.
Don't lose sight of the fact that ZUCKERBERG IS AN AD MAN. Companies pay him to display ads in places where lots of eyeballs will see them. That's his business. Period. End. Of. Story. His ad medium is an internet-based social networking service. Before that, ad men used cable TV. Before that, broadcast TV. Before that, magazines and newspapers. New medium, same business. One can make arguments that computing and the internet make it fundamentally different, but that's just hubris. "I must be unique from all the generations of human that came before me". Sorry, nope. The internet hasn't transformed us into anything substantially different.
You want to know what facebook is going to do or say in any situation? Ask yourself what would maintain or expand their ability to SELL ADS to other companies. That's what they'll do. That's their business. That's why they exist.
This strikes me as an effort made by a person who is afraid of becoming irrelevant.
An effective "democracy" creates the illusion the people have a say in their government.
Zuckerberg would have to fundamentally change who he is in order to come out the other side of these "debates" and actually do something useful. He's never going to be an advocate for important social issues, personal privacy or putting limits on technology invading every part of our lives. He made facebook. That's who Mark Zuckerberg is. His strengths and talents are in making facebook successful, not figuring out how to nicely integrate it into a more healthy society. If he wants to see something actually change then he needs to be willing to let go and give some control to someone else who cares about different things rather than the success of his tech baby. He's never going to be suitably motivated to actually get it right.
is certainly not to be a massive spy-machine.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.