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thinkcomp1030 karma

I think hate is the wrong word. We reached a settlement (as the links above indicate) in 2009.

I do have serious concerns about Mark's recent claims that he wants to help promote democracy. I think his behavior indicates that he has no interest in democracy whatsoever. He runs Facebook effectively as a dictator (which I say based on his manipulation of the publicly traded stock share types, which permit him to retain control basically no matter what). Dictators tend to be incompatible with democracy.

thinkcomp833 karma

I think Mark's Facebook has become damaging to a lot of people in a number of ways, some of which I actually did anticipate. Others, not so much.

  • I was initially quite afraid that without a cautious person at the helm, all kinds of privacy issues would quickly snowball and harm a lot of people. Mark took the opposite approach, encouraging students to post their sexual orientation and dating status right from the start. Arguably, this is a large part of what made the site interesting to other students, but it also of course presents a real potential for danger.
  • I was also afraid from the outset of what government actors might do with such a database, if anyone was able to compile it. This turned out to be a reasonable fear. Facebook is implicated in all kinds of government work now, from the NSA Prism scandal to DEA investigations to local law enforcement campaigns.
  • I didn't know that people would find Facebook so addictive, and it's not likely that Mark knew it would be either. The addiction aspect I find problematic because it causes people to waste huge amounts of time engaging in what is essentially a fake world, leading to depression and anxiety for many. This leads me to think that Facebook may actually be as dangerous as cigarettes in some ways; it's certainly been designed to addict users at this point, much as cigarettes were designed to deliver the maximum nicotine kick by tobacco companies.
  • There's a lot of fraud that takes place via Facebook, both in terms of advertising fraud and fake users trying to defraud other users. That's something that could have been avoided had Mark chosen to focus more on keeping the network safe rather than on growing it larger.

I don't know what Facebook's ultimate undoing will be, but I think the press had a large role in hyping it up with virtually no skepticism. I hope that the press does its job by starting to ask questions about the company's leadership, business practices, and especially its financials, which I find suspect. It's possible that Mark's raw ambition (to be President) will lead to the company's downfall to some extent, but it's too early to tell.

thinkcomp695 karma

I think Mark would be an extremely dangerous President. Aside from having referred to his users as "dumb fucks," he's also stated in writing, "You can be unethical and still be legal that's the way I live my life haha." That alone should be disqualifying for someone to be CEO of a publicly traded corporation, let alone President.

I worry that Mark's money might co-opt the Democratic Party and "convince" the old guard (Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, etc.) that there's really no better choice. But there are a lot of better choices out there. Sally Yates seems like she would be a fantastic candidate. Even Steven Colbert is more appealing if we have to pick someone famous. But I would much more prefer to see qualified candidates with real ideas as opposed to the usual smattering of wealthy celebrities. This obsession with celebrity is extremely dangerous, as recently pointed out by Frank Bruni. (See https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/opinion/the-shameful-embrace-of-sean-spicer-at-the-emmys.html .)

thinkcomp492 karma

Honestly, it's hard to think of much good to say about Mark, and especially right now. I think he played a vital role in bringing fascism, or perhaps "fascism lite," to the United States, and I don't think that's a coincidence.

For thirteen years I've warned people as much as possible--harming my own reputation in the process--that he's a danger to society. At first I was ridiculed and made fun of and called a lot of names for doing so. Now, it's looking a little bit more reasonable to others I think.

thinkcomp457 karma

I think a lot of the problems Facebook is causing are the result of unchecked corporate power and greed generally. There are a lot of mechanisms that are supposed to prevent a Facebook-type company from existing: anti-trust laws; SEC disclosures; media scrutiny; cultural norms (such as expectations of honesty).

Anti-trust laws are a thing of the past. We're in an economic boom right now, and as with many past booms, there's been a surge of M&A activity. If you want that boom to continue, which many in government assuredly do, the last thing you want is to curb mergers. So the Sherman Anti-Trust Act goes out the window. This allows Facebook to do things like buy Instagram and WhatsApp, and it makes it harder for new startups to compete. After all, they might get bought by a Facebook competitor before they even have a chance, and technology companies are so big, what sensible undergraduate would want to take that risk anyway when they could just have a comfortably salary and life?

SEC disclosures don't really disclose anything half the time, and the SEC rarely prosecutes large corporations, let alone technology corporations. Even when it does, it can't bring criminal charges--that's the DOJ's job. You really have to be an Enron or a Worldcom before anything happens.

Speaking of which, what if Facebook actually is an Enron or a Worldcom given its fake accounts and non-functional advertising? We'd never know, because all the media has done for the past decade-plus is write puff pieces about how great the company and its founder is. Largely this is because of access journalism dynamics: if you want access to information, you have to be nice. The result is that voices like mine have been silenced. I was supposed to be interviewed on the 60 Minutes piece where Lesley Stahl fawned over Mark's ability to use a computer. Cancelled. I was supposed to be the focus of a GQ Magazine article. The reporter, Alex French, flew out to Palo Alto to interview me for a week. Cancelled; it turned into a profile on Mark's genius instead. I was supposed to be interviewed on Bloomberg TV; I drove to the Bloomberg studio in San Francisco, where they gave me a name badge and told me to leave. The interview was cancelled. As annoying as this was each time, when you think of the aggregate effect, it's that no one has said very much negative about Facebook in the mainstream media until awfully recently.

Lastly, we desperately need to wake up as a society and realize that some things are just not healthy, social media in its present form among them. In European societies, where the older generation has lived long enough to have experienced the KGB and its sister organizations (Stasi, Securitate, etc.) privacy is truly valued. Regulators take it seriously. In the United States, we don't.

Personally I think Facebook's financials deserve close examination, and I'm hoping that gets more attention soon. My sense is that the trust-your-friends-to-buy-stuff advertising model fundamentally does not work, and if I'm right, that means that much of Facebook's cash flow is simply fraudulent.