"There’s the computerized version of Risk he coded in ninth grade; his long-standing interest in the Roman empire; his obsession with information flow and human psychology. There’s the story of his first bona fide internet scandal, when he hacked into Harvard’s directory and lifted photos of students without their permission to make the hot-or-not-style website FaceMash. ('Child’s play' was how Zuckerberg later described the ease with which he broke into Harvard’s system.) There’s the disconnect between his lip service to privacy and the way Facebook actually works. (Here’s Zuckerberg in a private chat with a friend years ago, on the mountain of data he’d obtained from Facebook’s early users: 'I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses … People just submitted it. I don’t know why. They "trust me." Dumb fucks.') At various points over the years, he’s listed the following interests in his Facebook profile: Eliminating Desire, Minimalism, Making Things, Breaking Things, Revolutions, Openness, Exponential Growth, Social Dynamics, Domination."
The article links to this video from 2005, when Zuckerberg was 21. He's not too prepossessing!
Looking back at that, it sure doesn't seem as though "Zuckerberg's path to world domination was inevitable." It's doesn't even seem too obvious now, and it's surely not inevitable. People don't need Facebook. On any given day, you either check in on Facebook or you don't. I find it marginally interesting. It could just as well collapse.
I used to like Jesse Eisenberg. He was good in The Squid and the Whale. Since he played Zuckerberg, I can't stand him. He channeled everything that was repellent and contemptible about Zuckerberg and that makes one wonder how much of that there is in himself.
The only reason the left are hysterical over Zuckerberg is because he might have - supposedly, agreed to be friendly with the current administration at some point. Oh no! Rather than obey the only accepted game in town which is to be an actively politicking in for The Party(D) - or else.
"Doomsday Machine grave threats destroying all human life radiation levels nuclear explosions atomic explosion extinguish all life terrible flash of light booming sound sustained roar destruction megadeath Facebook"
The previous paradigm of independent weblogs collapsed, leaving Althouse and a few others as survivors.
I can see why things look different to Althouse, since she obviously spends almost every waking hour on her weblog.
For the rest of us that is not an alternative. First, I never had a desire to stand guard over millions of comments. Second, I don’t want to spend my life promoting a weblog and generating content.
Althouse, Turley and, occasionally, theNewNeo, are the only weblogs I now read. I publish my own but make absolutely zero attempt to promote it.
So, FB is the only alternative if you want to have wide ranging discussion on a variety of subjects, or just a friendly coffee chat.
"People don't need Facebook. On any given day, you either check in on Facebook or you don't. I find it marginally interesting. It could just as well collapse."
Substitute "advertising" for "Facebook".
"I'm not on facebook. I know people who hate it, but the tell me it's a must for their business. I say why? Stop giving in. Stop acting like sheep."
There are, it seems, two possibilities; a) Advertising lets you know about opportunities you would otherwise be unaware of. b) Advertising gets you to do things that are not in your interest.
They are not mutually incompatible. But it is undoubtedly true that exposure to advertising causes you to do things you would not have done without it.
One good thing about growing up before this crap existed; you know it's crap.
Before FB, when I lived in Woodstock, on Saturday mornings I took the family to Maria’s Bazaar for breakfast. After breakfast, the kids headed out to the patio to play while I had two or three cups of coffee and chatted for an hour or two with the locals.
FB now serves the same function for me on Saturday morning.
It’s not crap. It’s socializing, and socializing is seldom about big big issues.
Facebook as chat is one thing but Facebook as news is another. Facebook as advertising is one thing but Facebook as arbiter of who gets to advertise is another. Facebook as the easy way for a large extended family to stay in touch is one thing; Facebook as the way for any government to automatically build a dossier including friends, relatives and interests on everyone is another. And Facebook because it's a monopoly is bending the arc of its history toward its own darkest side.
"Facebook as chat is one thing but Facebook as news is another. Facebook as advertising is one thing but Facebook as arbiter of who gets to advertise is another."
Not being on Facebook, I have found it hard to imagine how it is a news "source". Ads I understand.
FB has become the commons, nicely illustrated by Shouting Thomas. Also illustrated by ST is that it's not the cool commons anymore, because it's full of regular old people and deplorables and such. I think most kids use FB today to say happy birthday to grandma and grandpa, or that will soon be the situation. It's ubiquitous, but not inevitably ubiquitous. If there's one of these new tech oligarchs who will cleverly suss out that taking a strongly, traditionally American stand on free expression in the commons, I'd put money on Zuck. He has experience now and always had some foresight, and can see that while it may make his company a target in the near term, it's the best chance to extend his era of digital dominance.
Yet almost all the people complaing about the Facebag have Facebag accounts.
If you don't like Facebag (I don't) don't use it (I don't)
If you use it STFU. If you use it, you've voluntarily given up any right to complain. It comes across as childish and petty.
There's other ways to share pictures about the family. Email lists, for example. Text messaging for another. A personal website @$30/yr with 100 email accounts.
Just please either stop using Facebook or stop complaining about it.
The thing about Facebook is that you have to be a willing participant. You have to agree to submit your life to them. Your privacy, your images, your family, friends, your life. As Zuckerberg noted early on- you're dumbfucks for doing it.
That said, I do get people liking to see family photos. But trust me, there is a universe of ways to see family photos that does not include posting them on Facebook. Instead we post them on Google Photos. What?...Doh!
It's doesn't even seem too obvious now, and it's surely not inevitable. People don't need Facebook. On any given day, you either check in on Facebook or you don't. I find it marginally interesting. It could just as well collapse.
People who have never had to deal with addiction or with growing up in a household with little parental attention and make absolutely no effort to understand the point of view of other people say things like this.
Lock downs forced people to use things like Facebook.
The problem is no that Facebook exists. It is that Facebook buys up or destroys any competition that pops up through anti-competitive tactics. It abuses a massive capital advantage it has to buy things like Instagram and freezes out things like Tinder.
The other problem with Facebook is that it is actively dishonest about how they invade your privacy.
I've just come off a Facebook shadowban that lasted a little more than I week. I couldn't comment or see most posts. Zuckerberg is very thorough. FB tells us vote fraud can not happen, so neither can disagreement.
Bond villains were stereotypes based on old movies. You know, the hypersophisticated villain always thinking up clever tortures for the ordinary guy and gal hero and heroine. I suppose Soros fits the stereotype, and usually there is some Germanic Eurocrat who does, but today's world-conquering villains (if that's what they are) don't fit the old image and are a lot less distinctive.
The thing is -- Facebook itself, particularly the platform, SUCKS. Seriously, it is a seriously crappy website. Beyond that there is the, OK, now what? factor to using Facebook.
Your objection is well taken, Althouse, but there is a kernel of truth regarding the mentality of the Tech Giants being about control and manipulation. These players may well be, in conjunction with Big Government, our future Overlords. They honestly think they know better than other people how the world should be managed. And managed it will be.
It is critical, however, to realize that the thing about Facebook is that you DO NOT have to be a willing participant. Going on the Facebook webpage, sure, that is a voluntary, knowing, willing act. But Facebook has interjected itself into countless other websites, platforms, etc. Its tentacles are everywhere - hence the need to use antitrust law to break it up.
The only way to avoid such interaction with some aspect of the Facebook omnipresence is to stay off the internet, stay of TV and radio, don't read newspapers . . . in short, go live as a hermit up in the mountains.
How do we get this far in this post without anyone mentioning that Zuckerberg spent nearly half a billion dollars of private money into the 2020 election, including the funding of illegal crap like curing ballots only in Democrat areas, and election officials gave the far left groups he funded complete unsupervised access to edit the voter rolls however they wished.
Soros may have bought the election officials, but Zuckerberg funded the ground troops that carried off the election theft. Add the censorship and information manipulation, and Zuckerberg may really be in the top 5 most dangerous, evil people on the planet.
Wife and I both deleted Facebook entirely a few weeks ago. Wasn't a hard decision. Moved to MeWe, which has been an excellent source of news and info that is being censored elsewhere (though its mostly my wife that gathers it).
Never been on FB, never will. Never had an Alexa, never will. My TV isn't even 'smart'. While I admit my phone is smarter than I'm willing to concede, it is necessary for the time being.
“People don't need Facebook. On any given day, you either check in on Facebook or you don't. I find it marginally interesting. It could just as well collapse.”
If only it were so. I keep Facebook a arm’s length too, but that doesn’t change the simple fact that Facebook’s business model is controlling thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
It is quite literally an addiction for many many millions of people. There’s no choices being made by those folks, because social media companies have basically enslaved them by monetizing them and their lives.
Whether their attempt at domination affects you or not, it is inaccurate and dangerous to downplay their impact.
On any given day, you either check in on Facebook or you don't. I find it marginally interesting. It could just as well collapse.
Indeed. As others have said FB is full of old people, so it's no longer "cool".
People with things to sell may see a need for a FB presence today, but some other "cool" mass-marketing tool could takes its place in the near future. It's not hard to switch your ads to another platform. And just like that FB could disappear.
Zuckerberg's anti-privacy attitude pissed me off so I never signed up for FB, in spite of the constant appeals from the most zombie-like family members to join the cult so that we could "keep in touch". Apparently now that there is Facebook the phone, email and birthday cards are off-limits to these zombies.
"his long-standing interest in the Roman empire...:
That explains his haircut. Hail Zuckerberg! The android emperor!
People do not understand how pervasive Facebook's reach into the tech community is. And even the Google makes them look like pikers.
Just one aspect is that new grad Computer Engineers are for all intents and purposes worthless. They need a year or two of on the job training to be useful. But once they get a year or two of training they almost invariably leave to a new job unless they are H1b's. The hiring process for a new grad is a disaster. But once you have 2 years experience everyone will fight to hire you.
The only companies that can absorb this kind of investment are the large companies. You are talking about Facebook, Google, Salesforce, Microsoft, Twitter and a few others. These companies are dominated by an ideologically fascist corporate culture.
Just like there are very few people who do not conform to this ideological purity as College professors very few software engineers who are not ideological tyrants make it through.
It is quite literally an addiction for many many millions of people. There’s no choices being made by those folks, because social media companies have basically enslaved them by monetizing them and their lives
It's certainly true that web-based social media is addictive-- I write as I chastise myself for wasting time doing this when I have other things that need to be done.
Like social media, TV was/is addictive and was/is a way to spread propaganda and influence opinions. The difference of course is that the web is interactive. You can get feedback almost instantaneously, which can be more addictive than passively watching tv.
It's obvious that the combination of being powerfully addictive and useful as a propaganda/sales tool means these social media marketing apps are not going away. But for how long Zuckerberg stays the android emperor of the world with his product is not as certain.
All the commentary on zuckerberg seems wrong to me. He is a child of the middle class. He went to Harvard. He learned to make money. There are probably a million kids in India who can "code better" than Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg's genius is not in writing computer code, it is in manipulating the system to make him billions. What the Hell do you think that Zuckerberg talks about at meetings with FB managers? Which particular C libraries are most efficient at rendering database front ends? He is in a kind of Hell. No matter your dreams and desires, you end up making your entire life about stock price and shareholder meetings. And you must always do better.
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52 comments:
How come nobody writes articles about MySpace any more?
MySpace did not have Farmville, but Facebook did. That's why MySpace lost to Facebook.
I used to like Jesse Eisenberg. He was good in The Squid and the Whale. Since he played Zuckerberg, I can't stand him. He channeled everything that was repellent and contemptible about Zuckerberg and that makes one wonder how much of that there is in himself.
Facebook is all about chatting with your friends the same way Amazon is all about selling books.
People need to smarten up.
My God that was boring. I’m the same age as Zuck and I expected to feel nostalgic about college seeing footage of him and his buds back then. Nope.
That’s Our Commenter Mike Sylvester!
I'm not on facebook. I know people who hate it, but the tell me it's a must for their business.
I say why? Stop giving in. Stop acting like sheep.
This is how you get more Zuckerberg.
The only reason the left are hysterical over Zuckerberg is because he might have - supposedly, agreed to be friendly with the current administration at some point.
Oh no! Rather than obey the only accepted game in town which is to be an actively politicking in for The Party(D) - or else.
Which word or phrase "doesn't belong"?
"Doomsday Machine grave threats destroying all human life radiation levels nuclear explosions atomic explosion extinguish all life terrible flash of light booming sound sustained roar destruction megadeath Facebook"
The previous paradigm of independent weblogs collapsed, leaving Althouse and a few others as survivors.
I can see why things look different to Althouse, since she obviously spends almost every waking hour on her weblog.
For the rest of us that is not an alternative. First, I never had a desire to stand guard over millions of comments. Second, I don’t want to spend my life promoting a weblog and generating content.
Althouse, Turley and, occasionally, theNewNeo, are the only weblogs I now read. I publish my own but make absolutely zero attempt to promote it.
So, FB is the only alternative if you want to have wide ranging discussion on a variety of subjects, or just a friendly coffee chat.
No, FB is not fungible.
"On any given day, you either check in on Facebook or you don't."
On every given day, I don't.
"People don't need Facebook. On any given day, you either check in on Facebook or you don't. I find it marginally interesting. It could just as well collapse."
Substitute "advertising" for "Facebook".
"I'm not on facebook. I know people who hate it, but the tell me it's a must for their business.
I say why? Stop giving in. Stop acting like sheep."
Substitute "advertising" for "facebook".
There are, it seems, two possibilities;
a) Advertising lets you know about opportunities you would otherwise be unaware of.
b) Advertising gets you to do things that are not in your interest.
They are not mutually incompatible. But it is undoubtedly true that exposure to advertising causes you to do things you would not have done without it.
World's most punchable face, on the world's most punchable guy.
FB is not entirely about politics, believe it or not.
I converse with people on a wide variety of subjects on FB. In fact, I deliberately seek out people who aren’t particularly interested in politics.
Political controversy turned out to be the only selling point of a weblog over a long period.
That leaves FB as just about the only viable alternative for talking about, say, classical organ music.
One good thing about growing up before this crap existed; you know it's crap.
One good thing about growing up before this crap existed; you know it's crap.
Before FB, when I lived in Woodstock, on Saturday mornings I took the family to Maria’s Bazaar for breakfast. After breakfast, the kids headed out to the patio to play while I had two or three cups of coffee and chatted for an hour or two with the locals.
FB now serves the same function for me on Saturday morning.
It’s not crap. It’s socializing, and socializing is seldom about big big issues.
"That leaves FB as just about the only viable alternative for talking about, say, classical organ music."
I don't understand this. My big interest is telescopes and astronomical observing. I have no trouble talking to like-minded friends without Facebook.
Facebook as chat is one thing but Facebook as news is another. Facebook as advertising is one thing but Facebook as arbiter of who gets to advertise is another. Facebook as the easy way for a large extended family to stay in touch is one thing; Facebook as the way for any government to automatically build a dossier including friends, relatives and interests on everyone is another. And Facebook because it's a monopoly is bending the arc of its history toward its own darkest side.
"Facebook as chat is one thing but Facebook as news is another. Facebook as advertising is one thing but Facebook as arbiter of who gets to advertise is another."
Not being on Facebook, I have found it hard to imagine how it is a news "source". Ads I understand.
Do ad-blockers work on Facebook?
FACEBOOK FACEPLANT!
FB has become the commons, nicely illustrated by Shouting Thomas. Also illustrated by ST is that it's not the cool commons anymore, because it's full of regular old people and deplorables and such. I think most kids use FB today to say happy birthday to grandma and grandpa, or that will soon be the situation. It's ubiquitous, but not inevitably ubiquitous. If there's one of these new tech oligarchs who will cleverly suss out that taking a strongly, traditionally American stand on free expression in the commons, I'd put money on Zuck. He has experience now and always had some foresight, and can see that while it may make his company a target in the near term, it's the best chance to extend his era of digital dominance.
Yet almost all the people complaing about the Facebag have Facebag accounts.
If you don't like Facebag (I don't) don't use it (I don't)
If you use it STFU. If you use it, you've voluntarily given up any right to complain. It comes across as childish and petty.
There's other ways to share pictures about the family. Email lists, for example. Text messaging for another. A personal website @$30/yr with 100 email accounts.
Just please either stop using Facebook or stop complaining about it.
John Henry
Not being on Facebook, I have found it hard to imagine how it is a news "source". Ads I understand.
"News" is pictures of grand children.
World domination ain't what it used to be.
The thing about Facebook is that you have to be a willing participant. You have to agree to submit your life to them. Your privacy, your images, your family, friends, your life. As Zuckerberg noted early on- you're dumbfucks for doing it.
That said, I do get people liking to see family photos. But trust me, there is a universe of ways to see family photos that does not include posting them on Facebook. Instead we post them on Google Photos. What?...Doh!
It's doesn't even seem too obvious now, and it's surely not inevitable. People don't need Facebook. On any given day, you either check in on Facebook or you don't. I find it marginally interesting. It could just as well collapse.
People who have never had to deal with addiction or with growing up in a household with little parental attention and make absolutely no effort to understand the point of view of other people say things like this.
Facebook pushed lock downs.
Lock downs forced people to use things like Facebook.
The problem is no that Facebook exists. It is that Facebook buys up or destroys any competition that pops up through anti-competitive tactics. It abuses a massive capital advantage it has to buy things like Instagram and freezes out things like Tinder.
The other problem with Facebook is that it is actively dishonest about how they invade your privacy.
Zuckerberg (all the tech oligarchs) is a classic Bond villain.
The Amazing Mr.Zuckerberg and his Harvard techie narrative has always been a CIA front for collection of dossiers on everyone.
I've just come off a Facebook shadowban that lasted a little more than I week. I couldn't comment or see most posts. Zuckerberg is very thorough. FB tells us vote fraud can not happen, so neither can disagreement.
Bond villains were stereotypes based on old movies. You know, the hypersophisticated villain always thinking up clever tortures for the ordinary guy and gal hero and heroine. I suppose Soros fits the stereotype, and usually there is some Germanic Eurocrat who does, but today's world-conquering villains (if that's what they are) don't fit the old image and are a lot less distinctive.
"Zuckerberg’s path to world domination was inevitable"
Xi disagrees. Xi's right.
Anyway, even the EU can hack Zuck if it wants.
Domination isn't what it used to be.
The thing is -- Facebook itself, particularly the platform, SUCKS. Seriously, it is a seriously crappy website. Beyond that there is the, OK, now what? factor to using Facebook.
Your objection is well taken, Althouse, but there is a kernel of truth regarding the mentality of the Tech Giants being about control and manipulation. These players may well be, in conjunction with Big Government, our future Overlords. They honestly think they know better than other people how the world should be managed. And managed it will be.
It is critical, however, to realize that the thing about Facebook is that you DO NOT have to be a willing participant. Going on the Facebook webpage, sure, that is a voluntary, knowing, willing act. But Facebook has interjected itself into countless other websites, platforms, etc. Its tentacles are everywhere - hence the need to use antitrust law to break it up.
The only way to avoid such interaction with some aspect of the Facebook omnipresence is to stay off the internet, stay of TV and radio, don't read newspapers . . . in short, go live as a hermit up in the mountains.
How do we get this far in this post without anyone mentioning that Zuckerberg spent nearly half a billion dollars of private money into the 2020 election, including the funding of illegal crap like curing ballots only in Democrat areas, and election officials gave the far left groups he funded complete unsupervised access to edit the voter rolls however they wished.
Soros may have bought the election officials, but Zuckerberg funded the ground troops that carried off the election theft. Add the censorship and information manipulation, and Zuckerberg may really be in the top 5 most dangerous, evil people on the planet.
It does seem appropriate that a Zuckerberg post be followed by one about horse droppings.
Quit Facebook.
Problem solved.
This is not difficult people...
Wife and I both deleted Facebook entirely a few weeks ago. Wasn't a hard decision. Moved to MeWe, which has been an excellent source of news and info that is being censored elsewhere (though its mostly my wife that gathers it).
I increasingly use Facebook solely for its Marketplace feature.
Never been on FB, never will. Never had an Alexa, never will. My TV isn't even 'smart'. While I admit my phone is smarter than I'm willing to concede, it is necessary for the time being.
“People don't need Facebook. On any given day, you either check in on Facebook or you don't. I find it marginally interesting. It could just as well collapse.”
If only it were so. I keep Facebook a arm’s length too, but that doesn’t change the simple fact that Facebook’s business model is controlling thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
It is quite literally an addiction for many many millions of people. There’s no choices being made by those folks, because social media companies have basically enslaved them by monetizing them and their lives.
Whether their attempt at domination affects you or not, it is inaccurate and dangerous to downplay their impact.
On any given day, you either check in on Facebook or you don't. I find it marginally interesting. It could just as well collapse.
Indeed. As others have said FB is full of old people, so it's no longer "cool".
People with things to sell may see a need for a FB presence today, but some other "cool" mass-marketing tool could takes its place in the near future. It's not hard to switch your ads to another platform. And just like that FB could disappear.
Zuckerberg's anti-privacy attitude pissed me off so I never signed up for FB, in spite of the constant appeals from the most zombie-like family members to join the cult so that we could "keep in touch". Apparently now that there is Facebook the phone, email and birthday cards are off-limits to these zombies.
"his long-standing interest in the Roman empire...:
That explains his haircut. Hail Zuckerberg! The android emperor!
People do not understand how pervasive Facebook's reach into the tech community is. And even the Google makes them look like pikers.
Just one aspect is that new grad Computer Engineers are for all intents and purposes worthless. They need a year or two of on the job training to be useful. But once they get a year or two of training they almost invariably leave to a new job unless they are H1b's. The hiring process for a new grad is a disaster. But once you have 2 years experience everyone will fight to hire you.
The only companies that can absorb this kind of investment are the large companies. You are talking about Facebook, Google, Salesforce, Microsoft, Twitter and a few others. These companies are dominated by an ideologically fascist corporate culture.
Just like there are very few people who do not conform to this ideological purity as College professors very few software engineers who are not ideological tyrants make it through.
It is quite literally an addiction for many many millions of people. There’s no choices being made by those folks, because social media companies have basically enslaved them by monetizing them and their lives
It's certainly true that web-based social media is addictive-- I write as I chastise myself for wasting time doing this when I have other things that need to be done.
Like social media, TV was/is addictive and was/is a way to spread propaganda and influence opinions. The difference of course is that the web is interactive. You can get feedback almost instantaneously, which can be more addictive than passively watching tv.
It's obvious that the combination of being powerfully addictive and useful as a propaganda/sales tool means these social media marketing apps are not going away. But for how long Zuckerberg stays the android emperor of the world with his product is not as certain.
Take his toy from him. Send him to bed.
If only he'd used his power for good!
Maybe he'd still have eyebrows.
All the commentary on zuckerberg seems wrong to me.
He is a child of the middle class. He went to Harvard. He learned to make money.
There are probably a million kids in India who can "code better" than Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg's genius is not in writing computer code, it is in manipulating the system to make him billions. What the Hell do you think that Zuckerberg talks about at meetings with FB managers? Which particular C libraries are most efficient at rendering database front ends?
He is in a kind of Hell. No matter your dreams and desires, you end up making your entire life about stock price and shareholder meetings.
And you must always do better.
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