
The Apologies of Zuckerberg: A Restrospective - apu
https://allthingsd.com/20111129/the-apologies-of-zuckerberg-a-retrospective/
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law
It baffles me how Zuckerberg can remain disdainful of our very consistent
feelings toward privacy, while arrogantly suggesting that he knows better. It
doesn't take a privacy law scholar, an Internet security expert, or someone
with a 150 IQ to realize that there's something _profoundly different_ about
socializing online.

More specifically, the presence of an all-knowing middleman/service undermines
trust; no matter what, we will never trust Facebook as much as the members for
whom we maintain a profile. Facebook wants us to completely open our private
lives to a corporation notorious for its lack of transparency and openness.
Facebook is entirely self-serving, as evidenced by its metastasis into even
more of our lives. Masquerading as a selfless company innocently trying to
connect people, Facebook continues to shove invidious technologies down our
throats for one reason only: $$$.

That said, I truly hope that its FTC settlement portends a turning point for
the social web.

~~~
alex_c
_It baffles me how Zuckerberg can remain disdainful of our very consistent
feelings toward privacy, while arrogantly suggesting that he knows better._

Facebook's popularity suggests that Zuckerberg does know better. I have yet to
be convinced that the average Facebook user cares about abstract privacy at
all, let alone as much as we tend to.

I can't just dismiss all the complaints and protests from Facebook users, of
course, but I do have to wonder what proportion of it is simply people not
liking change, rather than actual privacy concerns.

~~~
cstejerean
I think the vast majority of Facebook users aren't reading tech news and
likely haven't heard about a lot of the privacy changes in Facebook. It's also
likely that for most people the decreased privacy did not cause any practical
problems. The users that have been burned by Facebook's privacy changes though
are definitely complaining. The ones that aren't complaining probably haven't
been burned. Yet.

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kontiki
I remember when zuckerberg called users of facebook "dumb fucks" for trusting
him

[http://gawker.com/5636765/facebook-ceo-admits-to-calling-
use...](http://gawker.com/5636765/facebook-ceo-admits-to-calling-users-dumb-
fucks)

those words will haunt the world some day

~~~
clobber
Whenever I think about Facebook and the vast number of people using it, that
quote is all I can remember.

Are people too dumb to care about their own privacy or do they just not care?

~~~
daeken
I use Facebook constantly, posting photos, checkins, status updates, etc.
However, I've completely disabled all privacy controls. Why? Because I don't
put things on the Internet that I don't want to be public, even behind
'privacy controls'. There's no breech of privacy for me, because the data is
inherently public. So no, I don't care.

~~~
veb
When I was growing up, I was always told never to put your real information on
the Internet. As I grew older, I simply changed around my "real" details a
bit. So, my Facebook does not have my real identity, I like stuff that... I
don't like.

Like I've said before, if you don't want people to know, don't post it on the
Internet.

Funny thing is though, the people that told me not to put info up on the
'net... didn't listen to their own advice. lol

~~~
nkassis
well you can put fake info about yourself but doesn't mean your friends will
put fake info in for you. Also, I'm sure marketers have a special category for
people who lie about their age and name and have products ready to sell to
that group. There is no escape. ;p

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rosser
"I'm sorry, baby. I promise I won't hit you again."

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yuhong
I still remember reading how Zuckerberg lied to a competitor he was working
with when Facebook first started and later even hacked it.

~~~
iamandrus
He also used a Facebook user's credentials to hack into her (?) email account.

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pasbesoin
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...

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rokhayakebe
Come on, the organization made an average of 2 mistakes per year. How many
other decisions did they get right? Thousands.

~~~
Karunamon
I totally enjoy how the only other dissenting opinions in this thread are
being downvoted with no explanation.

~~~
steve-howard
I think the issue is that Facebook makes _the same_ mistake repeatedly,
indicating that it's not even close to a mistake. It does something its users
don't like (erodes privacy, design changes, automated sharing, etc), claims
it's good for them, then partially backs off.

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shazam
Listening to Mark speak right now at Stanford. Someone asked him a question
about privacy. He genuinely seems like a not-evil person.

