
Zuckerberg's trust problem - gfredtech
https://www.wired.com/story/mark-zuckerbergs-trust-problem
======
rw
Why has this article been removed from the top 250 news results? It was #1 for
a few minutes, then #5, and now it's gone. We've successfully discussed much
more risqué topics here on HN...

Why did the comment by `TAForObvReasons calling out this apparent censorship
get deleted?

~~~
bschwindHN
I would like to know the same, it's pretty ironic for an article titled "Mark
Zuckerberg's Trust Problem"

------
jokoon
I actually trust institutions more than I trust people.

Institutions are built on laws, they outlive humans, and they are impervious
to the individualist nature of humans. Although it's a different story for
companies and corporation (which facebook is).

Facebook is a bad idea because it is only about individuals and their private
circles of friends. You would expect from a social network to give you
opportunities to enlarge and open your friendship to new individuals, but
facebook does the exact opposite, it builds exclusivity between individuals.

The whole real name idea makes no sense, since it only enables stalking.
Zuckerberg have this naive optimism about people trusting people, and it would
somehow justify the intrusiveness of facebook because he thinks that most
people have good intentions. Except you need a very few individuals to ruin
the experience.

The internet is not a trustworthy place, and facebook has made it even worse.
It is really frustrating because facebook really has the potential to be so
much better with its userbase, but it seems it will keep being this useless
photo and news sharing website. I wish technologies like decentralized
networks and the blockchain could change that.

The whole distrust for institutions is another great meme of the libertarian
agenda.

------
b6
Zuckerberg is my go-to example of a tool. Utterly consumed by ambition. Eager
to serve power. No vision, no internal compass, just endless hunger. The guy
sucks up to Xi Jinping! Of course he has a trust problem. It's rare to
encounter someone so eager to sell their soul doing harm when it would have
been easier to do something decent.

------
factsaresacred
> In the days that followed Trump’s election, Zuckerberg used the stage at the
> Techonomy conference to deny Facebook could have had a hand in the
> election’s outcome. Only now, we learn that 10 days after Zuckerberg’s
> Techonomy appearance, Obama warned Zuckerberg privately that he believed
> misinformation and fake news had influenced the election

Is this not all just a little insane? Of course misinformation and fake news
influenced the election. Most political ads are a combination of both.

The supposed Russian agents spent $100,000 on 3,000 ads. I don't know if you
guys market on Facebook, but that's not a lot of reach (by comparison,
$11,000,000 was spent by the campaigns). Furthermore, reports state the ads
they bought were not fake, nor against the terms. Rather they were 'divisive'
\- covering stuff like gun control, BLM, immigration. Is it 'divisive' to hold
an opinion on these things?

Now, here's the kicker: rewind to 2011 and the US government was paying
political NGOs in Russia to meddle in the Russian elections. They didn't call
it meddling, of course. Instead they were 'promoting democracy'. So how much
was spent? $100,000 worth of ads on VK.com?

Nope, instead about $9,000,000 was funneled to NGOs.

This from Reuters:

> Golos, which means ‘voice’ in Russian, has been instrumental in reporting
> allegations of irregularities....Its money trail leads from Washington and
> Brussels to its headquarters in a residential neighborhood in central
> Moscow....In 2010 Golos received a two-year $2.8 million grant from USAID,
> which extends funding to non-governmental organizations in foreign countries
> working in areas from the health sector to _political competition_.

and

> Golos is one of 57 organizations that have been receiving funding from
> USAID. More than half of the USAID's 2012 budget of $50 million (38.6
> million euros) went to groups promoting human rights and democracy.

and

> The United States has criticized Russia’s elections and its record on
> upholding the rule of law, but has dismissed accusations that its funding of
> human rights and pro-democracy organizations is intended to influence
> domestic politics.

The moral panic and the sheer hypocrisy is astounding. Putin, in his wildest
dreams, couldn't have imagined inflicting the sort of hysteria currently being
whipped up by the media and some politicians.

[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-
financing/analysis-...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-
financing/analysis-putin-critics-hit-back-over-charge-of-western-funding-
idUSTRE7BC0ZZ20111213)

------
aaron-lebo
So apologies if too many rants about Zuckerberg are annoying, but the reason
why he disturbs me so much is he's so transparently power hungry and
manipulative.

You can find it in everything he does. He's got this weird personal aura where
he feels like everyone in the world cares about him and his kids, while at the
same time he uses himself and his kids to spread his view of the world and his
view of how it works. It just makes me feel slimy.

Example, his attitudes about Xi:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/elizabetheconomy/2014/12/09/zuc...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/elizabetheconomy/2014/12/09/zuckerbergs-
love-affair-with-xi-jinping/#41082eb2c0ee)

 _Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has recently stirred up controversy by advising
his employees to read Chinese President Xi Jinping’s book The Governance of
China, because he wants them to “understand socialism with Chinese
characteristics.” The book appeared prominently placed on his desk during a
recent visit from China’s Internet czar Lu Wei, and he apparently has bought a
number of copies to share with others._

This of course went so far as to ask Xi to name his child. What the fuck is
that? Xi hilariously turned him down, but let us remember that this is the
same Xi whose father was the vice premier and propaganda chief while Mao was
killing murdering millions of his countrymen, the same Xi who is now the most
powerful Chinese leader in a generation and who continues to consolidate power
and control.

Yet here's Mark, putting out posts about the importance of democracy, etc.
It's like he's speaking out of two sides of his mouth and what he really wants
is people to trust his institution, Facebook, and him as benevolent or
competent. I'd have less of a problem with it if what Facebook did wasn't so
damn mediocre, but he continually excuses that mediocrity through acting all
feely carey about social issues.

 _In earlier eras, when the leader of a trusted institution failed to live up
to the mores of the organization, he (and it was usually a “he”) could leave
without threatening the existence of the institution._

Maybe, but the reality is that up until about 100 years ago, non-democracy,
authoritarianism, and autocracy were the norm and incompetent leaders and
their progeny could go on fucking up a nation and other nations for centuries.
Our governments have opened up, but Facebook and other companies are still
kingdoms. We've got this social system thing going on where we funnel the
smartest and most well off kids through lottery machines and when one of those
kids wins the lottery, we assume they are specially gifted and fit to rule the
world. Maybe they aren't. Maybe they should accept that having a net worth of
50 billion dollars is enough and they should spend that money to shut the fuck
up about things they don't know anything about.

It's fun to bullshit on HN about worldviews, but Mark's HN quality bullshit
has been affecting the world for the last 10 years and his only excuse is
trust me, dumb fucks. Of course Mark won't call you a dumb fuck anymore
because Mark has studied human behavior enough to understand that's not
palatable, but how different are his actions?

He wants more, more, more, like a bunch of this titans of industry. It's never
enough, presumably because they've adopted the idea that the best possible
thing in life is to have "influence" and to them that influence is more
important than whether that influence is any good.

~~~
srtjstjsj
You're taking oddly personal offense at someone doing rather straightforward
things to promote the growth of his business into the largest economy on
Earth, which also happens to be his wife's ethnic homeland.

It's fine to disagree with his attempts to accumulate power and be a demagogue
like most politicians and CEOs, but there's no need to be creepy about it.

~~~
aaron-lebo
Oh, right, I'm being creepy because Zuckerberg broadcasts his every action to
2 billion people and I happen to follow the news.

You should take personal offense, too. This guy affects your everyday life,
today, right now. You can be happy with that if you want, but I also have the
right to criticize it.

~~~
dang
Could you please stop posting hot-under-the-collar comments to HN? You've been
doing it a lot, and they're really not what the site is for.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
aaron-lebo
dang, I respect you and the site, and I recognize that some of my comments are
inflammatory. I delete a lot because I realize that and feel bad.

My problem is that there's a lot of content that is very "hot-under-the-
collar" thinly veiled hatred and prejudice around here, but it gets upvoted
and left alone. I'll try to tone it down, and I'm happy to take a break from
commenting for awhile, I just wish HN had a fair standard for this stuff.

I don't understand how my response to someone calling me a creep (due to my
opinions about a public and political figure) is what gets a response from
you. But again, I'm not trying to be disrespectful.

Thanks for your work because it's probably a pain.

~~~
dang
> _but it gets upvoted and left alone_

We see only some of the comments, since there are far too many for us to read.
Because of this quantity, it's impossible to moderate the whole corpus. So
you're always going to see examples of people getting away with worse in the
neighborhood, just like you see cars speeding on the same roads where cops are
pulling others over. It doesn't mean it's ok or that we endorse it, just that
we have human-scale limitations.

I'm sure it feels like the opposite side gets away with it more; everyone
feels that way. Drivers who get pulled over feel it too. It's a cognitive bias
that I've posted about a lot:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20cognitive%20bias&sor...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20cognitive%20bias&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0).

The way to deal with comments breaking the HN guidelines is to make sure we
know about them. You can do that by flagging them or by emailing us at
hn@ycombinator.com. It's amazing how often, when I see complaints about a
comment on HN, the complainer never flagged the comment. It seems to be hard
for people not to leap from "I saw X on HN" to "HN says X" to "the mods
support X". (By that argument, Larry must agree with all YouTube comments.)
The likeliest reason is that we just didn't see it.

People don't seem to realize how big a difference comment-flagging (or
emailing us) makes. A single user can have a lot of impact just by doing that.

~~~
aaron-lebo
That's makes sense, thank you for explaining that. I'll be a better citizen
going forward.

------
thinkcomp
The fact that Mark is not trustworthy is a real issue, and I've been screaming
it from the rooftops since 2004 because I was actually there. In fact, it was
the subject of my first post on Hacker News, for which I was ridiculed.

See also:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/71uva5/iama_classmate...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/71uva5/iama_classmate_of_mark_zuckerberg_who_created_the/)

~~~
patkai
Is it even legal for him to run for president, given that he founded / owns
the most powerful manipulation tool in the world?

~~~
srtjstjsj
why would that be illegal, unless someone created the law very recently?

~~~
patkai
I don't know the US constitution, this is why I asked. My assumption is that
running for president is not compatible with certain things, e.g. owning
and/or editing media. E.g. could somebody in theory buy most of the
newspapers, TV and radio channels, get on their boards and run for president?

~~~
ghostDancer
Usually is the other way round , powerful people buy and manipulate the media
so the one they want gets elected, and that way the can move everything behind
the curtain.

------
bobsil1
He’s amoral.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/exclusive-mark-zuckerbergs-
se...](http://www.businessinsider.com/exclusive-mark-zuckerbergs-secret-ims-
from-college-2012-5?op=1)

~~~
Simon_says
I think that asshole is going to run for president.

~~~
skocznymroczny
How would that work. Why would people vote for him? "Oh, I better vote for him
or I'll get banned from facebook"?

~~~
aaron-lebo
He's latched onto UBI, as have a lot of the technoraiti.

He probably genuinely believes it is necessary (and it maybe), but that's a
really easy bone to throw out to voters: "vote for me, I'm gonna give everyone
money".

Of course there's no way any unified vision of UBI is going to go through the
political grinder, so the end result is anyone's guess.

He'll probably lean on that and social issues and the fact that he's not as
obviously ignorant as Trump. It might be enough to slip through political
parties that are running people like Ted Cruz and Clinton as finalists.

