
Facebook hired a full-time pollster to monitor Zuckerberg’s approval ratings - dsr12
https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/2/6/16976328/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-pollster-tavis-mcginn-honest-data
======
gressquel
Seems like panic is starting to take hold. Unfortunately, neither this or the
news feed update is gonna change the tide, its just too late. The
transformation to Orkut/MySpace has already began and I am loving it.

The social media experiment has failed, its become too big and caused too much
psychological damage on individuals. I look forward to more and more niche
communities :)

~~~
aetherson
What evidence is there that Facebook in particular or social media in general
is actually declining, rather than occasionally inspiring cranky articles?

~~~
apocalyptic0n3
There is a bit of evidence in that US and Canadian daily users declined for
the first time last quarter. [1]

[1]: [https://www.recode.net/2018/1/31/16957122/facebook-daily-
act...](https://www.recode.net/2018/1/31/16957122/facebook-daily-active-user-
decline-us-canda-q4-earnings-2018)

------
zekevermillion
Maybe this is just Mark falling victim to his own machine. Now he, too, has
become obsessed with social media preening, and has to hire a professional to
tell him what people think about his party pics.

~~~
raverbashing
Remains to be seen if it's only another yes man or not

~~~
mcintyre1994
"McGinn declined to discuss the results of his polling at Facebook, saying
nondisclosure agreements prevented him from doing so. But he said he decided
to leave the company after only six months after coming to believe that
Facebook had a negative effect on the world."

I don't think he's a yes man.

------
oldcynic
I would perhaps be far less cynical about FB and Zuck if he, and other senior
people, used FB as we're expected to. He seems, from what I've read, to deeply
value _his_ privacy whilst FB does everything possible to gain more clicks,
time and tracking from us. FB isn't even much good for keeping up with friends
and family any more!

At least when Google was trying to push G+ there were many senior people
actually just using it. You could actually have conversations with them!

If he wants to gain stellar ratings then perhaps he should set his sights a
little higher. Like a certain Mr Musk recently did. :)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I'm not sure we're in the same class of paparazzi-attention as those folks. So
there's some excuse for more paranoia from them.

~~~
Slansitartop
> I'm not sure we're in the same class of paparazzi-attention as those folks.
> So there's some excuse for more paranoia from them.

Yes, but that shouldn't matter when it comes to social media use. Paparazzi
are about _invading_ privacy, but social media posts are about _voluntarily
giving it up_ in order to share. I also believe Zuckerberg once characterized
privacy as a kind of dishonesty.

------
ukulele
This means there is an especially good chance that whatever you write and vote
here will be eventually piped into Mark & Sheryl's eyes & ears. Time to unload
those pent up opinions!

------
nabla9
This is just what Facebook does for Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg initiative is separate from Facebook and they have hired very high
level campaign managers for Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama, GWB (Ken Mehlman) to
work for Zuckerberg.

~~~
tomashertus
Seriusly? I can’t imagine him running for a president. What he is gonna do
there?

~~~
joncrane
It's just an ego thing. He wants to be "popular" in the same way politicians
do. He wants to be at the top of the list of "most powerful people" that those
magazines put out.

He's probably super envious of Elon Musk.

~~~
wallace_f
He _has_ been making headlines regarding the possibility of running:
[https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/15/mark-zuckerberg-could-be-
run...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/15/mark-zuckerberg-could-be-running-for-
president-in-2020.html)

Why are people surprised he wants to run?

>Zuck: I don't know why. They "trust me." Dumb fucks.

Here he exhibits a defining characteristic of politicians.

It's worth noting the difference with Zuckerburg is this: we all suddenly
become concerned with our civil liberties when those of our own are directly
assaulted: [https://theintercept.com/2018/02/05/the-nunes-memo-and-
katie...](https://theintercept.com/2018/02/05/the-nunes-memo-and-katie-roiphe-
article-show-how-concerns-for-due-process-and-civil-liberties-are-highly-
selective-and-self-centered/)

------
everdev
The lines between politics and business continue to blur.

Is there anything to prevent Facebook from fully funding a Zuckerberg
campaign? I could see them arguing that it's a marketing expense as Trump went
from household name to the object of everyone's attention during his run for
President.

~~~
nathantotten
Not my scope of expertise, but I believe corporations are prohibited from
donating money directly to a candidate based on federal campaign laws. They
could of course give money to an action committee, but there are lots of
restrictions on coordination between the two. So I guess Facebook could fund
his campaign via a PAC as long as Zuckerburg himself had nothing to do with
the strategy. That would be an odd campaign.

More likely Zuckerberg could fund the campaign himself via gifts or loans -
this is what Trump did (not fully of course, but he did gift/loan some money).

~~~
uptown
"but there are lots of restrictions on coordination between the two"

This hasn't been true or enforced.

[https://theintercept.com/2016/10/07/both-campaigns-
enthusias...](https://theintercept.com/2016/10/07/both-campaigns-
enthusiastically-violate-ban-on-super-pac-coordination-watchdog-says/)

------
Sir_Cmpwn
I will draw immense personal satisfaction from not voting for Mark in 2020.

------
trs80
When I see Mark I feel queasy just looking at him. People don't like to have
their privacy violated, even if it is a result of them willingly giving up
their information.

~~~
java_script
He's definitely somewhere in the uncanny valley.

------
cJ0th
This is one of the key shortcomings of Mr Zuckerberg. If he was actually
willing to behave like a normal, vulnerable human being that lives and learns
over time more people would start liking him (no pun intended). But no, he
_has_ to be awkward about everything even after all those years.

------
Bucephalus355
What really concerns me about Mark Zuckerberg is his sister, Randi Zuckerberg.
She has to be one of the least intelligent (for a Harvard grad), most
entitled, narcissistic people I’ve ever seen.

I felt bad writing that about her, but Randi Zuckerberg desperately wants to
be famous and popular and keeps putting herself out there, hence her radio
show and book.

If you have a chance to look at her book, which is available for rock bottom
prices on Amazon, it’s absolutely awful, full of cliches, and weirdly enough,
lots of toilet humor.

Randi Zuckerberg scares the hell out of me.

EDIT: just saw this quote from the article. It’s almost Shakespearean in what
a tragedy Facebook has become and sums up our era quite nicely:

>“I didn’t feel proud to tell people I worked at Facebook.”

~~~
whatshisface
> _In 2011 Zuckerberg [ 's sister] advocated for the abolition of anonymity on
> the Internet to protect children and young adults from cyber-bullying.
> Zuckerberg explained how anonymity is protective for perpetrators._
> (Wikipedia)

I'm really surprised to see anyone advocating anything like that, but I guess
it goes to show that Hackernews is actually a little ways out of the
mainstream.

------
JoshMnem
I wish people would stop linking to AMP pages. They take about 8 seconds to
load on non-mobile browsers with JS turned off.

~~~
MiguelHudnandez
I don't think your experience is universal.

For me, I got these results with the amp version [1]:

    
    
      javascript on:  ~350kb / 24 requests 
      javascript off:  ~85kb /  4 requests
    

Compare this to the full version [2]:

    
    
      javascript on:  ~10.5mb / 125 requests
      javascript off:  ~6.0mb /  24 requests
    

[1]
[https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/2/6/16976328/face...](https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/2/6/16976328/facebook-
mark-zuckerberg-pollster-tavis-mcginn-honest-data)

[2] [https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/6/16976328/facebook-mark-
zuc...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/6/16976328/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-
pollster-tavis-mcginn-honest-data)

~~~
JoshMnem
Are you loading that in a browser? My browser reports 12 requests and 1.06
seconds for your first link, but it doesn't render anything for about 8
seconds.

Clarification: block the JS files from loading from the CDN, like it's done
with many privacy tools.

~~~
JoshMnem
It looks like there is an 8 second delay in the style element with the
attribute `amp-boilerplate` that makes AMP pages extremely slow when 3rd party
JavaScript is blocked (as it should be by default).

------
Slansitartop
This post was killed as a dup, but where was the prior discussion?

~~~
chalkandpaste
Technically it's here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16323168](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16323168)

But this is the only post that got comments.

