
Zuckerberg apologizes for VR cartoon tour of Puerto Rico devastation - Caveman_Coder
https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/10/zuckerberg-apologizes-for-his-tone-deaf-vr-cartoon-tour-of-puerto-rico-devastation/
======
2g67vupsoknn
The headline seems a bit misleading... he didn't actually apologize for the
cartoon, but for the fact that some were "offended" and misunderstood his
stated goals for the presentation (showing off VR and the partnership with Red
Cross).

In other words, a classic non-apology. The issue is that people _did_
understand the true goal of the presentation: self-promotion.

~~~
srrge
This has become an standard PR stunt. I agree with you that journalists should
point that out.

Also, why public figures could not apologize for real? Like "I am sorry, this
was not a great communication campaign after all. We'll do better next time."
Is this really difficult?

~~~
hackinthebochs
Why is the quality of apology such a concern these days? Obviously they're
apologizing for PR reasons, as should be expected. You're just creating an
environment where people learn to be better liars.

~~~
aoeuasdf1
Why is integrity such a concern these days? Obviously they're pretending to
have integrity for PR reasons, as should be expected. You're just creating an
environment where people learn to fake integrity.

~~~
hackinthebochs
Personally I find apologies of any kind from companies worthless. I don't get
why people are so bent on squeezing apologies out of everything they can. It's
a power thing most likely.

I prefer actions and we should incentivize the right actions from companies.
Apologies are worthless, what people actually believe is worthless. Behavior
is the only thing that matters.

>Why is integrity such a concern these days?

It's phony integrity. Social media has turned the entire world into gabbing
Sunday churchgoers where everyone has to pretend to think and act in
acceptable ways otherwise they'll incur the wrath of church gossip.

~~~
aoeuasdf1
It's definitely possible that people complaining about phony apologies are
doing a power thing... Hmm, maybe they want to take away power from people who
do bad things?

It would be nice if there was some kind of way to signal true remorse, like a
way of speaking with our bodies, a "body language".

No one says the behavior doesn't matter - but without an expectation of social
cost (apologies, and further criticism and reputation loss when the apology is
tone deaf and insincere), why would anyone care about behaving well? Demanding
apologies isn't worthless - it's a power thing.

~~~
hackinthebochs
The problem is that moral indignation is rarely about improving the state of
things. Further, attempting to change the behavior of corporations through
moral indignation is the least effective option. Getting CEOs to issue
apologies or to be driven out of their companies is about power--the feeling
that the mob gets when its crusade is victorious. But this is only loosely
related to improving the state of the world.

People follow incentives, and this goes even moreso for amoral corporations.
The most effective way to change the behavior of corporations is to create the
right incentives such that its in their best interests to behave in ways that
are in all of our best interests. Insisting on "true belief", which this
obsession over genuine apologies seem to indicate is the goal, just isn't
needed. The behavior will follow when the incentives are aligned. But this
shows its less about behaviors and more about the feeling of righteousness
people get from moral indignation.

------
diogenescynic
Zuckerberg really seems to have something wrong with him when he does stuff
like this, yet gaslights Congress over Russia's use of Facebook during the
last election. I never really like cared for Zuck or Facebook, but don't they
have any adults over there saying no to any of this stuff?

~~~
mmsmatt
Traditional media is chasing social media every day. This was the dream, it
just took Trump to bring it into reality. A company that lives and dies by ad
analytics couldn't have not known about election influencing purchases.

The adults in the room want more Facebook in your life at any cost, totally
rational goal for the organization to live on.

I would bet a day or two of bad press from Mark's VR stunt is probably worth
the bump in engagement and publicity.

------
apexalpha
I cringed a bit when I saw this. It is one thing to go to Puerto Rico and walk
around a block of houses to raise awereness.

But to do this in VR, not even taking the effort to actually go there... it's
a bit. I don't know. I guess tone-deaf is a good word for it.

Just feels like those pictures where people pose for a selfie next to the
homeless people they just handed €1 to.

~~~
coldcode
The people of Puerto Rico are suffering in Actual Reality using VR to visit
them is unbelievably dense. Doing it as a cartoon is even worse.

~~~
hackinthebochs
No, its a way for the rest of us to visit the devastation in a way that
triggers our empathy. This isn't about Zuck, this is about the rest of the
country that has basically been ignoring PR.

~~~
leereeves
The rest of the country hasn't been ignoring Puerto Rico. It's been in the
news everyday for weeks. FEMA and other agencies sent 20,000 people to help.
Tens of billions of dollars for aid have been approved by Congress or
requested by Trump.

Perhaps you've been misled by partisan claims that Trump is failing to
respond.

------
shpx
The video this article was about is 10 minutes long
[https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10104094186863501/](https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10104094186863501/)

Here are timestamps of the quotes from the article:

[https://youtu.be/cIA1AVpKt5c?t=4m19s](https://youtu.be/cIA1AVpKt5c?t=4m19s)

[https://youtu.be/cIA1AVpKt5c?t=5m34s](https://youtu.be/cIA1AVpKt5c?t=5m34s)

[https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10104094186863501/?comm...](https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10104094186863501/?comment_id=180060679227397)

[https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10104094186863501/?comm...](https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10104094186863501/?comment_id=142922293109217)

------
sergiotapia
Fellow humans, I apologize for my lack of tact. Rest assured my borg has
assimilated the proper human constructs and all sources of error have been
purged. Have a mellow day.

~~~
sametmax
I'm gona still that. Espacially the mellow day.

------
rdtsc
> the tone-deafness of the video was pretty pronounced and even though the
> content of his video pointed to all of the positive work Facebook was doing
> in Puerto Rico,

People are pretty good at detecting superficial niceness. It's something even
babies are good at, it's hard-wired so to speak and it's basically the answer
to the important question "does this person really care, or are they just
pretending". Sure, some become really good manipulators and can fool others.

Somebody else could have done pretty much the same VR tour and it would have
had a different effect. The technology itself here wasn't the main problem.

> Facebook is generally pretty careful to isolate its CEO from opportunities
> for bad press, Zuckerberg has an extensive team helping him maintain his
> manicured public image on the social media site.

The manicuring part is the fake niceness. "Someone is making him look like
what he is not, what are they really hiding..." kind of idea. That is it is
contrasted with his or his company's action, what he did and said in the past
(ex. "They trust me — dumb fucks") and then it becomes unsettling and has a
negative effect.

~~~
ogrisel
About manicuring a public image and fake niceness, for some reason, I find the
following funny take on his public image quite authentic :)

[https://twitter.com/BasedDrWorm/status/913282180280934400](https://twitter.com/BasedDrWorm/status/913282180280934400)

~~~
rdtsc
I love it! Thanks

------
romanovcode
Still not as cringey as the fact that he wanted Chinese president to name his
son which president refused to do!

~~~
WillReplyfFood
Would have found a awesome name if i where the chinese president.

Cringekotau M. Zuckerberg

~~~
romanovcode
Hehe, or something like "Miantang" which would mean "noodle soup" :)

------
roywiggins
You'd think politicians and pseudo-politicians[1] would have all learned their
lesson from Bush's poorly-received Katrina flyover[2].

[1] [https://www.gq.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-
pollster](https://www.gq.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-pollster)

[2] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2010-11-05/bush-
call...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2010-11-05/bush-calls-new-
orleans-flyover-in-wake-of-hurricane-katrina-huge-mistake-)

------
tn_
I'm wondering what kind of feedback they got from their dry-run... I kind of
wish interviews for engineering positions took soft-skills more seriously.
What ends up happening is you have a room full of technically brilliant
people, who might be on a spectrum, making user-facing decisions.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
What happens when the top guy is on the spectrum and over-rides these
decisions? Part of the problem isn't just being on the spectrum but having
someone in a position of power on the spectrum. You can have the best men and
women at Facebook, but if Zuck is personally greenlighting these moves then it
does no good.

As someone who worked in an environment like this, its very frustrating to see
good judgment tossed out the window because the boss's ego or social blindness
overrides all.

Worse, executive culture in the US is elitist culture. After a while, when you
push 7 figures for years, fly your own plane, spend weekends on the yacht,
have four homes, etc you just simply fall out of the mainstream and one's
judgment on what is appropriate PR simply is off-kilter. Its funny how well we
understand this with, say, royalty of old, but somehow our capitalistic
'royalty' get a free pass. Its the same human brain at work here be it today
or 18th century versailles. People who are elevated to a certain point will
simply become out of touch. Adding being on the spectrum to this only makes it
worse.

~~~
Cthulhu_
> What happens when the top guy is on the spectrum and over-rides these
> decisions?

Could go either way; seemed to work well for Jobs and Apple for example. Lots
of CEO's seem to be on the sociopath spectrum.

> you just simply fall out of the mainstream and one's judgment on what is
> appropriate PR simply is off-kilter.

And then they become president. Dun dun dunnnn.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Good point, but the 'net good' Jobs argument always feels a little hollow to
me as he didn't live long enough to fight he later-life battles, namely
destroying Android which he called a stolen work.

One of Cook's first significant acts was cutting back on the patent warfare
between Apple and Google/Samsung. Jobs dying young saved us from this war, a
war that would have damaged the smartphone and wearable market significantly.

The problems with Jobs is that he fought for his customers, which was nice if
you're a customer, but if you're not, you're now a victim of Jobs. Why should
Android buyers be assaulted by him? What did they do wrong other than buy into
a more open-ish ecosystem? The patent system and courts are wholly corrupt
and/or incompetent, so its not like there's a moral avenue for jobs to attack
Android. Just everyday business sociopathy.

Worse, a lot of Jobsian logic has been tossed out the window recently. The
whole "the human thumb is so long so smartphones must be 3.5" maximum" and a
variety of other cargo-cult wisdom. The iphone and mac lines of today most
likely would not have been possible with Jobs at the helm. iOS is more
Android-like than ever and recent decisions with MacOS seem un-Jobsian to me.

I think Jobs died at the perfect time. Enough to bring in the mobile
revolution but not long enough to run it into the ground over a scorched earth
war with competitors. That doesn't exactly make him a great example of
sociopathy for 'good' as much as it makes him a good example of dying
relatively young.

The above also ignores unexcusable sins like fighting "poaching" from his
competitors with a gentlemen's deal (enforced by the threat of patent lawsuits
- again) which only kept engineer salaries lower than they should be.

------
lalos
Things like this make me want to have a VR cartoon tour of the meeting or
round table that produced this train wreck. Wonder what their expectations
were.

------
emiliobumachar
The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics strikes again.[0]

I'm taking the contrarian stance that "visiting" a disaster zone in VR is more
engaged than just reading about it in the news, which is more engaged than not
taking any interest at all, which is the default.

"When you’re in VR yourself, the surroundings feel quite real. But that sense
of empathy doesn’t extend well to people watching you as a virtual character
on a 2D screen" -Zuckerberg, as per the article

I think this effect did most of the damage. The cartoons involved are just the
avatars, presumably each participant was not even seeing their own avatar.

[0] [https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-
eth...](https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/)

~~~
sremani
Instead of talking the tech and how to apply the tools of technology, the
media and their consumers are as usual scoring style points and mounting a
lynching expedition.

VR is a useful tool, for various parties including for planners to really
"see" the devastation in 3D.

~~~
_jal
> the media and their consumers are as usual scoring style points

Zuckerberg's stunt was tacky as hell. He clearly demonstrated how laughably
out-of-touch he is with the reality other people live in. You may care more
about the tech, but it was like watching a spray-paint salesman hawk wares by
spraying over masterpieces, except worse because we're talking about humans.

Also, calling criticizing an out of touch goofball for being tacky a 'lynching
expedition' is ludicrous. It isn't even a VR lynching.

> VR is a useful tool, for various parties including for planners to really
> "see" the devastation in 3D.

Stop and think about this for a minute. If you can get sufficiently detailed
data for logistics planning (say, by driving Google Cars around), you're past
the planning stage.

------
ghostbrainalpha
I think Zuckerberg and everyone involved with VR at Facebook have been overly
effected by Chris Milk's TED Talk about how VR can be the "Ultimate Empathy
Machine".

The arguments in that talk are compelling, and they probably felt they were
doing a great humanitarian service. I don't think they are bad people at all,
but they are definitely in a bubble where a certain awareness of the
humanitarian potential for VR has made them blind to the perception of the
average person.

[https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_milk_how_virtual_reality_can...](https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_milk_how_virtual_reality_can_create_the_ultimate_empathy_machine)

~~~
elicash
That makes me wonder... If rather than viewing it as a YouTube video I had
instead watched their "tour" in VR, would I STILL have been immediately struck
by it being tone-deaf?

I think I still would be, because the whole point is to have actual
conversations with people who are affected by the humanitarian crisis.

------
taytus
The fact that probably millions of people would vote for him to be president
is terrifying to me.

~~~
eb00
Trump may have doomed us to an endless flood of celebrity politicians. I
despise Zuckerberg but other celebrity candidates scare me more. If we must
have a tech mogul I would prefer Gates or Cook.

~~~
Caveman_Coder
> "Trump may have doomed us to an endless flood of celebrity politicians..."

We've had numerous celebrity politicians before Trump. Franken, Reagan,
Arnold, Ventura, Springer, etc... The list continues[1] and it definitely
wasn't Trump that was the first (although he holds the highest position of any
of the other celebrity-actor-politicians, without having first held another
political position).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_actor-
politicians#USA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_actor-politicians#USA)

EDIT: Clarified my comment on Trump being the "first" celebrity-president

~~~
Cthulhu_
Reagan was president too though.

~~~
Caveman_Coder
Fair point. I edited my comment to make clear that I meant first celebrity-
president without having had any other political position.

------
jijji
Lets cut in some video of the rawandan refugee crisis, hey look at all the
cute kids running around LOL here we go! this is fun! here is some PR for PR

------
40acres
It's events like this one that make me doubledown on the idea that having a
more diverse employee base helps buisnesses out, especially when it comes to
"optics".

Maybe just maybe if someone at FB in the decision chain had lived in an
impoverished area struck by disaster, or had relatives who were in this
situation, they could have made a convincing argument that this was
insensitive.

It seems as if every week there are 2-3 companies that have a PR disaster that
really seems as if it could've been averted if they had a different
perspective "red team" the idea, I guess this week it's Facebook and Dove[0].

0 - [https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/dove-
apologiz...](https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/dove-apologizes-
racially-insensitive-facebook-advertisement-n808806)

~~~
ryandrake
> in the decision chain

That's the key, and in the vast majority of companies, the decision chain is
going to consist of less than 10 people, all wealthy, mostly white, and mostly
whose privileged, elite world views are divorced from "normal human" life.

------
clifdweller
Perhaps more pr firms need to have some historians in their ranks. This far
too much seems like the 19th century slumming by the affluent.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slum_tourism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slum_tourism)

------
malloreon
America: please do not elect zuck president.

------
throw2016
Many here would pass this off as 'growth hacking' and that's a bigger problem.

Of course Mark Zuckerberg doesn't need growth hacking. For a social network
that prides itself for being on top of things this makes him and the facebook
team look completely clueless and disconnected.

Maybe some fresh blood ideally not from the software ecosystem who can make
the connection back to reality.

------
dontreact
If this was so cringe-worthy, why wasn't that mentioned in the original
coverage? [https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/09/vr-zuckerberg-shares-
detai...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/09/vr-zuckerberg-shares-details-on-
some-of-facebooks-ai-aid-to-the-red-cross-in-puerto-rico/)

~~~
MattBearman
From your lined article:

"seeing a cartoon avatar in the middle of an NPR-produced 360 video
highlighting the situation in Puerto Rico while very real people walk around
surveying the devastation of their homes perhaps wasn’t the most appropriate
choice."

------
thearn4
It reads like a script right out of Silicon Valley.

------
bamboozled
Really? Talk about out of touch.

------
20170319
Despite an army of PR people coaching him for over a decade, he still can't
stop the inner sociopath from coming out once in a while.

~~~
dang
I know how beloved that old standby is to some of you, but it breaks the HN
guideline against name-calling. We ban accounts that do this repeatedly, so
please don't.

No, this isn't because we love Zuckerberg, serve corporate overloads or
whatnot—it's because repeating the same things over and over is off topic for
this site, especially when they are toxic waste.

All: this is also the sort of comment we use to downweight user votes, since
it's a honeytrap for reflexive internet indignation, and that is the thing
we're most hoping to avoid here. If you'd like your votes to count on HN,
cultivate the habit of pausing before you use them.

~~~
20170319
What standby? This article is about Zuckerberg apologizing (again) for being
completely tone-deaf in a manner that suggests he really has no idea how
humans work beyond stimulus-response machines.

What do you suggest? That we comment on the VR tech?

This entire thread is just reaction on his behavior. You may as well just
close the thread.

~~~
dang
The "sociopath" standby, with extra anti-points for "dumb fucks" icing.

The thread of course has plenty of things to talk about other than that
petrified nugget, which was getting old ten years ago.

~~~
20170319
"dumb fucks" was an event in time.

Sociopath is a quality that manifests repeatedly through different events over
time, including this latest one. This entire thread is people saying the same
thing in different words.

Harvey Weinsten appearing in nothing but his boxer shorts for an actress
audition was a moment in time. The qualities that made him creepy and
predatory remained constant.

~~~
dang
You're doubling down on what I asked you not to do, which is casually sling
accusations of mental illness with an internet swear word. If you do it again
we will ban you.

Even if you were right in this case (which you have no evidence for, just a
connect-the-dots cartoon, and few dots at that), this would still be so.
"Sociopath" comes even before "shill" on the feces-throwing internet trigger
list. Every time we tolerate such a violation of the site guidelines
encourages others to do the same. That slope is both slippery and steep. Since
my #1 job is to (try to) prevent HN from plummeting to its death down it, it's
not like this is a hard call.

~~~
hungerstrike
Without his comment we wouldn’t have had this whole conversation.

HN is sliding backwards due to this kind of censorship, not for lack of it.

~~~
dang
This is not a good conversation to be having; it's a necessary one, made
necessary by people breaking this site's rules and endangering it.

You're talking to someone who has been doing this same thing for so many years
that I basically do it in my sleep, with about as much interest. If that's a
backward slide, then (as Voltaire said when someone told him coffee was a slow
poison) it must be very slow.

~~~
hungerstrike
> This is not a good conversation to be having.

In your (sleepy and uninterested) opinion. I love it. We're all learning so
much! There are more comments on this sub-thread than the rest of the thread.

> I basically do it in my sleep, with about as much interest...

That's exactly what it feels like.

Congrats.

~~~
dang
> _sleepy and uninterested_

That of course was a joke, meant to acknowledge how tedious and off-topic
these digressions are. A factual version of the remark would be something like
'I've done this tens of thousands of times over several years now, so any
negative effect of the sort you're claiming would long have been priced into
the system'.

------
ckastner
Unless he does indeed style himself as "Zuck", can we please spell his name
properly?

~~~
codemac
Real Names Only!

------
_pmf_
Let's focus on the positive things: at least he did not call the people "dumb
fucks" again.

