I don't mean to excuse Facebook for lots of negative consequences they've unleashed on the world, but I think journalists should realize that repeating ad infinitum Zuckerberg's "Dumb fucks" quote can have the opposite of the intended purpose. I stopped reading after that quote.
That quote has been repeated a bajillion times already. Importantly, it was over 20 years ago, as the article points out, when Zuckerberg was an arrogant college student in a private chat. Ironically, I think this quote is a great argument against Facebook and social media, but almost in the exact opposite way that journalists intend.
People change. People say dumb shit when they're in college, especially when they're trying to boast to friends, privately. One of the biggest downsides of Facebook and social media is that it preserves all the mistakes of our youth (which in my opinion should have the freedom to be gradually forgotten as they recede in the past) for all time. There has been a ton of research and musings about how today's young people are much more risk averse than generations past, largely to their detriment, and it's not surprising given how the consequences of a juvenile mistake are more severe now than ever before.
To emphasize, I'm not giving Zuckerberg a free pass, at all. I just think there are tons of much more recent actions and behaviors by Zuckerberg and Meta that deserve opprobrium that can easily be highlighted. You don't need to dredge up 2-decade old quotes that have already been widely reported. It smacks of lazy journalism and just shows that you are using some of the worst impulses that Facebook itself has made widespread.
So right. I have lived experience with someone who stalked me based on a 20-year-old (literally) 20 years ago - Internet post. At first, I thought they were sarcastic - until they actually drugged my sister and had her call me and I realized they had hired a sex offender to actually stalk me. This app is the same way. No ability to delete or forget what is posted. No one is suing anyone 20 years later, so retention of that data is not needed. It is only kept purely for profiling purposes. Ones that do not seem to add value other than support smear campaign efforts.
Having had first-hand experience, it's like walking into a nice resort at age 50 and having someone at the dining table pick up a brawl from a rugby match 20 years ago, thinking oh hey this is where we left off last I saw you.
The fact that your entire life's story, your narrative, is also forever preserved in the archives of the net, also lends credence to the illusion of a permanent, unchanging, fixed and immutable self.
People don't change. They can't change. It's impossible to act "out of character," because if you act in a manner that is opposed to how you have been depicted, represented on social media in the past, people will say, "oh, that's not the real you!" and reject all your attempts at self transformation, reminding you of who you were, where you've been, what you were wearing in that group photo last Friday...
It's fundamentally changing our concept of self, ossifying it in our digital fossil record. It's impossible to introduce a discontinuity into the thread of your life's story when the cameras are rolling 24/7. The cognitive fluency of being able to access thousands of self-representations, facsimiles of who you are, makes it easier to identify with the selfie on the screen. Easier to identify with the profile picture or the avatar. Easier to become locked into the constraints you imposed on yourself when you decided to freeze a snapshot of your person and preserve it in a digital time capsule. Easier to fall prey to the delusion that the self is permanent and immutable.
You never step in the same river twice. It just looks like the same river when we take a picture of it and frame it on our wall.
That quote has been repeated a bajillion times already. Importantly, it was over 20 years ago, as the article points out, when Zuckerberg was an arrogant college student in a private chat. Ironically, I think this quote is a great argument against Facebook and social media, but almost in the exact opposite way that journalists intend.
People change. People say dumb shit when they're in college, especially when they're trying to boast to friends, privately. One of the biggest downsides of Facebook and social media is that it preserves all the mistakes of our youth (which in my opinion should have the freedom to be gradually forgotten as they recede in the past) for all time. There has been a ton of research and musings about how today's young people are much more risk averse than generations past, largely to their detriment, and it's not surprising given how the consequences of a juvenile mistake are more severe now than ever before.
To emphasize, I'm not giving Zuckerberg a free pass, at all. I just think there are tons of much more recent actions and behaviors by Zuckerberg and Meta that deserve opprobrium that can easily be highlighted. You don't need to dredge up 2-decade old quotes that have already been widely reported. It smacks of lazy journalism and just shows that you are using some of the worst impulses that Facebook itself has made widespread.