Mark Zuckerberg still doesn't get it

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/mark-zuckerberg-still-doesnt-get-it

by bookofjoe • 7 years ago

44 85 7 years ago

lisper• 7 years ago

I think Zuck "gets it" much more than the reporter does: being evasive and dishonest can be extremely lucrative in today's world if you do it exactly right. Zuck has always seemed to possess a natural talent in this regard, and now has become a true master of the craft. That's why he travels in a private jet while reporters fly coach.

Torwald• 7 years ago

I think Zuck "gets it" much more than the reporter does… This assumes the reporter is honest in his writing. Then, of course, it is apparent that Zuckerberg gets something the reporter doesn't understand, in the way you describe it.

But what if, not only is Zuckerberg "evasive and dishonest", but the reporter as well? Is it not to the profit of the reporter to pretend in his writing to not get what Zuckerberg is doing?

It very well is! That way the reporter gets to criticise Zuckerberg on the grounds of his actions. That is a case much easier to defend. The reporter may very well discern a form of pretending on the side of Zuckerberg, but how do you prove this? Very hard to do so and risky. It is better writing to be 'dishonest' and call Zuckerberg out on the surface level of his actions.

OTOH, it could very well be that the reporter is naive and doesn't discern the true motivations of Zuckerberg's actions. But how can we know?

leftyted• 7 years ago

"Free speech is good" is not a "blithe techno-utopian narrative".

The internet makes people uncomfortable because it lives somewhere in between the realm of public discourse (heavily regulated) and private discourse (mostly unregulated). On the internet, these realms mix, and people (especially in the press) have a hard time sorting out which is which.

I don't know if "free speech is good" or if it "leads inexorably to truth and progress". I doubt it. But I do think that any cure will be worse than the disease. Democracy may not not "lead inexorably to progress" either, but does that mean we should nix it?

aeturnum3• 7 years ago

I think your comment and Zuckerberg’s framing of the issue hides the ball in a way that appears dishonest, though I do not think that is your intent.

For instance, what do you mean by this?:

But I do think that any cure will be worse than the disease

Because it all depends on what "cure" and "disease" mean, right? Free speech is good is blithe and techno-utopian in the sense that it makes a blanket statement that refuses to get into the details and have opinions. Facebook used for ethnic cleansing? Well, free speech is good and Facebook is all bout free speech; the problem has to lie elsewhere. Guess we should fix that ethnic cleansing problem somewhere else.

Sticking to a high-level generality implies that, because your basic aim is good we must frame solutions or restrictions in a different way. We must remedy the damage done with speech using ideas and methods that aren't related to speech, somehow.

I don't know what is in Zuckerberg’s heart, but it strikes me that this position is extremely kind to Facebook's business model. As long as everyone is committed to unmoderated speech being central to digital spaces, they can avoid expensive moderation. They can also distance themselves from the consequences of the use of the platform they designed and provide. We should not let them do either one of those things.

Edit:

To use a non-speech example: This seems to me like someone claiming that we can't do anything about drunk driving because "people need to drive to work." Of course, the statement is true and people do need to drive to work. It simply glosses over all of the many changes we can make to how we let people drive that can crack down on drunk driving. It refuses to engage with the issue by asserting a general principle that, actually, does not present any obstacle to regulation and is unresponsive to the critique.

pbreit3• 7 years ago

How could you possibly ever accuse a website of being “used for ethnic cleansing”?

repolfx4• 7 years ago

Facebook used for ethnic cleansing?

I'm not sure you should criticise others for hiding the ball or being dishonest when phrasing it like that.

Facebook is a website, a pretty trivial one at that. It isn't attached to flying weapons platforms, it doesn't command an army. It cannot be used for ethnic cleansing in any sensible use of English, no more than paper and ink or radio can be "used for ethnic cleansing".

So yes - your sarcastic statement is correct. If some African warlord goes nuts and starts mass killing his ethnic rivals, Facebook has sweet FA to do that with that, even if lots of his supporters are posting on Facebook. The problem lies with the people pulling the trigger, the people command them to pull the trigger. Don't try and spread it to Zuckerberg because unlike most genocidal ethnic cleansers, he happens to be a meek American you think you can influence.

We must remedy the damage done with speech using ideas and methods that aren't related to speech, somehow.

Yes, exactly. Speech doesn't damage things. People damage things. The conflation of speech with physical violence is exactly how you legitimise thuggery on campus, where crazed students are engaging in actual physical violence against people who are just presenting their opinion. And it's never, never, never acceptable to shoot someone who is merely presenting their opinion.

This seems to me like someone claiming that we can't do anything about drunk driving because "people need to drive to work."

This is a strawman argument nobody ever makes. Drunk driving is a precisely definable and measurable condition with precisely understood outcomes and is trivially avoided. "Bad speech" has no definition at all and thus can't be trivially avoided, as the ever-expanding horizon of what counts as offensive so neatly demonstrates.

chrismcb• 7 years ago

Free speech is the cornerstone to a free society. You can't have freedom without free speech. Free speech is good, and everyone should strive to keep speech free.

ykevinator• 7 years ago

But isn't a fair compromise to honor take down requests when the content is demobstrably false?

wnmurphy• 7 years ago

Facebook was used in 2016 by the Kremlin for disinformation warfare with the express purpose of swaying the results of our presidential election. Facebook recently adopted an official policy that they will not remove political ads which are blatantly, demonstrably false. This policy was drafted by Katie Harbath, Facebook's Public Policy Director of Global Elections, who was previously Chief Digital Strategist for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Freedom of speech is a straw man. It only applies to government interference in the free speech of individuals. Facebook is a private platform, with no obligation to protect the free speech of its users. They are using it as an excuse to protect the spread of disinformation.

Yet another reason that Facebook is toxic.

cobweb2• 7 years ago

Are you not beginning to struggle with the contradictions of your political ideas? You want a central authority to ban the spread of "blatantly false" ideas that you fear may cause plebians to vote the wrong way, yet you support affording plebians with the full right to vote? Would it not be simpler to bans plebians from voting, and therefore remove your worry entirely that they may vote the wrong way when hearing "blatantly false" ideas?

lordnacho• 7 years ago

It doesn't have to be the same authority. You could have an independent ombudsman.

CydeWeys2• 7 years ago

We are being attacked with foreign propaganda by our long-term enemies. They are succeeding in destroying our position on the world stage. It's not something that can be turned a blind eye to under the guise of free speech (which it isn't).

jakelazaroff7• 7 years ago

Are you not beginning to struggle with the contradictions of yours? Laws against defamation are exactly intended to prevent the spread of false ideas. Why not remove them, and let the plebeians figure things out themselves?

malvosenior16• 7 years ago

They are using it as an excuse to protect the spread of disinformation.

I really don't think so. They want usage, period. They don't want to actively spread disinformation. They probably find that editorializing and censoring information annoys users. There's been no proof whatsoever that Russia had any impact via FB on the 2016 election. Most people know this and reject larger narratives that push centralized manipulation of freely publishable information.

jakelazaroff7• 7 years ago

There's been no proof whatsoever that Russia had any impact via FB on the 2016 election.

This is false. Facebook themselves announced that Russia spent $100,000 on ads aimed at U.S. voters. Posts from six Russian propaganda accounts were shared hundreds of millions of times. [1]

Effort doesn't equal impact, I suppose, but there's no way of proving the latter and the former is still extremely disturbing.

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/inside-facebook-mark-zuckerberg-...

yousajoe2• 7 years ago

Facebook was used in 2016 by the Kremlin for disinformation warfare with the express purpose of swaying the results of our presidential election

As if a $100k ad buy [1] will sway voters. $100K is insignificant for social media ad spend and won't influence anything and marketers knows this, but the masses do not. Both candidates spent $81 Million on facebook ads [3] and $100K is a joke representing 0.05 of ad-spend.

The media and democratic party knows people are clueless about advertising and has made this "russia hacked elections using FB", a talking point that helps their narrative. FB ads are not that effective.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/technology/facebook-russi...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-electi...

[3] https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/01/russian-facebook-ad-spend/

malvosenior16• 7 years ago

If Russia was really able to have significant influence with $100k vs $81M the techniques they used could be studied and duplicated. Every startup would love to have marketing that effective.

The truth is it had no measurable effect exactly as you’d expect.

yepteuedat• 7 years ago

It’s pretty well debated throughout history that society is ultimately free to put whatever constraints on behaviors that it decides are infecting it’s organic agency. John Stuart Mill is the first name that comes to mind. Paulo Freire discusses being forced to “import” a model of culture as authoritarian in nature.

I don’t owe billionaires my emotional & political deference to some notion of “in an objective vacuum”.

You can point at a method for counting that you agree with. I can still tell you to get fucked.

That this is even a question of being within the purview of a society to mitigate spooky action at a distance potential for telling the species “what’s real” if you have the $$ to buy enough ads is absurd.

The tech scene is acting like the Boomers. Entitled to control of our work and the problems we align to.

That’s not a politically defensible position. That’s exactly what religion does. What a shock a culture with deeply puritanical origins continues to feel we’re just a flock to be is emotionally curated. So much for objective views of reality.

benjaminjosephw• 7 years ago

I have become convinced that, if our Silicon Valley overlords are to help solve the informational crisis they’ve created, the first thing they’ll need to lose is their blind faith that they can go on releasing new products, and profiting from them, and the net result will surely, in the long run, tend toward the good. This has always been a convenient self-justification. There has never been any solid reason to believe it.

This is an interesting point. I haven't been exposed to much advice on when and how to start thinking about the broader impacts of a startup. Is that just because I haven't looked hard enough or is there a general belief in the invisible hands of the market being the best guide for how a business should operate?

ixtli4• 7 years ago

I actually subjected myself the the entire 30 minute video of his speech and there’s little else I can say other than that it was embarrassing, bordering on disgusting in its western chauvinism. And I don’t just mean castigation of Chinese government policy: he quite literally said it’s in the worlds best interest for Americans to continue controlling the censorship policies for the entire internet.

PunchTornado• 7 years ago

1) the GDPR is European and has a huge effect in changing policies for internet giants

2) are you defending the government currently imprisoning millions of people in indoctrination camps just because they believe in something?

ixtli4• 7 years ago

1) and that’s a great thing. watch the video and you’ll see it begins with the claim that “no one wants to live in a world where tech companies control what you can say” and ends with “but we should keep doing exactly what we’re doing”. GDPR would never pass here partially because interests like Zuck’s don’t want it to.

2) quite explicitly I am NOT saying that. What I’m saying is that neither the government that disappears protestors NOR the government running concentration camps in the open NOR the government outright banning climate protests should be deciding what qualifies as dangerous to say.

EDIT on 2) just because I’m critical of the claim that the west and America specifically has any moral high ground here doesn’t mean in any way that I condone human rights violations by China. I think that’s an unreasonable implication.

bambax• 7 years ago

The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world, so they're not in a position to lecture any other country about freedom.

jacquesm• 7 years ago

Zuck gets it just fine, he's following the money. If you think a guy running a multi-billion dollar company doesn't understand something basic it is more than likely that you are simply not understanding him.

What else is he going to do? Do the right thing and shut Facebook down starting a year before any election?

ronilan• 7 years ago

“Whatever Mark says, Sheryl is inclined to agree”

hnuser54• 7 years ago

The New Yorker slamming the printing press and the idea of the inevitable march of progress was a bit of a surprise. Who's the "neo-reactionary" now?

wayne_skylar• 7 years ago

Oh I think he does get it. Facebook is a tool uniquely designed to influence behavior. Before you had to advertise to a generic stereotype of a person whereas now -- thanks to facebook's treasure trove of user data -- you can target just the perfect audience to get your ideas spreading organically.

Facebook sells the ability to do this to anybody who will pay. This is the core of how they make money. After a period of pretending to search for a solution, Zuckerberg has finally ducked behind the notion of 'free speech' as his excuse for doing nothing. He knows that the only way to stop it would be to stop selling this ability to influence. And he's actually right that it shouldn't be him deciding what are the good and bad uses of this powerful tool.

The blind faith that increased connectivity is a net benefit is what got us here. Seeing how social media is actually increasing depression makes me think the opposite. The sad truth is that most people are too vulnerable to misinformation and the older centralized distribution of information is probably the best for stability.

basch• 7 years ago

free speech is different than amplified speech. what people are allowed to say on a platform shouldnt equal what people can pay to have amplified and targeted towards peoples attention.

But I agree with you, that "he gets it" in the sense that as a leader and figurehead his job is to inspire confidence. It may not be working for you, but his mantra for a long time now has been to extol the virtues of what is possible if people dream and focus on the benefits. Unlike much of the userbase here, he chooses to project the public personification of his self as a glass half full person, where optimism, hard work, engineering, and money are put towards a better future. He knows that if he relaxes and steps back from that ruse, charade, or whatever you want to call it, that it leads to a crumbling house of cards. Not unlike a president, confidence in the system starts with the top of the house. Don''t forget, his job is also to keep his stock prices up for his shareholders, who are primarily himself. And despite what the fifth estate and a subset of techies want to believe, facebook and its suite of products are as popular as ever. Sure, growth has slowed, but thats bound to happen once you count 1/3rd of the words population as those that your tool serves.

modeless• 7 years ago

The sad truth is that most people are too vulnerable to misinformation and the older centralized distribution of information is probably the best for stability.

So information can be dangerous and should be controlled for the sake of an orderly society? There's a rising superpower that shares your view: China. But at the rate support for socialism is rising around the world, I'm pretty sure that America will be there too in about 40 years.

kapnobatairza• 7 years ago

Zuckerberg has successfully shifted the discourse to a discussion about free speech, but I don't think that free speech is under attack here.

I don't care if Trump and pro-Trump supporters or organizations want to post lies on their own feed. But if Facebook is getting PAID for political ADVERTISING, that gives them a moral responsibility to regulate that content. If they want to abdicate that responsibility, then I think the government has an interest in preventing the corruption or the appearance of corruption in our elections, so reasonable restrictions/regulations on political advertising on social networks should be considered.

chrischen2• 7 years ago

If one wanted to make a news company that owned and ran both FOX News and MSNBC, it’d be Facebook.

pbreit3• 7 years ago

I still think it’s the critics who don’t get it. The technology was always going to obviously move in this direction. The critics confoundingly both complain about the power of tech behemoths AND that they should be arbiting freedom on their platforms.

mindgam3• 7 years ago

Somewhat ironic that Zuck mentions free expression about a hundred times and yet:

1. took no questions from reporters

2. Facebook Live chat was scrubbed of any critical comments by algorithmic filters

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ma...

zachguo• 7 years ago

Polarization and misinformation are inherent flaws of free speech, the advents of cable TVs and internet only amplified them.

But you don't need to act like the Politburo of the Communist Party to fix them. There may be solutions without fundamentally underming the value.

How about teaching kids critical thinking and how to differentiate misinformation in schools? https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/05/how-finland-is-fighti...

Mark Zuckerberg still doesn't get it

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