Thiel and Zuckerberg on Facebook, Millennials, and predictions for 2030 (2019)

https://www.techemails.com/p/mark-zuckerberg-peter-thiel-millennials

by badcryptobitch • 8 months ago

60 149 8 months ago

lotsofpulp2• 8 months ago

One theme we've discussed is that many important institutions in our society (eg education, healthcare, housing, efforts to combat climate change) are still run primarily by boomers in ways that transfer a lot of value from younger generations to boomers themselves.

I do not understand the reason for assuming any successive group of old leaders to behave differently than boomers?

Millenials are going to have an even more disproportionate old age population, and presumably will seek to squeeze the younger generations even more than the boomers:

https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2...

scarmig• 8 months ago

It will be an endless whinge "the Boomers screwed us over, so we need to screw over everyone else just to get by."

Mistletoe• 8 months ago

The era you experienced growing up can influence how you are when you get older quite a bit. The generation before the Great Depression tried to create a more progressive equitable world but of course that was eroded eventually. Everything goes in cycles and the next generation coming that experiences the fallout from all our recent excesses will be different as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Era

iwontberude4• 8 months ago

Interesting perspective. Anecdotally, the people I met who lived through it were traumatized into a scarcity mentality and would spend the rest of their lives hoarding anything and using it to gain a sense of control. Certainly FOX news knew how to get to them with fear, formative fear.

lotsofpulp2• 8 months ago

The key parameter that has changed all over the world is there are more net benefit recipients than net payers in (i.e. far more old people relative to young people).

By far, the largest wealth transfer that happens is young to old, via defined benefit pensions (such as social security), healthcare, and asset price increases (via decreases in purchasing power of the currency).

In a democracy, most voters will vote for these policies, because most voters are or will soon be beneficiaries of these policies. I am betting that Millenials, once they are in their 50s, will continue voting for the same policies that Boomers have for the past 20 years, since they will have the same incentives.

code_for_monkey3• 8 months ago

nah, I think by the time millenials are old we'll all still be working for our boss: an 160 year old cyborg demon AI

elzbardico• 8 months ago

The current oligarchs plan on dispensing all together with the need for the blood of the young by replacing them with AI and robots.

tekbruh9000• 8 months ago

Also much more addicted to service economy with little survival and self sufficiency instincts.

Anecdotally, very briefly dated a 40 year old who claimed she only ever cooked boxed food; had never even baked or microwaved a potato. Her words!

They’re the Gizmodo and Ars Technica journalist crowd exploiting slave labor while bitching about social justice. The 1984 double speak is strong with them.

America is a passive investor society. Like Trump thinking factories will just appear because he wishes it, Millennials wish to be enriched without giving a shit about externalities.

I base this entirely off their actual effort on the ground. Their "thoughts and prayers" may be cranked to 11, but my lived experience is they're even more disconnected from obligation to themselves than Boomers and GenX who at least spent some part of their life solving their ground truth problems.

They prefer socialism (which I am not against) because they realize they're screwed as individuals, they need help. Many probably expect they'll be served by it, not serving it.

tedivm3• 8 months ago

While our company has a special role in the lives of this generation, this is likely particularly important for how I show up because I am the most well-known person of my generation.

They really are up their own asses so much in this thread. Just the arrogance of these people absolutely kills me.

xp84• 8 months ago

Well, it’s probably true only if you consider sports and media celebrities as not people, which would be a stretch.

saubeidl4• 8 months ago

I've never seen Zuckerberg fill up a stadium the same way Messi, Ronaldo, Taylor Swift or Beyonce have...

notahacker• 8 months ago

tbf they haven't been the villain in a movie (yet...)

throitallaway5• 8 months ago

Musk tried that once at a Dave Chappelle show. It didn't go so well for him.

code_for_monkey3• 8 months ago

Peter Thiel thinks Greta Thunberg is the antichrist. this should be disqualifying for life in the public sphere and somehow it is not.

saubeidl4• 8 months ago

We must understand that all of our industries leaders are deeply mentally ill and dangerous people.

Whether that is from not ever being told no once they got rich enough or whether it's pathological to even seek out that dimension of wealth is not clear, but the result is worrying either way.

throitallaway5• 8 months ago

It's always projection with those people.

vvpan3• 8 months ago

And Elon Musk does Nazi salutes in-front of the nation and just goes back to being CEO of things.

jimbokun14• 8 months ago

What the fuck is the "public sphere" and who decides who does or does not get a membership card?

Like, call Thiel an idiot with stupid ideas that are dumb, fine, but trying to cancel someone from the "public sphere" just reeks of passive aggression.

AndrewKemendo• 8 months ago

Devils advocate here

I’m not agreeing, but I’m hard pressed to find another person that is from the millennial generation that has been a persistent “public figure” as long and persistently than Zuck. He has been persistently in the news more or less daily since 2006.

Can you name another millennial that has a wider and longer lasting notoriety?

Does that mean that people respect him, or think of him as an ideal person or whatever?

but that’s not what Zuckerberg is saying - he’s saying “well known”

I’m not sure I could name another millennial that is as well known globally for as long - maybe Ronaldo or Taylor Swift

throitallaway5• 8 months ago

That may be true, but that's not the news I'm exposed to. I only see him pop up every few years or so when he's announcing The Next Big Thing or trying to look/act more like a human person.

9rx3• 8 months ago

I’m hard pressed to find another person that is from the millennial generation that has been a persistent “public figure” as long and persistently than Zuck.

Prince William and Prince Harry have him beat on that front, surely? They've been persistent public figures since birth.

And if we limit it to modern times, Taylor Swift has got to be way more well known. Even my young kids know who Taylor Swift is. They have no clue about who Zuckerberg is.

TheCoelacanth• 8 months ago

Do you think that is genuinely the news in general, or just the subset of the news you personally follow?

I would imagine Swifties see a lot more Taylor Swift news than Zuckerberg news. For someone on HN, they're going to see a lot more Zuckerberg news than average.

hiddencost• 8 months ago

I don't think this particular Satan needs or deserves an advocate.

throitallaway5• 8 months ago

Those that have their names on the high score board of capitalism are truly the Einsteins of our generation and we should be so lucky to hear every thought stream that dribbles out of their heads.

lbrito• 8 months ago

They are the Bond villains of their generation.

latexr5• 8 months ago

r/Millennials has a relevant list of Millennial celebrities.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Millennials/comments/1g1gw7v/famous...

Zuckerberg thinks he’s more well-known than Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran, Scarlett Johansson, Adele, Lady Gaga, Cristiano Ronaldo, Beyoncé…

misiti37802• 8 months ago

I mean, he is *as* well known as those people. You think more people know who Ed Sheeran than Zuckerberg?

hearsathought2• 8 months ago

That Meta/facebook had a special role in the lives of his generation is not up for debate. It's a fact. Also, zuckerburg probably meant he was the "most well-known person in tech" of his generation, which is true. But expanding it beyond tech, he definitely is as well-known as anyone else in his generation. Everyone in his generation knows what facebook is. Everyone in his generation knows zuckerburg.

The guy may be arrogant, but nothing about his statement was arrogant. He was stating facts.

tedivm3• 8 months ago

You literally had to rewrite the meaning of the statement to remove the arrogance. He didn't say "in tech", he said what he said.

butterfi• 8 months ago

Zuckerberg as generational representative made my millennial and Gen Z kids lol

tsm• 8 months ago

Previously (2024-07-07; 136 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40898654

badcryptobitch• 8 months ago

I didn't know that. I encountered these emails recently from the Tech Emails X account and figured I'd share here because 1) it's very timely considering the NYC mayor elections and 2) HN is a great place to read about people's thoughts on topics like these outside of where I usually hangout.

iwontberude4• 8 months ago

This article flame bait. No point in keeping it up.

buellerbueller2• 8 months ago

Satire, by definition, is flamebait.

That this particular of satire is nigh on indistinguishable from reality/so believable indicates how good a satire it is.

seydor3• 8 months ago

How is this satire

jimbokun14• 8 months ago

It's not satire.

lisdexan• 8 months ago

Reality is stranger than fiction.

DrewADesign3• 8 months ago

** maybe edit of un-shame: ... is it?

* edit of shame: it's satire. Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug.

there is a certain sense in which Mark Zuckerberg has been cast as 'the spokesman' for the Millennial generation — as the single person who gives voice to the hopes and fears and the unique experiences of this generation, at least in the USA

That is an absolutely bananas read of Zuck's place in American culture.

iwontberude4• 8 months ago

I just realized it’s satire now that I’m actually reading their thread further.

DrewADesign3• 8 months ago

Whoopsie. Bizarre that it's this plausible but it shows how prone I am to confirmation bias. I'm adding an edit to the comment but leaving it up as a reminder.

tedivm3• 8 months ago

This is not satire. This is a website that has been around for years that has an email archive from emails released in lawsuits against tech companies. The page literally sites the specific case ("Tennessee v. Meta (2024)") that this came from and is easily verifiable.

Not satire. They really are just that up their own asses.

sebular• 8 months ago

I’m browsing around on this site and don’t see any indication that this is satire. I think your initial reaction is correct.

seydor3• 8 months ago

He is flattening Mark in order to keep him under his leash. Zuck has never said something generationally interesting

yapyap2• 8 months ago

Was so confused on your comment cause to me it seemed like he was massively inflating the Zuck.

Till I figured u likely slightly mistyped flattering, haha.

carlosjobim• 8 months ago

Why are main stream media reporting on this, if it's satire? It's supposedly from a court filing in Tennessee vs Meta.

tempfile2• 8 months ago

Is it really satire? If so, I'm genuinely angry this was not flagged as such. But there is no indication on the website, and they have some older emails which sound familiar as authentic.

Aurornis• 8 months ago

That is an absolutely bananas read of Zuck's place in American culture.

It’s flattery. Consider the audience for the emails. These were not intended for the public.

jimbokun14• 8 months ago

It's true for technology in the sense that anytime Congress wants to bring in someone for a hearing about anything tangentially related to being online, Zuckerberg will be invited.

But beyond that, yeah.

oplicktis• 8 months ago

Being the cause of widespread despair, hate and fear, and so, the one most often called upon to be held accountable (at least from an optics perspective) is dramatically different than being "'the spokesman' for the Millennial generation — as the single person who gives voice to the hopes and fears and the unique experiences of this generation, at least in the USA" which is a completely delusional take.

tempodox• 8 months ago

I’ll say this: When you can’t distinguish reality from satire any more, you know we’re royally screwed.

mvdtnz• 8 months ago

It's important to understand that Peter Thiel is incredibly stupid.

DrewADesign3• 8 months ago

Perhaps his most benign character flaw.

noir_lord3• 8 months ago

But that does beg the question - what is it about our current system (western civilisation) that seems to reward the incredibly stupid.

Though I do wonder if you looked at all people with a net worth of over say 100M whether the proportion of incredibly stupid people would be the same as the general population or whether we just have so many incredibly stupid people some of them will get lucky.

yapyap2• 8 months ago

It sure reads like satire but I dont think it is.

code_for_monkey3• 8 months ago

there is a certain sense in which Mark Zuckerberg has been cast as 'the spokesman' for the Millennial generation — as the single person who gives voice to the hopes and fears and the unique experiences of this generation, at least in the USA

Fucks sake... that is an absolutely bananas read of Zuck's place in American culture.

nextworddev• 8 months ago

Are we sure these guys didn’t actively contribute to creating this future?

hypeatei• 8 months ago

Isn't Thiel the one that believes democracy and freedom are incompatible and also a co-founder of Palantir? Why do we give these people any legitimacy? Because they have money?

buellerbueller2• 8 months ago

We don't give them legitimacy. The people who govern us do; they don't actually care about democracy, the second it causes them to lose elections. Look at Trump: lost an election, incited a riot to overthrow the peaceful transfer of power, pardoned those who were complicit in it.

The sad thing is, because the Dem playbook is now "fight fire with fire" (cf. the gerrymandering wars), it is only a matter of time until they stoop to the same level of overthrowing legitimate elections, in the name of fighting fire with fire...

karmakurtisaani• 8 months ago

Peter Thiel knows about the antichrist..

Sorry, this song has been in my head since I saw the South Park episode. Highly recommend anyone to watch the 2nd Trump era episodes, they sure rid these people of any legitimacy they might have.

noir_lord3• 8 months ago

Thanks Peter – hugely thought provoking!

Excuse me while I throw up in my mouth, I never liked Clegg much even when he was in office but bleh.

cjs_ac• 8 months ago

The most striking thing about this exchange for me is how abstract it is: until the last email from Clegg, there's no reference to any of Facebook/Meta's products. It sounds more like political strategists trying to find out how to appeal to Millennials, but by pandering to Millennials' pre-existing political views rather than trying to push a political view.

lm284697• 8 months ago

They're parasites, data parasites, political parasites, economical parasites, ...

hamdingers• 8 months ago

Millennials remain our most active users.

Even in back in 2019 I have a hard time believing this was true. As a millennial, my facebook feed was overtaken by my parents generation in the early 2010s and the handful of peers I know who still use it regularly use it to communicate with that generation.

Maybe he's counting Instagram usage as part of Facebook?

drivebyhooting2• 8 months ago

Facebook and instagram are a disease. Time and again Meta’s properties have been shown to be detrimental to children’s (and adults’) mental health. Even by Meta’s own research!

The whole thing stinks of the same foul reek as big tobacco. When their reckoning comes we will wonder how we could have let one megalomaniac’s scam go so far.

They trust me. Dumb fucks.
Zuck aut nihil.

He never changed.

jimbokun14• 8 months ago

Along with every other social network.

drivebyhooting2• 8 months ago

You’re probably right. That doesn’t exonerate Zuck from his crimes.

theideaofcoffee• 8 months ago

Do these dweebs ever let up on huffing their own farts? I can only hope that the actual measurements of their declining platform influence and use are true and we see FB peter out at some point. Sadly, it'll be replaced by something even more banal, but at least Zuck will fade away, here's hoping Thiel does as well.

HardCodedBias2• 8 months ago

"One example of such an "iron grip" from my colleague Eric Weinstein: Of the 67 top research universities in the US, 62 have Baby Boomer presidents (three are Silent Generation and only two are Generation X). Today, the median age of these 67 university presidents is 65 years-old... And this is very different from the recent past. Only thirty years ago, in 1990, the median age of these same university presidents was a much lower 52-years old;"

Got to admit that's very interesting. That was January 5, 2020, I wonder how it looks today.

I asked chat:

Boomers: ~13 of 20 (~65%) Examples: Princeton (Christopher Eisgruber, 1961), MIT (Sally Kornbluth, 1960), Harvard (Alan Garber, 1955), Duke (Vincent Price, 1957), Brown (Christina Paxson, 1960), Johns Hopkins (Ron Daniels, 1959), Columbia’s acting leaders across 2024–25 were also Boomers.

Gen X: ~7 of 20 (~35%) Examples: Stanford (Jonathan Levin, 1972), Yale (Maurie McInnis, 1966), Dartmouth (Sian Beilock, 1976), Rice (Reginald DesRoches, 1967), Vanderbilt (Daniel Diermeier, 1965), WashU (Andrew D. Martin, 1972), Notre Dame (Rev. Robert A. Dowd, 1965).

Millennials/Silent: 0 in this Top-20 (today). (A few large publics just outside the USNWR top-20 have Boomer or Gen-X chancellors as well; e.g., UC Berkeley’s Rich Lyons, 1961.)

The boomers are still holding on to power. Amazing!

What's it like in the private sector?

Gen X: ~53% (Microsoft/S. Nadella 1967; Alphabet/S. Pichai 1972; Amazon/A. Jassy 1968; Tesla/E. Musk 1971; Eli Lilly/D. Ricks 1967; Walmart/D. McMillon 1966; Tencent/Ma Huateng 1971; Visa/R. McInerney 1975; Mastercard/M. Miebach 1968; ExxonMobil/D. Woods 1965; plus Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters 1970.)

Boomers: ~43% (Nvidia/J. Huang 1963; Apple/T. Cook 1960; Saudi Aramco/A. Nasser 1958; Broadcom/Hock Tan 1951/52; TSMC/C.C. Wei 1953; JPMorgan/J. Dimon 1956; Oracle/S. Catz 1961; plus Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos 1964.)

Millennials: ~5% (Meta/Mark Zuckerberg 1984.)

Silent Generation: ~5% (Berkshire Hathaway/Warren Buffett 1930 — slated to hand CEO role to Greg Abel, b. 1962, at year-end 2025.)

A little better, but my gosh they are really holding on. I'm sure it is unprecedented. Certainly heath is better than any time in history, but this seems extreme.

HardCodedBias2• 8 months ago

Update:

It looks like there has been some turnover at the universities since the quote from Eric Weinstein. I quick survey (could be incorrect!) says it is now more around 63.

That's still high but not as high as what Eric Weinstein was quoting.

Would be a great time series.

ireadtheemail2• 8 months ago

No matter how hard I try I fail to see why would anyone mentally stable dislike Peter Thiel.

throitallaway5• 8 months ago

Besides hating immigrants and Palantir contributing to the surveillance state? Just like drug dealers, I guess someone else would do it if he weren't.

ireadtheemail2• 8 months ago

I think he's beyond the childish "hate" phase. He argues against unbridled immigration but why shouldn't he.

motoboi• 8 months ago

Thanks for this. This helped me understand Zuckerberg’s recent change of style.

It is now clear that he made a repositioning, and not that was fruit of some psychological breakthrough or something like that.

At the same time it’s scary to think about to what extent that men can go for business and also, given his pathetic behavior at the White House dinner, who is actually controlling that man.

fidotron• 8 months ago

Of course, there are numerous ways in which this role (Mark as Millennial spokesman) is both pretty unfair and highly inappropriate. It is unfair because this much of a burden should not be placed on any single person; and it is inappropriate because Mark is a highly unrepresentative example of the Millennial generation, for a whole range of reasons that we do not need to enumerate. But even with these caveats, I believe that we might be better served by understanding that something like this is going on and trying to think about what it would mean for Mark to think of himself as a Millennial spokesman... and perhaps to contrast this with what I take to be our current policy (at least implicitly) — of Mark as a Baby Boomer construct of how a well-behaved Millennial is supposed to act. If forced to make a choice, I would always rather win popularity contests with Millennials than with Boomers!

That entire paragraph is mind bending. I really wish he had enumerated for a wider audience what was there because you could read something quite profound into it.

exogeny• 8 months ago

It's extremely telling that as Thiel is talking about Zuck's speech at Harvard, he is using the pronoun "we", as if Thiel was also giving the speech.

Zuck is Thiel's mouthpiece, through and through. And it explains everything about Meta.

seydor3• 8 months ago

Well if the changeover happens it seems it will happen in the 2030s.

Amd millennials found their replacement for housing bubble with the stocks / crypto bubble.

And democracy is good for boomers, because they are too many and outnumber everyone else in battle. So millennials and genz are not unsympathetic to less democracy (a view that Thiel shares).

Thiel in this context could be considered a boomer, and his interests lie with them

jimbokun14• 8 months ago

I would like to see a poll showing that Millennials as a whole are unsympathetic to Democracy.

triceratops2• 8 months ago

Surprisingly self-aware and empathetic from Thiel:

I would be the last person to advocate for socialism. But when 70% of Millennials say they are pro-socialist, we need to do better than simply dismiss them by saying that they are stupid or entitled or brainwashed; we should try and understand why. And, from the perspective of a broken generational compact, there seems to be a pretty straightforward answer to me, namely, that when one has too much student debt or if housing is too unaffordable, then one will have negative capital for a long time and/or find it very hard to start accumulating capital in the form of real estate; and if one has no stake in the capitalist system, then one may well turn against it.

But when he gives examples of the "iron grip" boomers have on power, he only talks about their control of universities and the government. He leaves out wealth and capital.

HEmanZ2• 8 months ago

Is “techmails.com” a trustworthy source? This seems like a made up thread. Although plausible enough to seem real.

planewave• 8 months ago

Yes, this site usually publishes emails released into the public record via court cases.

This exchange is cited as:

  [This document is from Tennessee v. Meta (2024).]

HEmanZ2• 8 months ago

And where is that document? I can claim this document is from wherever if there is no way to find that document.

Sorry this just reads way too much like fiction and if I have two hypotheses about its origin:

1. Real court document that I can’t find the source for and have to trust a random substack is telling me is real.

2. AI generated conversation for views.

I’m inclined to the second these days.

But if it’s real: the fact that guys real life conversations read like satire is telling…

hereme8886• 8 months ago

Reminder to millennials:

Socialism in real life = Biggest Government, Biggest Tech monopoly, forced uniformity, no self-agency, no authenticity for anyone who slightly disagrees with any aspect of the agenda, etc.

Source: I fled Venezuela because I lived in it.

lm284697• 8 months ago

No offence but Venezuela is a political meme and one of the most corrupt country out there lol, given your natural resources you should be doing way better regardless of where the government leans.

Socialism brought a lot of good things all over Europe in the 1900s

svieira2• 8 months ago

Socialism brought a lot of good things all over Europe in the 1900s

Just ask Poland!

jimbokun14• 8 months ago

Give me a definition of socialism that only includes the good things done in Western Europe and excludes all of the bad things that happened in Soviet Union, China, Venezuela etc.

hereme8886• 8 months ago

Not offended. It is one of the most corrupt countries since socialism. It was thriving when I grew up there. But when you steal, oppress, and kill competent leaders because you resent them having more money than you, and give entire industries (steel, gold, petroleum) to the "workers" because they think collective thinking > a single phD who knows what he's doing, the industries rot and fail, like they did.

dbrowes• 8 months ago

Pain and suffering, families thorn apart and blood of thousands of people are a meme to you? Fuck you, pull your head out of your ass

xg15• 8 months ago

We have a team working on an ambitious long term project on loneliness/isolation which, again, has the potential to hold particular appeal to the Millennial sentiments set out in the paper. The latest plans will be presented to Mark next week.

With the goal to reduce it, right?

...right?

disambiguation2• 8 months ago

Wow am I reading this correctly? To recap:

- They're going to run Zuck for president to beat the millennial socialist zeitgeist.

- They're going to use generational warfare to stage an institutional coup.

we need to do better than simply dismiss them by saying that they are stupid or entitled or brainwashed

Classy.

jimbokun14• 8 months ago

Please point me to the above quotes in the emails.

tru3_power• 8 months ago

I did not get him running for president from this. Which part made you think that?

disambiguation2• 8 months ago

Granted I'm taking creative liberties reading between the lines and mapping to other context. I'd give it low odds overall, but I'm gleaning a non-zero likelihood worthy of consideration:

1. "Mark Zuckerberg has been cast as the spokesman for the Millennial generation."

2. "I am the most well-known person of my generation"

3. "we'll even see a millennial president within the next few cycles by 2032."

4. The direct comparison to Pete Buttigieg.

5. He's signaled a presidential bid in the recent past.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/mark-zuc...

Some additional interpretation of mine from the exchange:

6. The expressed need to "win" in the policy arena in the next few years.

7. The imminent "transfer of value" (and power) from boomers to millennials, and the explicit urgency and intent to "position" themselves to capitalize on this "rapid shift."

Further real world context:

8. Thiel's track record of hands on political involvement with Trump, Vance, and Yarvin.

9. Thiel's recent "antichrist" lectures which articulates a fear of being "scapegoated."

benrutter3• 8 months ago

When Mark and Priscilla commit to giving away 99% of their wealth during their lifetimes

I hadn't heard this before but googling it seems like a genuine commitment at the time[0]. I mostly feel like Zuck isn't making the world a better place, but this sounds really impressive as a commitment - any idea if this commitments been stuck to now we're around 10 years on?

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-34978249

thatguy09002• 8 months ago

How kind of him to give his wealth away after intentionally using his company to fracture society as much as he could to earn the money in the first place

jimbokun14• 8 months ago

Sigh.

No, Zuckerberg did not set out consciously trying to "fracture society". He started out trying to provide a way to rate women at Harvard by how attractive they were, then by just trying to optimize revenue without any consideration for unintended consequences. Then kept going.

Not understanding the failure mode is going to just lead to repeating the same mistakes at even grander scales, like what's happening now with AI. Nerds obsessed with creating "AGI" without the capability or willingness to think through the potential consequences.

benrutter3• 8 months ago

I get it, meta has caused a huge amount of societal damage, and we wouldn't need philanthropists if we fairer economies.

But people are complicated, and if Zuckerberg really is giving away 99% of his wealty to causes, that's a positive and worth discussing. Even if it doesn't make up for other harm.

laserlight2• 8 months ago

giving away

Giving away to their own LLC, not to a non-profit [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chan_Zuckerberg_Initiative

benrutter3• 8 months ago

That's so interesting- I'd assumed from the name that it was a charity for allocating donations, but legally it's a regular company?

Seems like its activities are mostly charity based at least.

It's a confusing thing, and I still don't really understand what 99% of wealth over the course of a lifetime actually means in real terms. Is that of lifetime wealth? 99% of Zuck's wealth from 2015 over the course of his life?

NalNezumi• 8 months ago

The thing that most surprises me in these emails are that those two people care about housing price or student debt, or millennials in general.

And cynical me can't brush of the feeling that this is satire or that I need to read between the lines.

A dude that buys all houses around him just to get privacy and "fuck off" others (Zuck) cares about housing? A guy that think Greta is antichrist and think anyone that blocks AI advancement is antichrist, somehow thinks "we should look at why millennials choose socialism" as a thought process?

A more realistic, "what they mean" interpretation of this emailing is:

"FB product have influence over millennials (Instagram) and Boomers (Facebook). Boomers are dying out, so we should double down on our grip over millennials and tune the algorithms so we can manipulate them more than ever. We should lobby and push out the boomers and set millennials in the position of institutional power, and no other cohorts, so that we have a direct pipeline of controlling the public discord and communication between this generation "

jimbokun14• 8 months ago

Or maybe it shows that The Bad Guys have complicated and unexpected and nuanced thoughts sometimes?

haunter• 8 months ago

This site needs better links to sources. Hard links to the case files + Archive.org mirror too.

"This document is from Tennessee v. Meta (2024)" ain't cut it in the age of LLMs anymore

Thiel and Zuckerberg on Facebook, Millennials, and predictions for 2030 (2019)

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