I was Zuckerberg’s speechwriter • Hacker News Board

Re: I was Zuckerberg’s speechwriter

#91

Post by owebmaster » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 4:19 PM UTC

vinceguidry wrote: post #77

agentultra wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Am I alone in thinking this isn't heresy? A country or federal state is just a company with a monopoly over law in a certain geographical region. A nation state is backed by armies, monetary obligations, and the need to co-operate with other nation states in each others' best interests (optimally). In order to protect its citizens and monetary interests and obligations most modern, well-functioning markets are regu…

> In order to protect its citizens and monetary interests and obligations most modern, well-functioning markets are regulated by these nation states. It's hard to take this 'protection' seriously in many cases. It's for more often the case where nation-state protection is extended to one company against other companies within the state than it is for one country's industry to be collectively protected against other c…

> Protecting your own company against both the state and other companies is the CEO's mandate.

Which usually mean to not care about users, laws, and any sense of moral or ethical standards.

Re: I was Zuckerberg’s speechwriter

#92

Post by knuththetruth » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 4:20 PM UTC

mLuby wrote: post #83

knuththetruth wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their employees can with labor organization. Strikes to end these kinds of abuses at Google and Facebook would end them. The thing the management of these companies fear more than anything is their employees realizing the power inherent in collectively withdrawing their labor from them.

Only possible because government sits above companies and regulates them (and their ability to break strikes).

History says otherwise. People won what we think of the “legal” right to strike only after acting collectively and disruptively against key industrial nodes which relied on their labor to function (mainly in the energy sector, e.g. the coal miners in England). They forced governments to render their actions “legal.”

Because of its centrality in the modern economy, tech workers are in a similar position today. They have the power to withdraw their labor from companies and restore a more equitable balance to ceaseless assault on labor by Capital that has pushed this country into decline since the 1970s.

Re: I was Zuckerberg’s speechwriter

#93

Post by ddingus » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 4:23 PM UTC

Barjak wrote: post #43

Am I alone in thinking this isn't heresy? A country or federal state is just a company with a monopoly over law in a certain geographical region. Facebook's "monopoly" is at least subject to the whim of the market, as the Delete Facebook campaign shows. Look at last week. The senate was on their high-horse, admonishing facebook for privacy infringements, totally unaware of the irony they are an appendage of the same…

Governments aren't companies. In the case of the USA, their root authority comes from consent of the governed, who do that in order to maximize their own personal freedom and opportunity.

More. But I got a dead device..

Back.

Business operates under license, and that comes with terms, the rules, law. It serves us, as do markets, and when that doesn't happen, the license can be revoked, or new terms come into play so it all does.

Government is about the general welfare too. Very different purpose from a corporation, and a necessary one.

Under all of that lies the basic idea of citizens defining their society, for their own welfare.

When we set those basic ideas aside, we get the sort of mess we have today.

Zuck has this backward, and favors lords and fiefdoms over a just society. His ideas are old world, old money ideas more closely aligned with ideas of leadership, how a society runs more in line with kings, divine right, wealth, purity, and other obviously unjust ways to define and manage power.

This nation was formed on the idea of rejecting all of that. Thomas Paine derives most of this in "Rights of Man" and "Age of reason", where the first reference speaks to self governance and what free people means, and the second speaks to why the church is not a center of power either, both straight up rejections of both forms of old world governance.

Re: I was Zuckerberg’s speechwriter

#94

Post by 908087 » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 4:24 PM UTC

Barjak wrote: post #43

Am I alone in thinking this isn't heresy? A country or federal state is just a company with a monopoly over law in a certain geographical region. Facebook's "monopoly" is at least subject to the whim of the market, as the Delete Facebook campaign shows. Look at last week. The senate was on their high-horse, admonishing facebook for privacy infringements, totally unaware of the irony they are an appendage of the same…

> We can all opt out of Facebook

Care to explain how non-users who have been having their data harvested via back channels such as their friends/family, data brokers like Acxiom, and trackers on non-FB sites, can "opt out of Facebook"? Sure, technically skilled people can "opt out" of portions of this in a sense, but that leaves billions of people still powerless in this regard.

I'd also love to know how to opt out of the wider societal damage Facebook has encouraged and enabled.. and no, "Move to a shack in the woods if you don't like it" is not a valid answer here.

Re: I was Zuckerberg’s speechwriter

#95

Post by Consultant32452 » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 4:30 PM UTC

adamnemecek wrote: post #23

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People sounded the alarm many years ago. EFF from 2009 "predicted" a CA-like event would happen as a direct result of FB policy changes: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/facebooks-new-privacy-... Rest assured, not everyone in technology openly embraced the externality-disregarding "move fast and break things" ideology that took hold of SV in the last decade or so.

> Rest assured, not everyone in technology openly embraced the externality-disregarding "move fast and break things" ideology that took hold of SV in the last decade or so. To be honest tho, like I can't blame them, I dont think they were aware of the consequences this might have.

As bad as Trump is, as bad as the potential foreign propaganda affecting election outcomes is, I'm worried the solution will be worse than the problem. I suspect the two incumbent parties will use this as an opportunity to further cement the two-party system, making it more difficult for third parties or political "outsiders" to have successful campaigns.

Russian spending on FB ads was a drop in the ocean compared to the total spend. Congress clearly doesn't care about our privacy as evidenced by the domestic spying programs. Without trying to go too far down the conspiracy rabbit hole, we need to figure out what their real motivation is here. My personal opinion is that they will make it harder for outsiders, including other political parties, to gain any traction.

Re: I was Zuckerberg’s speechwriter

#96

Post by adamnemecek » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 4:33 PM UTC

Consultant32452 wrote: post #95

adamnemecek wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rest assured, not everyone in technology openly embraced the externality-disregarding "move fast and break things" ideology that took hold of SV in the last decade or so. To be honest tho, like I can't blame them, I dont think they were aware of the consequences this might have.

As bad as Trump is, as bad as the potential foreign propaganda affecting election outcomes is, I'm worried the solution will be worse than the problem. I suspect the two incumbent parties will use this as an opportunity to further cement the two-party system, making it more difficult for third parties or political "outsiders" to have successful campaigns. Russian spending on FB ads was a drop in the ocean compared to…

I share some of your concerns. However re Russian spending, I think that that the current spending estimates are on the lower end. Also the money was spent less wastefully so it might have ended up having larger effect than assumed.

Re: I was Zuckerberg’s speechwriter

#97

Post by reaperducer » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 4:35 PM UTC

mannykannot wrote: post #86

leggomylibro wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We can all opt out of Facebook. Thankfully many have. I'm pretty sure that is not accurate. We can't opt out of Facebook without significant effort which most people aren't even aware is possible and which can prevent some websites from working (NoScript, router rules, etc). They use the 'share' buttons built into most websites to collect information about and profit off of people who never signed up for the service…

For example, someone could tag your face in a photograph even if you don't have a Facebook account.

And they don't even have to tag a face. Facebook does facial recognition on every face in a photograph. So you could be in the background of a picture taken in a restaurant by someone else and now suddenly you have a profile.

Appear in the background of enough photos and Facebook can use other data to eventually figure out who you are, even if don't have a computer or smartphone.

Re: I was Zuckerberg’s speechwriter

#98

Post by otempomores » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 4:36 PM UTC

Barjak wrote: post #43

Am I alone in thinking this isn't heresy? A country or federal state is just a company with a monopoly over law in a certain geographical region. Facebook's "monopoly" is at least subject to the whim of the market, as the Delete Facebook campaign shows. Look at last week. The senate was on their high-horse, admonishing facebook for privacy infringements, totally unaware of the irony they are an appendage of the same…

[dead]

Re: I was Zuckerberg’s speechwriter

#99

Post by bsbechtel » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 4:42 PM UTC

mattmanser wrote: post #51

Barjak wrote: post #43

Am I alone in thinking this isn't heresy? A country or federal state is just a company with a monopoly over law in a certain geographical region. Facebook's "monopoly" is at least subject to the whim of the market, as the Delete Facebook campaign shows. Look at last week. The senate was on their high-horse, admonishing facebook for privacy infringements, totally unaware of the irony they are an appendage of the same…

It does all the people who fought, died, campaigned and worked to institute democracies over dictatorships or feudal lords a great dis-service to tout this drivel. You want to make the NSA an election issue? You can go campaign on it. Setup a party, gather people to your cause. Vote. You can't do anything even remotely similar to influence google or facebook.

If the same level of effort were applied to educating the population about Google and Facebook abuses as would be needed to successfully end NSA spying via elections, they both would be out of business. Political activism is incredible expensive and moves at a much slower pace than the free market.

Re: I was Zuckerberg’s speechwriter

#100

Post by JoeDaDude » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 4:46 PM UTC

anonu wrote: post #35

Zuckerberg espouses some sort of utopian idealism and is pushing his Facebook experiment on the world. The capitalist underpinnings of his project completely denigrate those views. I've heard the same thing from him and his apparatchiks consistently - and in his written testimony to Congress: "My top priority has always been our social mission of connecting people, building community and bringing the world closer tog…

This is just corporate-speak to motivate the minions. What he meant was "My top priority has always been to increase profits and shareholder value by bringing in more eyeballs that we could sell to marketing and advertising agencies. By getting the eyeballs to share their private information, the value of our platform - and our revenue - increases", which is in line with his job as CEO of a publicly traded corporation.