The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Movie Version
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Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Movie Version
#2Popups, tiny font, etc. https://outline.com/kFKtF3
Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Movie Version
#3Reality != Movies
People are boring, bias and sometimes, really dumb (or playing dumb to avoid further persecution).
Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Movie Version
#4Movie dialogue is scored on being interesting but there are a lot of interesting responses to Congressional inquiry, including interesting and true responses, which pessimize for your tactical or strategic goals.
They also plausibly pessimize for Congress' goals. If you wanted to learn when Zuckerberg learned of a topic, you could send him a letter, and he would check his notes and send you a letter, and then you would know a thing you don't care about in the least. The point of grilling Zuckerberg in person about it is not to ascertain the truth, it is to grill Zuckerberg on television.
Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Movie Version
#5Preparing and asking a bunch of interview questions is a lot easier than being on the receiving end and having to think though the legal ramifications about what you’re about to answer. Contrasting the slickness of the interviewer with the interviewee and drawing conclusions based on that is not accurate.
Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Movie Version
#6Slightly off-topic - why doesn't FB just ban all political ads? Is it really worth continuing to display them?
Either have a coherent policy that the CEO can explain or just don't do it.
Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Movie Version
#7Preparing and asking a bunch of interview questions is a lot easier than being on the receiving end and having to think though the legal ramifications about what you’re about to answer. Contrasting the slickness of the interviewer with the interviewee and drawing conclusions based on that is not accurate.
At the same time, he should be able to clearly state the policies of his company. He seemed completely unprepared for some basic questions that he should have been prepared to answer.
Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Movie Version
#8Slightly off-topic - why doesn't FB just ban all political ads? Is it really worth continuing to display them? Either have a coherent policy that the CEO can explain or just don't do it.
There's a gray area that makes defining what is political complex when it comes to subjects that become politicized.
Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Movie Version
#9The congressional hearings are a hostile environment. The only reason to have Zuckerberg there is to get camera footage of him looking shifty and to pressure him to do whatever the politicians want him to do.
His tactical and strategic goal is not to deliver 'zingers', it is ideally for the situation to go quiet and be forgotten by everyone. Failing that, an acceptable fallback is for any anti-Facebook action by government to get mired in endless committee investigations that are boring, neverending and unproductive to slow down any hostile regulation that might eventuate. Failing that, regulation that is onerous but favours Facebook by locking out any competition from the American markets. None of these will be achieved by interesting public exchanges with Congresspeople.
Public government hearings are not where the serious moves are made. It is more a show-and-tell for the politicians to communicate to their voters what is being negotiated in the backrooms where real work happens.
Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Movie Version
#10Preparing and asking a bunch of interview questions is a lot easier than being on the receiving end and having to think though the legal ramifications about what you’re about to answer. Contrasting the slickness of the interviewer with the interviewee and drawing conclusions based on that is not accurate.
I appreciate that answering questions in a grilling interview is more difficult than asking questions, but ...
> “You don’t know? This was the largest data scandal with respect to your company, that had catastrophic impacts on the 2016 election. You don’t know?”
... but at the same time, I would certainly expect the chairman and CEO of a company to be more prepared to answer these difficult questions than what is reported in the original article. This was one of the biggest scams related to Facebook. I understand that Zukerberg's legal team may have advised him to be vague during the interview and he probably answered what is best for his company.
But as citizens of the world, we should never find such vague answers acceptable. The way Cambridge Analytica has upset the process of democracy and how Facebook data was used while doing so requires Facebook to be subject to such grilling. It should be made clear to Facebook in no uncertain terms that it needs to present answers and concrete answers.