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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

#41

Post by jayess »

fatjokes wrote: post #32

Is this the state of journalism in this day and age? Is there any surprise that a real life CEO carefully coached by PR and lawyers is less interesting than his doppelganger in a multi-million dollar Oscar-targeted movie backed by a team of professional writers?

Yes. It's all a show. The "journalist" pretends that congressional hearings are serious events rather than the entertainment clown shows that they are. Then said "journalist" compares the performance at such a show-trial light to dialogue in a fictional movie. People click on it. Ads are shown. Comments fly. Money is made.

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Movie Version

#42

Post by supercanuck »

roenxi wrote: post #9

The 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 gove…

Only one of these parties to the negotiation works on behalf of the American people. Zuckerberg said he has 3B customers.

You seems bored with the process but I would argue the job politicians are doing is equally important if not more so than the construction of an Online Ad Delivering Skinner Box, the “real work” you allude to. (Current top most on HackerNews explains how much people despise ads and pay money to avoid them)

Holding powerful people accountable, publicly, creating laws and regulations and governing the rules of our society is very important to operating this country.

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Movie Version

#43

Post by coldtea »

Looks just like a guy who did something ho-hum, at the right time and with the right connections, and thanks to lots of in-between people, got 1000000000x more value that he'd ought to get. Facebook was neither impressive technology, nor original conceptually. It just was there at the right time and had the right funding.

Not even for a moment did he strike as a computer genius, a business genius, or anything in between.

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Movie Version

#45

Post by mortehu »

chopin wrote: post #34
StavrosK wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opposite of "optimize", e.g. "the writer pessimized for understandability while optimizing for sounding smart".

Is that really a thing in (American) English? I wasn't able to dig up anything (I am not a native speaker).

Edward Tufte, one of the people who coined the word, explains: https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=...

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Movie Version

#46

Post by Traster »

bertil wrote: post #14
dimitar wrote: post #6

Slightly 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 no clear separation of “political ads”: - candidates can be serious or not so much, but it’s unclear where the line is between the GOP and Vermin Supreme. - PACs represent the bulk of “political” spending: it’s also unclear where you set the line there; clear attack ads are not the same as a more generic charity defending the environment and supporting a candidate; you can’t ban one without banning the other,…

>- PACs represent the bulk of “political” spending: it’s also unclear where you set the line there; clear attack ads are not the same as a more generic charity defending the environment and supporting a candidate; you can’t ban one without banning the other, or you have to define clear rules that allow “Vote for a candidate that supports your values” but not anything more specific, where using the same symbol, colour, font, as a specific campaign becomes a problem.

Well, they're PACs. Political Action Committees. So if you're banning political ads it would be trivial to ban organisations that are registered as a 527 organisation. That seems like a screaming flashing bright red line there.

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Movie Version

#47

Post by sailfast »

fatjokes wrote: post #32

Is this the state of journalism in this day and age? Is there any surprise that a real life CEO carefully coached by PR and lawyers is less interesting than his doppelganger in a multi-million dollar Oscar-targeted movie backed by a team of professional writers?

No, I would not use this particular publication as a good indicator of the state of journalism. There are almost more quotes from the movie than from the hearing, and the premise was a joke, taken seriously.

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Movie Version

#49

Post by criddell »

roenxi wrote: post #9

The 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 gove…

> The congressional hearings are a hostile environment.

That's true, but if an honest answer to any of the hostile questions makes Zuckerberg look and feel bad, then maybe he should fix his company.

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Movie Version

#50

Post by Udik »

ThomPete wrote: post #29
carloswilson wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rep…

I think there is something else going on here. Claiming that Cambridge Analytica had a catastrophic impact on the 2016 election. It's hard to know what to answer to such a thing. If you get into a debate with her on whether her completely unproven claim is true or false you are guilty, if you try to avoid it you are basically saying she is right and are guilty. This kind of questioning only works because it's not a c…

> Claiming that Cambridge Analytica had a catastrophic impact on the 2016 election. It's hard to know what to answer to such a thing.

"Congresswoman, half of this country thinks that your statement about the impact of Cambridge Analytica in the last election is factually false. In case you wanted to publish an ad that mentioned it, should Facebook reject it?"

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