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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

#51

Post by objektif »

supercanuck wrote: post #42
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 av…

Only if the said lawyers were doing those for the benefit of the people. Many of those lawyers would kiss Zucks ass for a million. Hearings are just theaters until we get money out of politics.

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

#52

Post by supercanuck »

objektif wrote: post #51
supercanuck wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 av…

Only if the said lawyers were doing those for the benefit of the people. Many of those lawyers would kiss Zucks ass for a million. Hearings are just theaters until we get money out of politics.

And in a representative democracy, there is an ability for the public to remove said lawyer. We need to do that.

Private Corporation there is no such method.

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

#53

Post by seanwilson »

I agree his answers about why political ads shouldn't be fact checked weren't good, but I found some of these "zinger" clips on Twitter really silly.

> Mr. Zuckerberg, what year and month did you personally first become aware of Cambridge Analytica?”

Unless I missed that the hearing was highly related to this, why would he remember this exact date offhand?

You'd be better declining to answer this question than guess and get it wrong which seems like what he did. Asking if he became aware of them before or after a specific event would have been much more reasonable. There's tons of important events in my life where I don't know the month it happened because it's not important to remember.

I think he's right to say "I don't know" when he can't be completely sure. That's not a zinger.

Likewise, it's not a zinger when you ask a really long question that contains several factual claims that you require clarification on, or try to force a yes/no answer to a loaded question (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_question#Complex_quest...).

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

#54

Post by lonelappde »

ohduran wrote: post #12
patio11 wrote: post #4

Movie 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 wou…

Congressional inquiries haven't been about finding truth since TV was invented. They are a platform for the parties involved to signal their positions. MZ is talking to his investors, AOC to her constituents. My point is: there is no conversation going on. Just people talking.

It's not symmetric, though. The congresspeople are there to stir trouble, and the CEO is there to dodge it. For all of Zuck's misdeeds (or those of anyone dragged in), at a congressional hearing, the participant is a victim of a punishment, not an agent of their agenda.

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

#55

Post by roenxi »

criddell wrote: post #49
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.

Having watched quite a bit of parliamentary footage, the style of question that can be asked could reasonably include such curly ones as "Research suggests that Facebook harms the mental development of adolescents. Did you stop to think about the potential damage to teenage girls when you were crafting your extractive corporate empire?"

Now in theory someone asked that could answer without accidentally agreeing that their company is extractive/they are harming young girls/they are recklessly not considering the impacts of their work. Bonus points if they can answer without getting shouted down for not directly answering a yes/no question with a yes/no. Lose a point if the answer gets testy and they look like they are defensive or flustered.

They also have to do that while being completely honest, without getting tongue-tied and correctly assessing the question in a very short time frame.

Zuckerberg isn't a barrister, he didn't found an empire on the ability to think quickly under a barrage of questions and he may just not be an expert at it (most clever people aren't). He is far better off just looking a little wilted and evasive. People who try to be clever tend to end up looking worse.

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

#56

Post by criddell »

roenxi wrote: post #55
criddell wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Having watched quite a bit of parliamentary footage, the style of question that can be asked could reasonably include such curly ones as "Research suggests that Facebook harms the mental development of adolescents. Did you stop to think about the potential damage to teenage girls when you were crafting your extractive corporate empire?" Now in theory someone asked that could answer without accidentally agreeing that…

> without accidentally agreeing that their company is [...]

I'm saying maybe Zuckerberg should acknowledge the nature of his company. Then openly try to fix it.

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

#57

Post by iagovar »

jacques_chester wrote: post #31
iagovar wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked in marketing for an Agency. If Facebook had to check everything we did, they'd really had a hard time. We had multiple clients with multiple banners with multiple landing pages and all of this with a software rotating stuff with A/B tests and regressions. If a political party came to hire us, I'm sure we'll do it. This was in Spain, so I guess that there will be a lot more companies doing this in the US.…

If it's hard, then it's hard. That no perfect, complete solution is possible just means we accept the imperfect, incomplete solution if it is an improvement on the status quo. I really don't have a lot of sympathy for the woes of the advertising industry, considering the consequences.

If I, working there, found that FB was painful to work with, I'd go somewhere else, as simple as that. I won't spend two days wrestling with FB to see if my ad it's ok or not.

I may not care for political advertising, since my client is not looking to "make a profit" like a traditional customer. But I definitely do for an eCommerce brand for example.

Most agencies use FB because it's easy to work with and it's cheapish with a little expertise. If that dissapeares then nobody is goung to pour money on it.

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

#58

Post by basch »

supercanuck wrote: post #42
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 av…

Did you watch the hearing? Very few people said anything that wasnt a 1) scripted grandstand that didnt even have a question 2) had already been covered in another hearing or 3) was a misunderstanding of the business and its technology. Some of them did have good points sprinkled in. But to call what they did a "good job" is an extreme overstatement.

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

#59

Post by Pigo »

criddell wrote: post #49
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.

I wouldn't defend Facebook for anything. But when you see reps like AOC hurl questions at him, and not even care if he answers them, it really highlights how these events only serve to create headlines or steer a narrative. You'd think they want information out of him if they wanted to accomplish something.

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

#60

Post by nicoburns »

roenxi wrote: post #55
criddell wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Having watched quite a bit of parliamentary footage, the style of question that can be asked could reasonably include such curly ones as "Research suggests that Facebook harms the mental development of adolescents. Did you stop to think about the potential damage to teenage girls when you were crafting your extractive corporate empire?" Now in theory someone asked that could answer without accidentally agreeing that…

> Now in theory someone asked that could answer without accidentally agreeing that their company is extractive/they are harming young girls/they are recklessly not considering the impacts of their work.

The right answer to this question is to accept that the company is extracting / harming people. And admit that they didn't stop to think about that when they were building it. That's understandable - they had no idea the impact that facebook would have on society when they were building it.

You can then go on to have a productive collaborative discussion about what to do about it (which isn't obvious or easy). The environment is hostile because Zuckerberg isn't engaging in the process, and is stonewalling congress with "we have a process for this".

He's not being honest, and I suspect (and hope tbh) it will eventually be the downfall of his company.

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