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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

#61

Post by christophilus »

lifestyleguru wrote: post #25

I have to admit that there was something surreal in the short videos of hearing I saw on the internet. Congressmen/women, people of power, whom we stereotype as poker-faced, cynical, and manipulative, having people-like problems - e.g. "my granddaughter played with a mobile phone and then some creepily relevant ads started to appear", against a youngster without any formal power who cuts them off with laconic respons…

I've only seen a few clips from the interview-- clips that were supposed to show Zuckerberg getting owned by some politician or other. To be honest, the politicians seemed really childish to me. Their questions were uninformed, hostile, and off topic. I thought Zuckerberg handled himself just fine, given the circumstances.

I say this as someone who thinks the world would be better off without Facebook. I don't use it. I don't invest in it.

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

#62

Post by Cthulhu_ »

seanwilson wrote: post #53

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…

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

Because it is one of the biggest scandals affecting Facebook in probably its entire history, and he's been grilled about it before? You'd think that once they found out his staff and advisors would make sure to tell him every single detail about it. Likewise, it should be the thing that occupies him for months on end.

It's inexcusable for him to not seem to know some basic factoids about the whole thing.

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

#63

Post by Pigo »

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?

Are you not entertained?!?

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

#64

Post by mattferderer »

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…

Is it just me or do yes/no questions that don't allow a response make the person asking the question look even worse than the person replying?

If the person doesn't answer the question, go ahead & berate them. Just don't expect a complicated question to be answered with a simple yes/no.

Likewise it's terrible to judge a politician based on their yes/no voting record without understanding why they voted for/against something.

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

#66

Post by Cthulhu_ »

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.

Where do you draw the line though? I mean sure, you can ban ads promoting a political party or candidate - that's simple.

But what about e.g. "awareness" campaigns about e.g. refugees? What about ads pretending to promote products to the LGBT community but targeted to be presented to conservatives / right-leaning people so that their bigotry will only increase?

You can affect people's political affiliations and their voting behaviour in really insidious ways. I wouldn't be surprised if agents are active on HN that operate with that in mind.

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

#68

Post by danaris »

Mirioron wrote: post #18
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…

Sure, we should not find this dodging acceptable, but shouldn't we start by using this standard on the politicians themselves first? At least Zuckerberg is offering a service we can opt out of, that's not the same for what the politicians do.

In a very real way, that's not true.

Facebook's adoption is so high that even if you and I choose not to use it—choose to take every measure available to us to avoid personal interaction with anything Facebook does—we cannot avoid its effects, because of the millions of people around us who do not take that choice.

Facebook can, without any exaggeration or doubt, influence elections in multiple countries. Treating Zuckerberg like he's the CEO of, say, Dropbox just doesn't fly anymore.

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

#69

Post by newen »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #66
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.

Where do you draw the line though? I mean sure, you can ban ads promoting a political party or candidate - that's simple. But what about e.g. "awareness" campaigns about e.g. refugees? What about ads pretending to promote products to the LGBT community but targeted to be presented to conservatives / right-leaning people so that their bigotry will only increase? You can affect people's political affiliations and their…

I am sure people can debate for decades about where to draw the line. But many other countries have banned political ads and they drew the line somewhere.

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

#70

Post by setr »

nicoburns wrote: post #60
roenxi wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Admitting fault, and then retroactively be punished for it at the tune of X million "potentially harmed"? If this were a board meeting and it was simply to say what should be fixed, understood or analyzed going forward, then admission of failure is fine; but this is about meting out punishment, in which case you tell the cops nothing.

Anything you say can and will...

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