Zuckerberg: this election is not going to be business as usual

> views and actions, notwithstanding the transparent attempts to buy good PR under the guise of philanthropy.

Which views and actions? Note that simply making choices you disagree with does not mean the man isn't sincere or attempting to be civic minded.

For example, Facebook's reluctance to fact check President Trump doesn't imply in any way, shape, or form that he agrees with Trump or disagrees with the harm Trump is causing. While I don't particularly like Facebook's policy, I could easily justify such a policy by explaining that it's attempting to strike a balance that doesn't antagonize a fairly large segment of the American population and that granting Trump a largely unadulterated platform makes it easier for him to hang himself. What of the posts that don't quite make the cut for falsehood? An absence of a label arguably grants them legitimacy, even though they may still be B.S. Maybe Facebook should just ban Trump? Does that make indisputable sense: ban a duly elected President from your platform to protect the population from his mistruths, no matter that the man was elected upon a mountain of undisputed lies openly exposed? Especially when he's already cultivated a narrative about the media suppressing him and his political faction? In fact, arguably Twitters' recent switch to labeling Trump's tweets has born some these counterarguments out. (Again, these aren't the views I hold, but I find them quite reasonable all the same, and without straining to be charitable. And though I haven't read Zuckerberg's communications and arguments very closely, these seem to me to be some of the arguments beneath his policy preferences; self-serving, mixed motives notwithstanding.)

> transparent attempts to buy good PR under the guise of philanthropy.

Transparent? Since when does somebody have to be a martyr to do good? A transparent attempt to buy good PR would be, you know, simply buying PR (opinion pieces, think tanks, etc), like has become increasingly popular among the wealthy. I know Facebook has done this to some extent (submarine articles, etc), but I don't think either Facebook or Zuckerberg stand out in this regard; if anything they seem to do so less than most other groups, and in any event none of it negates his actual philanthropy and, AFAIU, more than mere token gifts. Compare Rupert Murdoch, who has built an entire media empire deliberately and continuously designed to profit from enflamed political and cultural sentiments, not merely to give a voice to a supposed silent conservative faction.[1] Facebook may have inflamed political sentiments, but I've yet to hear anybody seriously argue that it was deliberate, and everything Zuckerberg has done to defend Facebook is at least as consonant with a good faith disagreement about its effect and role as it is with Zuckerberg being civically malicious.

> he is completely indifferent to the consequences of his actions.

Again, doing things you disagree with is not the same thing as indifference. In fact, that argument is in tension with the argument that he is acting in bad faith and is merely self-serving.

Also, somebody can create both benefits and harms. When you're a multi-billionaire it's not only easy but almost inevitable. Indeed, a sense of righteousness can be a dangerous thing--you believe you're doing good when in fact you're causing harm.

And simply because Zuckerberg might be a nice guy isn't an argument to abstain from anti-trust action. By all means, promote such policies. I'm certainly not trying to argue that centralization of power is a good thing. What my argument boils down is that what you do matters, especially (but not only) if you're rich, and America has a relatively strong political system because of the choices previous magnates have made--that is, abstain from promoting radical, burn it all down and erect a new utopia policies. Admittedly, preference for the status quo may be self-serving--it's how they became wealthy, after all. But as Trump and others have shown, there's no shortage of people, even wealthy and powerful people, desirous of taking a larger piece of a smaller pie.

[1] When Fox debuted in the U.S., two of its early programs were The Simpsons and Married With Children. Both shows were groundbreaking for their casual, over-the-top, prime-time sarcasm and cynicism, and chosen precisely for that reason. While I love both shows, the channel was from the very beginning designed to be culturally antagonistic.[2] Sarcasm and cynicism can be good things, but they can also quickly turn poisonous, and if your business model is quite literally engineered around antagonism, which continuously needs to be ramped up to have the same, profitable effect, then the result is predictable--e.g. strategic alignment with a political faction in the culture wars. Many (all?) of Murdoch's other media outlets employ the same strategy. What we accuse modern media of doing en masse today is something Murdoch began doing, deliberately and singularly, from the very beginning. Yellow journalism was near its nadir in the U.S. when Murdoch saw his opportunity. (Note that nadir != absent. I'm merely trying to show what a bad faith business strategy actually looks like.)

[2] Later came the conspiracy theory laden X-Files. Also a great show, but can you spot the pattern? In our collective fatigue and sometimes disgust with saccharine, moralistic TV programming (which I think describes not only sitcoms but even edgy current event shows like with William F. Buckley Jr.) we never seemed to contemplate that indulging our cynicism could lead to things far darker than even the most extreme, left-wing criticisms about the previous state of affairs.

EDIT: A concrete example that evinces Zuckerberg's sincerity is his policy against anonymity. The tech and free speech communities protested the policy vociferously. But Zuckerberg's express intention was to not only avoid trolling, but to generally moderate extreme views. In his opinion, anonymity prevented accountability, and a lack of accountability let to extreme behaviors and discourse. Clearly Zuckerberg has faith in this moderating effect. Even if that faith was and remains merely in service of creating a successful and popular platform, it contradicts the view that Zuckerberg deliberately seeks to enflame sentiments or is even indifferent to enflamed sentiments.

Certainly not when one candidate commits a crime in the very act of accepting the nomination.

If The Social Network and some of the stories I’ve read portray Zuckerberg in any accuracy, it seems like he was a very...atypical... social being even before getting rich.

With all this navel-gazing in american social media that lasts for months and months, i wonder why other media don't jump into the opportunity to steal their international users. Honestly the talk of US politics is excessive and disproportionate even for a supeerpower, and it's spilling over so much and everywhere that it has become repulsive.

Thanks for sharing. I’ll have to dig deeper to see what more I can find about this.