Mark Zuckerberg donates $500 million • Hacker News Board

Re: Mark Zuckerberg donates $500 million

#41

Post by veidr » Wed, Dec 19, 2012, 10:37 AM UTC

mikedmiked wrote: post #37

veidr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, he deserves kudos for this, but he also deserves much of the shit that people talk about him. Facebook is a company that is loathed roughly in proportion to the degree that people understand what they actually do to make their money: adorn your baby or wedding photos with fart app ads, put your own face on various ads that you know nothing about, make you play whack-a-mole with their settings UI to preserve wha…

> And he's the guy who calls the shots. When a child grows into a teenager it becomes harder to blame the father for their actions.

Right. That is indeed a more difficult and nuanced judgement than holding a corporation's CEO responsible for its major business decisions.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg donates $500 million

#42

Post by endgame » Wed, Dec 19, 2012, 10:37 AM UTC

yen223 wrote: post #17

bksenior wrote: post #3

He gets a bad wrap, but as far as a role model for continued commitment to self betterment and helping other within a positon of power he has done an incredible job.

It's bad rap , as in rap sheet. http://grammarist.com/usage/bad-rap/ Sorry, this is a pet peeve of mine :).

Please don't stop.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg donates $500 million

#43

Post by jfoster » Wed, Dec 19, 2012, 10:42 AM UTC

veidr wrote: post #26

jfaucett wrote: post #16

People can say what they want about Zuckerberg, maybe he doesn't have the amazing charisma of Jobs, or the genius of Torvalds, and Facebook gets constantly hammered in the press (and him as well), but this is a great gesture on his part, I applaud him.

Yeah, he deserves kudos for this, but he also deserves much of the shit that people talk about him. Facebook is a company that is loathed roughly in proportion to the degree that people understand what they actually do to make their money: adorn your baby or wedding photos with fart app ads, put your own face on various ads that you know nothing about, make you play whack-a-mole with their settings UI to preserve wha…

I haven't seen evidence that the average facebook user cares that much about the things that you've mentioned.

I fully accept that some of their users (or ex-users) do. I have seen plenty of blog posts and outraged media stories. Yet I haven't noticed any great attrition among my friends on facebook, which is what I would expect to see if people cared much about this stuff.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg donates $500 million

#44

Post by jfoster » Wed, Dec 19, 2012, 10:49 AM UTC

meaty wrote: post #23

jfaucett wrote: post #16

People can say what they want about Zuckerberg, maybe he doesn't have the amazing charisma of Jobs, or the genius of Torvalds, and Facebook gets constantly hammered in the press (and him as well), but this is a great gesture on his part, I applaud him.

Well he deserves the hammering. The guy is clearly immoral and has damaged people's privacy and the world wide web forever. $500mil doesn't suddenly make that ok, especially considering the charity is basically a quango.

Why do you think he's immoral?

If you equate "enabled people to share more of their lives more broadly" with "damaged people's privacy" then I agree, but I'm not sure even a majority would agree with a sentiment of that necessarily being a bad thing. People share what they feel comfortable with, don't they?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg donates $500 million

#45

Post by VMG » Wed, Dec 19, 2012, 10:50 AM UTC

meaty wrote: post #23

jfaucett wrote: post #16

People can say what they want about Zuckerberg, maybe he doesn't have the amazing charisma of Jobs, or the genius of Torvalds, and Facebook gets constantly hammered in the press (and him as well), but this is a great gesture on his part, I applaud him.

Well he deserves the hammering. The guy is clearly immoral and has damaged people's privacy and the world wide web forever. $500mil doesn't suddenly make that ok, especially considering the charity is basically a quango.

Who's privacy was damaged in a way where the victim didn't voluntarily give it up?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg donates $500 million

#46

Post by jfoster » Wed, Dec 19, 2012, 10:53 AM UTC

001sky wrote: post #31

jfaucett wrote: post #16

People can say what they want about Zuckerberg, maybe he doesn't have the amazing charisma of Jobs, or the genius of Torvalds, and Facebook gets constantly hammered in the press (and him as well), but this is a great gesture on his part, I applaud him.

this is a great gesture on his part, I applaud him. == Why? Can you explain? How is this not a PR exercise: Oopps. Here's $500MM.

Investment of $500MM is going to result in very poor ROI if this is a PR exercise. It's going to be roughly a few days (perhaps a week) of "Zuck is nice" news stories and then be mostly forgotten.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg donates $500 million

#47

Post by jhuni » Wed, Dec 19, 2012, 10:58 AM UTC

oscilloscope wrote: post #40

jhuni wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Myspace provided a large social network with free web hosting and some PHP doodads before Facebook did. Did Mark Zuckerberg create anything new? 2) Facebook is a weapon deployed against the integrity of human personality. Does facebook quality as wealth considering that it is a destructive force?

I found Facebook useful for finding my roommates and classmates during college. They took away the classmate finding feature, but then it became more accessible and my grandparents could use it. I just used it a moment ago to get my cousin's birthday. That's a lot of value to me. When I share something there, it has the broadest reach of real-world friends on any social network, but that's my personal experience. Fac…

Whenever a photo is shared through Facebook it is run through facial recognition software and the results are sent to every police agency that is interested. We know that policy agencies have picked people up on information attained in this way.

Some of the worlds police agencies are evil. Whenever you use Facebook to share photos or some other personal information you are equipping potentially evil police agencies with a potent weapon that can be used against you and your friends.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg donates $500 million

#48

Post by S4M » Wed, Dec 19, 2012, 11:10 AM UTC

jhuni wrote: post #36

S4M wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue that Facebook helps spreading democracy in some countries, and thanks to Facebook companies can target customers more efficiently.

What countries did Facebook help spread democracy to?

The arabic ones during their recent revolutions. It did not directly spread democracy, but one could argue it contributed to it.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg donates $500 million

#49

Post by oscilloscope » Wed, Dec 19, 2012, 11:13 AM UTC

jhuni wrote: post #47

oscilloscope wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found Facebook useful for finding my roommates and classmates during college. They took away the classmate finding feature, but then it became more accessible and my grandparents could use it. I just used it a moment ago to get my cousin's birthday. That's a lot of value to me. When I share something there, it has the broadest reach of real-world friends on any social network, but that's my personal experience. Fac…

Whenever a photo is shared through Facebook it is run through facial recognition software and the results are sent to every police agency that is interested. We know that policy agencies have picked people up on information attained in this way. Some of the worlds police agencies are evil. Whenever you use Facebook to share photos or some other personal information you are equipping potentially evil police agencies w…

Wouldn't they get that information anyways by tapping my phone or internet connection? The NSA probably has my known IP addresses linked together, who knows.

I've not experienced Facebook used as a form of oppression against me and my friends. If I did, I would immediately alert them... on Facebook.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg donates $500 million

#50

Post by saurik » Wed, Dec 19, 2012, 11:16 AM UTC

I'm somewhat confused. If $500 million in shares are donated by Zuckerberg, does that mean a tax write-off of that amount? Also, to verify, the foundation would have to liquidize the shares, right? That kind of instant sell-off would cause massive drops in price... I really hate to ask this (as I honestly don't have anything against Zuckerberg, and really don't feel that "rich people" or "all companies" are evil or anything, as I know some people do), but is this not a massive tax arbitrage? Especially so, given that many people feel that Facebook's stock is overvalued (trading at almost $30 when it "should" trade for less than $10)? Even without any possible benefits to Zuckerberg (which I don't particularly really care about, and which brianpam had an interesting explanation for in his comment elsewhere on this post), doesn't that make this number sound much larger than it would ever really mean to the foundation's bottom line, making this insanely large number somewhat for show? (Seriously: please tell me I'm wrong; I just want to better understand these things.) (Although, thinking more, maybe the "show" is also in the benefit of the foundation, as having a massive donation, the largest in the foundation's history, also looks very good for it, even if the money deflates quite a bit in the process of turning it into cash.)

(edit: Someone, in person, points out they could hold onto the stock and sell it off slowly, or keep it for dividends; I don't think this stock has dividends, and maybe it is actually maintaining its value well--my comment was based somewhat on the premise that the various "overvalued" comments from a few months ago would continue into ever-decreasing prices, but in fact the stock went up at some point from its low-point, so maybe that's where I'm wrong?)