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Mark Zuckerberg donates $500 million

tech.fortune.cnn.com

71–80 of 147 posts

Re: Mark Zuckerberg donates $500 million

#71
post #7

I'm curious for someone to explain the choice of charity. It looks like Silicon Valley Community Foundation is an organization that specializes in helping people and companies set up large spendings of charitable donations. Does anyone else do that on this scale? It seems the alternative is spending a fair amount of mental overhead to set up a charitable foundation or donating to an existing foundation institutionall…

I set up a donor advised fund (DAF) with the Silicon Valley Community Foundation when I sold my company in 2000. At that time they had the policy of selling all the donated shares immediately. It turned out to be one of the best things I did. Now I have more time available to look into how to give money in meaningful effective ways and I have a pot of money available for this thru the DAF where I don't have to be doing the math on whether or not I can 'afford' the donation. My post acquisition world has been much richer for the interactions I've had with people I respect that stemmed from this.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg donates $500 million

#73
post #43
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…

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.

What on earth does "what most people feel" have to do with anything? Nobody in Germany seemed to care that much about what Hitler was doing until they lost the war.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg donates $500 million

#74
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment has been downvoted, but there isn't yet an explanation of why it is incorrect. I'll provide my perspective. 1) Zuckerberg didn't "take" wealth. He created it. 2) Governments don't have particular insight into the best ways to spend resources. We spent a couple of decades comparing market economies with command economies, and market economies won.

>> Zuckerberg didn't "take" wealth. He created it. Well, Myspace was kinda destroyed in the process. So let's call it reshaping, refactoring and some creation.

And, of course, the fact that he was hired by the two guys who actually came up with this idea, stole the idea from them and purposely lead them along into believing he was working for them when in fact he was competing with them with their own idea.

So yea, I'd probably stick with "took wealth".

Re: Mark Zuckerberg donates $500 million

#76
post #48
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One would have a pretty blood difficult argument in that case. Was anyone in any of these countries actually using FB?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg donates $500 million

#77
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large social network called Facebook.

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?

You might consider Facebook as a weapon and a destructive force, but don't state it as a fact.

As far as streaming facial recognition data to various agencies - source? Do they comply with various legal orders? Most definitely. Do they send all of their data to police agencies? I highly doubt it.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg donates $500 million

#78
post #67
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it matter if they're altruistic or not? It's a move, it's going to help. Who the fuck cares why ? The saying goes "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth"

You would look a gift horse in the mouth if the mafia gave it you right? It'd come with strings attached...

I might be willing to accept a lot of strings for 500mil ... just saying.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg donates $500 million

#79
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is not a lot to write the donation off against . Zuck is on a salary and won't be selling any stock for a few more years. This is straight up just giving away $500M. Zuck wasn't the one who put a dollar value on the donation, that was CNN. Zuck only mentioned a number of shares. He also said he is committed to giving away most of his net worth. There really is nothing that can be criticized here. You could perh…

It's likely he can carry the deduction forward. (I do understand that he only saves some portion of the $500 million so it doesn't make sense to say he is doing it for tax purposes.)

I imagine once you have a guaranteed $10-$20 million to your name, you'd not need or have any attachment to any money after that.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg donates $500 million

#80
post #78
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would look a gift horse in the mouth if the mafia gave it you right? It'd come with strings attached...

I might be willing to accept a lot of strings for 500mil ... just saying.

Problem is Zuck wants your soul and takes it for far less than $500 mil then sells it to other people and gives someone some stock with those strings attached...

When you put it that way, he can't be anything other than an asshole.

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