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Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

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Re: Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

#321

Post by aredox »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #282

I'm more shocked there really weren't any shocking revelation. It's pretty much what everyone expected. - Zuckerberg wants people to like him.. okay.. - Weird personal details about lingerie budgets.. an insinuation about Sandberg having some homosexual relationship.. eye roll - The Myanmar stuff we already knew about. It's bad. It seems negligent, but not like Zuckerburg wants to drown babies (all the FANG don't wan…

>- The Myanmar stuff we already knew about. It's bad. It seems negligent, but not like Zuckerburg wants to drown babies (all the FANG don't want to hire moderators and want to solve everything with machines)

Translation: "I am lucky not to be part of the group being exterminated, therefore I am comfortable to brush that under the rug"

Re: Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

#322

Post by aprilthird2021 »

pbiggar wrote: post #273

Another source of allegations about the behaviour at Meta comes from 7amleh's report on how they systematically suppressed what Americans and others were allowed see about Israel's invasion of Palestine. https://7amleh.org/storage/Advocacy%20Reports/Delete%20the%2...

Note that all the replies to this have conveniently steered the conversation into fighting over the Israel-Palestine war and gotten us to not talk about the actual point, that FB very credibly worked alongside the US gov't to suppress what Americans saw about the war on social media, lots of times suppressing actual journalists with press vests who were reporting from within Gaza at a time when formal press were banned by Israel from entering Gaza (meaning reliance on the ones already inside was crucial)

Re: Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

#323

Post by jpadkins »

blitzar wrote: post #52
aoanevdus wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious what would be considered the industry standard for fact checking in tech. Does Google Search, Apple App Store, TikTok, Snapchat, Amazon store, etc. apply fact-checking to the content posted by users/sellers? Or more abstractly, is fact-checking the responsibility of authors and content editors, or of platforms and infrastructure that spread the content?

Wikipedia is the gold standard. Good enough is asking Grok.

> Wikipedia is the gold standard.

LOL thanks for the laugh. The co-founders of Wikipedia have sounded the alarm that you cannot trust Wikipedia anymore. The inmates have taken over.

Re: Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

#324

Post by jpadkins »

dep_b wrote: post #16
dzonga wrote: post #9

you don't become a global ceo without being an absolute killer and not having non-questionable morals. I can make up different stuff about how a ceo can be amoral, and those would still apply to zuck / {{ whoelse }} book meant to be sold at airports for bored people. non-story.

This is probably true if you look at all big tech companies, but before Windows, MacOS, Oracle Databases or IBM computers did not have the responsibility of dealing with the communication and shaping of world view of billions of people world wide. It's the same as owning a large share of news papers or TV channels. You own the public discourse. If Larry Ellison is a greedy immoral bastard I switch to MS SQL Server, o…

> Bill Gates .. was not able to influence the public discourse.

People forget that the MS in MSNBC stands for Microsoft. Bill Gates invested heavily in media and lobbying in the late 90s / early 00s.

Re: Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

#325

Post by Muahaas »

s_dev wrote: post #283
contrarian1234 wrote: post #282

I'm more shocked there really weren't any shocking revelation. It's pretty much what everyone expected. - Zuckerberg wants people to like him.. okay.. - Weird personal details about lingerie budgets.. an insinuation about Sandberg having some homosexual relationship.. eye roll - The Myanmar stuff we already knew about. It's bad. It seems negligent, but not like Zuckerburg wants to drown babies (all the FANG don't wan…

What about the allegations that Facebook is suppressing informating regarding the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine? Is that an eye roll as well in your book or is it newsworthy?

I would personally put that in the eye roll category.

The problem is that pro-Palestine camp is a pretty active group of evangelists that inserts itself into every discussion and comments on unrelated posts. You have to moderate them to avoid alienating or fatiguing your normal users.

A funny example is LinkedIn of all places. Personally, I constantly see pro-Palestine propaganda liked or shared from connections. Most of that content is demagoguery or outright lies. Has no place on a work-related so I also report it.

I have no dog in this race but the content of the pro-Palestine crowd is simply low-quality.

Re: Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

#326

Post by n4r9 »

MrMcCall wrote: post #278
n4r9 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you mention Gates in particular?

If there's a person who used ALL his power to win every skirmish, no matter how unscrupulously, it was BG. A guy that powerful and unscrupulous and also unattractive with that horrible voice only gets women because of money and power. And the only woman who could stand him enough to marry him (and have his kids) was no looker, yet divorced him with no press whatsoever. That's the power of money. I suspect a lot of us…

There's a lot of subjective judgement going on in this post, but putting that aside: how does all this not apply equally well to most other wealthy billionaires such as Bezos, Ellison, Ballmer etc... ? I'm curious why you're picking on Gates.

Re: Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

#327

Post by BLKNSLVR »

thehyperflux wrote: post #315
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #293

Two comments downplaying the grossness of the conduct of executives and one reply trying to discredit another whistleblower saying similar things. For me, that's a worrying level of apathy towards and / or normalisation of what should be totally unacceptable behaviour. This is the kind of attitude that gets Trump a second term even after his first.

Don't forget HN is likely frequented by senior figures from all the major tech companies so that kind of comment on here doesn't necessarily indicate that such sentiment is leaking out into the wider world at volume.

Hah! Pretty good way to sniff that particular breeze then, and there's something rotten in the air.

Having said that, the other thread on this topic was bent into what I consider to be a more appropriate shape, so there must be a wide swathe covered.

Re: Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

#328

Post by johnecheck »

borgdefenser wrote: post #151
max_ wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is definitely not healthy. But I don't think you can limit people's wealth and not call it communism. I think the real problem is abuse of power, not accumulation of it. Power cannot be eliminated. It will either end up in the hand of politicians (who are genuinely more evil than tech bros) or remain in hands of wealth creators. What we should do is focus of punishingpeople who abuse thier power.

Then the people who punish those in power will gain too much power. The reality is our system is not compatible with the internet. Our system is made for a network with much lower density and clustering coefficient. When you crank these up with the internet, it creates power law distributions everywhere. Complaining a few people have all the wealth when we have created a society with this massive power law distributi…

While I agree that 'our system' is failing in part due to its preference for a sparser network than the one we have today, I disagree strongly on your conclusion.

You (and I) have no idea whether there is a solution. We've only explored the tiniest fraction of the societal solution space. The idea that we've exhaustively searched it by trying both "communism" AND "capitalism" is idiocy.

Choose to believe that we can build a better world. It might not be true, but it's certainly false if none of us believe it.

Re: Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

#329

Post by johnecheck »

js8 wrote: post #43
max_ wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Noone should be as big as Zuck, Musk, Altman, Bezos... What should be the maximum of how big someone should be? Humans are not perfect, whether "big" or "small".

> What should be the maximum of how big someone should be? In democracy, the maximum should be 1. One vote per person. That's it. In practice, we can delegate stuff, but I don't see reason why should people (as adults) accept any sort of authoritarianism in their lives.

Ah, but this wasn't the question. You've confused formal political input with the broader idea of power.

In this hypothetical perfectly fair democracy, the ones with power would be the ones best able to sway the populace. Popularity, rhetoric, and control over media would skew the true distribution of power away from the perfectly flat one you might be hoping for.

Instead of aiming for perfection, we should oppose the systems that result in power becoming more concentrated over time. Our goal is an equilibrium where power is spread broadly and the most powerful are the most deserving (e.g, a scientist's voice has power because their expertise is respected).

One person, one vote is a good place to start. But it isn't the whole solution.

Re: Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg

#330

Post by tbrockman »

I bought the book specifically as a result of Facebook's attempts to silence the author and have been enjoying the read so far. While there's nothing "surprising" about the stories it recounts of Facebook's leadership (as many pessimists and contrarians have mentioned each time it's brought up here), it's nonetheless interesting to read intimate details of specific instances where--much as in these discussions--sociopathic and abusive behavior is normalized and goes unchecked, even by those who eventually become victims of it themselves.

I hope that over time we're able undo some of the damage caused by these bad stewards of power, but it's disheartening to see how many just care to be on the right side of the whip.

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