To me, it's like Aaron lost the game with Zuckerberg because Zucks wasn't fighting fair and Aaron expected him to. The expectations were clearly different on each side. Zucks wanted to win the game and take all the marbles any way he could, and didn't care at the who's expense it came, including his friends. I think Aaron expected more fairness and is hurt, but not surprised Zuckerberg hasn't changed.
The Lost Chapter
91–100 of 246 posts
Re: The Lost Chapter
#92Institutional investors made the mistake - again, and again, and again - of validating Mark's duplicitousness by pouring literally billions of dollars into his company, and then billions more into startups seeking to emulate it. Some of their investments created out of thin air industries that contribute absolutely nothing to, and in many cases even detract from, society. . . . Most mind-boggling of all, it's been cl…
Jeez, did you have to write all that? Anyway, although I think you are focusing on the weakest part of Greenspan's argument - the point where he comes closest to bitterness - I was wondering if you'd like to invest $20,000 in my new venture. I'd like to sell crack heroin to junkies in Detroit. I'm sure as a fellow champion of guilt-free founder consciences, you will support my endeavour as I give gangbangers the chan…
I want to invest in your startup. Sounds like a great opportunity, definitely profits from day one.
Re: The Lost Chapter
#93Logline: Zuckerberg mistreats Aaron Greenspan, is therefore greatest con of all time.
I believe the greatest con of all was likely in reference to this line: He may, in fact, be the greatest con of all time, having effectively convinced an entire nation, including the President of the United States, to believe in his extremist philosophy of radical openness. It isn't clear if getting someone to believe in your 'extremist philosophy of radical openness' is necessarily a con, unless of course you yourse…
"It isn't clear if getting someone to believe in your 'extremist philosophy of radical openness' is necessarily a con, unless of course you yourself don't believe in it and/or are doing so only in furtherance of some other interest which you are obscuring."
I do believe this is what Greenspan was getting at.
Re: The Lost Chapter
#94Here is what I don't get about this whole thing: Friendster - 2002 Myspace - 2003 LinkedIn - 2003 Not to mention the dozens of other social media clones around that time (I remember being members of countless social media sites in those days) Its not like anyone at Harvard stumbled upon an amazing new idea that was going to change the game. They were building what they hoped would be better versions of things already…
I remember thinking that nobody would ever overtake MySpace.
80 million users!
Facebook gives me great comfort that the race isn't always to the swift.
And the contrast between Facebook and the launch of Google Wave has demonstrated that having a dense social graph early is critical to success.
Re: The Lost Chapter
#95Re: The Lost Chapter
#96Institutional investors made the mistake - again, and again, and again - of validating Mark's duplicitousness by pouring literally billions of dollars into his company, and then billions more into startups seeking to emulate it. Some of their investments created out of thin air industries that contribute absolutely nothing to, and in many cases even detract from, society. . . . Most mind-boggling of all, it's been cl…
Jeez, did you have to write all that? Anyway, although I think you are focusing on the weakest part of Greenspan's argument - the point where he comes closest to bitterness - I was wondering if you'd like to invest $20,000 in my new venture. I'd like to sell crack heroin to junkies in Detroit. I'm sure as a fellow champion of guilt-free founder consciences, you will support my endeavour as I give gangbangers the chan…
In a free society, he is free to write as much as he likes and you are free to neither read nor reply to it.
The base of his argument is offending a persons preferences is not sufficient to self censor ones own actions - and I agree.
I also agree where he said any legal start up is fine and free of guilt - but don't worry I would be behind any start up or government initiative that gave away heroin to Junkies. The so called British System worked very well for many years, until the Puritan guilt pressure ended it in spite of empirical evidence that harm reduction did in fact reduce harm
so convert your start up to social entrpreneur status, and go make something to be proud of
the only reason to feel guilty is to have talent to create and not do so.
Re: The Lost Chapter
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Jeez, did you have to write all that? Anyway, although I think you are focusing on the weakest part of Greenspan's argument - the point where he comes closest to bitterness - I was wondering if you'd like to invest $20,000 in my new venture. I'd like to sell crack heroin to junkies in Detroit. I'm sure as a fellow champion of guilt-free founder consciences, you will support my endeavour as I give gangbangers the chan…
Yes, I'm sure that's exactly what he meant. Ugh.
I think the point that his rousing hand-waving passes conveniently (and at great length) over is that the internet is a novel medium and legal ideas about what is and is not ethical business practice are very poorly defined if they are defined at all.
For instance at what point can we argue that the rights of Facebook users and the "stickyness" of the service should limit the autonomy of Facebook as an independent company?
E.g. perhaps at some point, if Facebook becomes nigh-on-ineradicable from the fabric of our lives, should we nationalise (globalise) it? The argument would be that it's not just "another service" and it's too important to leave in the hands of private individuals interested primarily in profit, and thus the rihts of its many users outweigh the prerogatives of its "owners".
Re: The Lost Chapter
#98Institutional investors made the mistake - again, and again, and again - of validating Mark's duplicitousness by pouring literally billions of dollars into his company, and then billions more into startups seeking to emulate it. Some of their investments created out of thin air industries that contribute absolutely nothing to, and in many cases even detract from, society. . . . Most mind-boggling of all, it's been cl…
Yegge, is that you?!
Re: The Lost Chapter
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
False equivalency. All over false equivalency. Walmart isn't a service. Walmart doesn't have access to your most intimate information like Facebook does. Heck millions of Virgin Mobile accounts have been compromised. But the potential damage isn't even in the same order of magnitude of something (hypothetically) going foul at FB, either owing to deliberate policy or accidentally. Same with JetBlue with passenger data…
> Walmart isn't a service. I don't really know what distinction you're trying to make here. > Walmart doesn't have access to your most intimate information like Facebook does This probably varies from person to person. Walmart potentially has medical prescription data, which is inherently sensitive, but also a ton of data on nearly every product you buy and your shopping habits (obviously, only for people who buy nea…
Walmart, even when it's potential for misuse of customer data is taken to it's negative extreme, is just a vendor. Not a repository of your most private data.
Walmart cannot deduce from your pictures printed at their photo kiosk if you are having an extra-marital affair. It doesn't have that kind of "putting together two and two" power.
Plus it doesn't share that with your other family members or suggest to them that they get to know your extra-marital partner better.
Where am I going with this...scratch this reply.
If you can't see the potential for abuse at FB (or any other similarly massive soc-net) and somehow are trying to draw parallels to some big box vendor with no social tentacles, my explanation will not advance your understanding of it either.
No current corporation, conglomerate or organization - Disney, Visa, Experian, Equifax, Transunion, ExxonMobil, Monsanto - has that kind of established and potential scope for intrusion into your life.
Not even Acxiom has that kind of potential.
Re: The Lost Chapter
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Larry and Sergey are different from other star founders who've been accused of evil (Jobs, Gates, Zuckerberg) in that they were older so maybe more mature and also relatively less entrepreneurial- their goal was academia, unlike all the young dropouts. Maybe many extremely entrepreneurial people don't respect the law. In Zuckerberg's case it does seem like he doesn't care about patents at all whereas Aaron is still m…
1) I don't think Greenspan is mad, he seems more disappointed. 2) It is absolutely possible to treat your fellow human beings well and find richly-deserved success - Mark Zuckerberg however does not seem capable of this. 3) Even though our society might tolerate and even reward (in the short-term at least) this sort of behaviour, should we be happy that a master-exploiter of this unfairness is the guardian of social…
I don't know Zuckerberg but want to play devil's advocate to give him the benefit of the doubt until he actually gets convicted of something.
> 2) It is absolutely possible to treat your fellow human beings well and find richly-deserved success - Mark Zuckerberg however does not seem capable of this.
From Aaron's account, it looks like Mark does not believe that these software ideas were original or IP. If you buy that perspective, he wasn't wrong to execute far better on the same ideas that have appeared repeatedly in the history of social networks- he was simply a sucky friend, which is unlikeable but not illegal.
He's made a bunch of people very rich with Facebook. Do you think D'Angelo, the Winklevosses, and Saverin would rather have never met Zuckerberg or would rather he never created Facebook?
>3) Even though our society might tolerate and even reward (in the short-term at least) this sort of behaviour, should we be happy that a master-exploiter of this unfairness is the guardian of social relationships on the internet?
The sin Mark's accused of is stealing people's ideas, assuming ideas are steal-able, and thereby breaching the trust of people who considered themselves his friends or coworkers. If he's guilty, I guess the question is whether someone who is immoral/amoral in one respect is able to be ethical in other areas.
Since the movie makes a good case that Zuckerberg betrayed some of his close friends, I don't trust him (or any random person) not to betray me, a random stranger / Facebook user. But I do trust Zuckerberg to want to do whatever is good for Facebook. Are people scared he's going to somehow blackmail them into staying on Facebook by threatening to release their private data to everyone? I'll be scared of that scenario if that ever seems like the best plan for Facebook.
Who else could run Facebook? Most people are less intelligent or less competent or less interested in Facebook's future. Almost anyone in Mark's situation would cash out and grow indifferent but Zuckerberg persuades me he's not doing it for the money. So I guess I'm happy he's running it because regardless of his moral judgment or human loyalty at least I feel like he cares about Facebook.
I think many problems with corporations arise from leaders' interests not being aligned with those of the company. Facebook is one of the few examples where I don't believe that's the case. It might seem psychopathic to care more about Facebook than your best friend and/or cofounder, but is that really a big problem? Maybe from the corporation's perspective (or from the user and shareholder perspective), it's actually a virtue.