I think Zuck is too full of himself. People often get confused that their success means that they are wise, and that we should listen to them. Should we as well follow the thought leadership of drug cartels and the Saudi monarchs?
"Full of himself"? Way too mild an indictment. In the last 24 hours Facebook bought a story in a publication, pretended it wasn’t sponsored, their COO posted it, then when they got caught, they denied knowing anything about it. And what was that ad/story about? Their commitment to stopping disinformation. All the while we've learned that they have utterly sold the company to international electioneers.
Citations to your references would be appreciated. It's the first step to overcoming the state of internet disinformation, as well as helping society overcome the fear of missing out just because someone doesn't already know your references.
I understand what you are saying, but this is a mainstream story, easily searchable with DDG from hints in the comment, covered by both Washington Post and New York Times as well as being splashed all over Business Insider, Mashable, The Verge, etc. etc.
This is not the comment to be fighting this battle with.
I agree with providing citations if the situation warrants it. This comment is an aside with a recent, topical, well covered and easily verifiable anecdote, a citation is not needed or warranted.
This is NOT the hill for citation fanatics to die on.
[edit] also another comment had already provided a citation, in fact the citation you provided, so you or I providing the citation was unnecessary so I don't understand your point
I wasn't agreeing with the original claim, though it's probably somewhat accurate, nor that this news item supports that claim. Just disputing that a citation was required for that claim in this forum.
I agree, we're clearly not understanding each other perfectly, I think this phenomenon is all too common and it's worth some mild effort to investigate where things have gone wrong.
The original comment:
> Citations to your references would be appreciated. It's the first step to overcoming the state of internet disinformation, as well as helping society overcome the fear of missing out just because someone doesn't already know your references.
This request (and it's just that, nothing more) seems reasonable.
This subsequent comment exchange:
>> All the while we've learned that they have utterly sold the company to international electioneers.
> This is disinformation, laundered with the trust of the first comment.
...specifically: "laundered with the trust of the first comment" seems like perfectly valid criticism, and arguably adds to the "onus" (or value in) for the original person to provide a proper citation, in order to minimize misunderstanding.
And then here is where I see a problem arises:
> Just disputing that a citation was required for that claim in this forum.
You are criticizing someone for saying a citation is required, but it is you that introduced the idea of it being a requirement into the conversation - which is what I pointed out (perhaps not as eloquently as I should/could have).
Your subsequent reasoning:
> I deliberately swapped so you could see how that word doesn't work
...doesn't make sense to me. Replacing the original word with a new one that has a distinctly different meaning, and then criticizing OP for the new meaning of the sentence, doesn't make sense to me.
Yes, you are assuming I have a much more extreme view than I actually have. When I used the word required that didn’t mean I thought the original poster was ordering/demanding there be citations. When I tried to clarify that, you again misinterpreted my intent. And again now. At three misinterpretations it’s time to let it go. L
> you again misinterpreted my intent. And again now
Words have distinct (non-interchangeable) and broadly accepted meanings, independent of either intent or personal preferences for what the meaning should be. I have merely interpreted your words according to the broadly accepted meanings, have I not?
Upvoted because even though I knew the context of that comment, I consider it poor form to expect everyone else on a public forum to keep up with every bit of daily news.
I did have a hard time taking any of what he wrote seriously. It was not thought provoking for me and I felt it wasn’t deep or interesting. It’s interesting in the sense that it is useful to know where FB may be headed, but when I think of Facebook all I see is another advertising company looking for more ways to put ads in front of captive eyeballs.
One thing I can't understand is why Facebook is still around. But, at the same time, Twitter is still around, too. I guess people got tired switching platforms.
Because they actually solve a real problem for a majority of their users? I mean I get it, I'm on the hate train too but their actual product (the Facebook web site) provides a useful service. It allows me to share a bunch of stuff with a bunch of groups of people who I want to stay in touch with, in a low friction manner.
Pretending Facebook is useless is like pretending GM doesn't make cars. Sure, maybe you don't like GM cars but they fill a genuine need for a lot of people.
Because they also purchased IG and WhatsApp and because their messaging app is reasonably successful (in parts because they didn’t add groups to IG messaging, otherwise younger folks would have been even more eager to leave FB). As far as I can tell the main FB app/website has been pretty much deserted by younger people.
The UX of that process you describe (without something like facebook) sucks. It's surprising you haven't realized this once you've tried to do that for more than say ~10 people in the list.
If the UX sucks, it means it takes more time and energy to do the same thing, it means that I will not be doing the same thing, I will end up sending to less people or less information. Which means that facebook effectively allows new types of communication which would otherwise not even exist.
I'm not sure that's a bad thing really. Having easy to maintain distance relationships leads to accumulating less meaningful relationships. Then again, I'm hardly a good metric for sociability.
It is the low cost of Facebook (and social media) messaging that makes me not use it to send messages to people I love and care about. I still call them on the phone. When it comes to relationships, my communication theory is simple: the cost of the medium is the information. Goes without saying in this setting, there's only few people I call "friends."
If you have more than a handful of people that you wish to meaningfully connect with - facebook is a great tool. I know personally many people including myself that both use calls, emails, chat messages - and yes, facebook - all with the same people. They are just geared towards different kinds and modes of communication. The notion that I have to use phone exclusively to communicate with someone to call them "friends" seems very dated to me personally. It probably works for someone else. (But I mean the numbers show that a lot of people do indeed find facebook useful, it is not that popular for no reason.)
It's about the connection itself, it's about the energy and attention one puts into the relationship, not whether one allows oneself to use facebook for it or not.
Nothing. People just find other means more convenient and for some reason are willing to sacrifice their privacy in return. Also, by names and college and work you can find people on these social platforms even if you lost their contact long back.
Basically, it's more difficult/tedious to do. Facebook lowered the cost opportunity of this for the vast majority of people (you and others excluded, obviously).
While I don't actively use Facebook the way I use twitter, I've kept my account for messenging because its the only way to keep in touch with old friends and family. People change numbers, names, locations. Facebook is my Phonebook, in a way.
low effort intelligence collection. I wouldn't mind "investing" into those companies if I were an agency employing who are basically incompetent crooks.
To be honest, I’m always a little bit happy to see him writing something and have it come off as a bit awkward. I don’t feel so bad about my own writing style when I think that the CEO of a multibillion dollar company is the same :)
In the case of Zuckerberg specifically he's actually more likely to be right on this by virtue of being in a position to influence it. If Zuck persuades the board of Facebook that AR is the future then thousands of FB engineers could be tasked with building AR apps and libraries, and Facebook could invest billions in AR acquisitions. Those sorts of actions steer the future.
When a billionaire claims to predict the future they're not just making a prediction, they're really telling you what they plan to invest in.
Zuck is "not just making a prediction", he's not making any relevant statement about the future at all.
All he does is telling what he plans to invest in. But given his privileged position, that's almost as irrelevant as what he is going to have for dinner tonight, if his plans for the next decade do not address the urgent and burning issues that keep the rest of humanity awake at night in earnest.
I'm sure AR "is the future" in a decade. But then you'd have to ask to whose benefit and to what ends.
If a billionaire makes swiping statements about the social good, then I expect a proper argumentation that shows an understanding about the vast complexity involved, and their according responsibilities. Not vapid filler that reduce the issues to a mere generational conflict such as:
> Today, many important institutions in our society still aren't doing enough to address the issues younger generations face -- from climate change to runaway costs of education, housing and healthcare. But as millennials and more members of younger generations can vote, I expect this to start changing rapidly. By the end of this decade, I expect more institutions will be run by millennials and more policies will be set to address these problems with longer term outlooks.
Google+ failed because Google didn't know what they wanted it to be. I don't think that's down to engineering. That's a product and marketing problem.
AR is a little different because it's not a product; Facebook's AR apps might fail, but Zuck's vision could still succeed if Facebook create (or acquire) tools for creating an AR ecosystem.
Google doesn't actually have many customer-facing product wins on the strength of their GUIs / UX to its credit, period.
Google search was minimalist. Android followed everyone else in the market, and hasn't iterated core UX much since. G Suite office apps were acquired, and mostly cloned Office online. Same with Gmail.
Maps is about the only heavily-used app, and I wouldn't call its design revolutionary (or even good).
Chrome is about the best example I can come up with, and it's mostly iterated and improved on the back end.
Maybe I'm missing something major? But it's not a market they compete in or are particularly good at.
(This isn't to say that the initial lift of desktop apps to the web wasn't a technical tour du force; just that blue sky GUIs have never been something they're known for)
Mass media social networks are a winner-take-all game. All but one candidates will fail, and the success of that winner is all but certain to be based on a mix of ideosyncratic or non-apparent characteristics, though founding cohort can be and has been a major success factor.
Two of the largest online social networks to date have emerged from the highly-selective university space: Usenet (UCLA, Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, UI, Rutgers, etc.), and Facebook (once: literally Harvard).
Google+ might have been able to grow from its tech roots. My sense is that Google's marketing-and-advertising focus (and community), as well as gross mismanagement, doomed its attempt, nudged with some active antipropaganda from other sources, notably Facebook. That's not to say it would have succeeded, but there were numerous self- and externally-imposed injuries.
If this post had been written by an anonymous dev, it would not be read as "full of himself". I think the "full of himself" subtext comes from the readers, not the writer.
This doesn't stop the possibility that Zuck actually is full of himself.
It's as much how it is written as it is what is written. No-one who isn't a captain of industry could write a blog post like that, because they wouldn't be writing a puff-piece and write in the guarded lofty tones of political speak.
You can give an anonymous dev the benefit of the doubt that they are probably not expecting millions of people to be influenced by the bullshit they are saying.
> I think Zuck is too full of himself. People often get confused that their success means that they are wise, and that we should listen to them.
Wow, you just described like greater than 99% of the internet.
Search engine results these days is like taking a metal detector to the city dump.
We might as well use Taleb's idea of Lindy to find good information. Unfortunately, the internet hasn't been around long enough for anything published direct to web to qualify.
> Should we as well follow the thought leadership of drug cartels and the Saudi monarchs?
To be fair, the Saudi monarchs are in the thought leadership business. Their influence over Islam is important to them and a lot of effort goes into it.
Drug cartels, as far as I'm aware, don't really care what you think.
This is unpopular to say, but when we're heading for a mass extinction event, maybe we should be sacrificing freedom for the sake of social cohesion. There should be facial recognition, social score and such things, to preserve humanity from chaos. I think there's a decent case to be made, and that's why I generally appreciate what China is doing. They are the best prepared for what might come.
A valiant effort could be made to make the argument for a social score to achieve a "greater good," but ending the statement by saying you appreciate China's implementation of it kind of ruins the argument. They're not exactly making use of it for "good".
> They're not exactly making use of it for "good".
Depending on your definitions of "exactly" and "good".
I think a better question is something like: might it plausibly result in a net better outcome than some/all alternative approaches? I would say the answer to that question is definitely yes.
What is this "mass extinction event"? You don't get to advocate for giving up freedom for the sake of security if you're not even saying what we should be so afraid of.
I suppose the mass extinction event is climate change - but if so the idea that having face recognition and social score will help humanity combat that problem is ludicrous.
Well he has the financial power to influence change in the world, so even if he may be someone whose insight you don't find useful, he is someone you should hear out. At least by listening you will have some idea of what he intends to do with his power, and from there you can decide if your actions will aid or not in whatever change Zuck decides to act on. For example, from this post it is clear the VR will be a big component of FBs future. From this you can do what you believe is a better path for VR and use your bit of influence by not providing money to FBs VR efforts (remove all FB VR apps(including Beat Saber), buy from Oculus competitors, etc...)
> Should we as well follow the thought leadership of drug cartels and the Saudi monarchs?
Please stay on topic and refrain from ad hominems that add nothing to the discussion. If you have disagreement with his predictions, focus on that in your reply.
Your comment adds nothing to the discussion and just lowers the quality of discourse. It's a shame it is the most highly voted comment.
A legitimate reason for being interested in his post is to comb through it for ill conceived ideas that may further damage privacy and spread hate and misinformation, in order to sound alarm bells. Because Zuckerberg has massive power and can implement whatever naive and gullible ideas he comes up with.
