> "We’re not going to debate the disgruntled litigants and anonymous sources who seek to rewrite Facebook’s early history or embarrass Mark Zuckerberg with dated allegations. The unquestioned fact is that since leaving Harvard for Silicon Valley nearly six years ago, Mark has led Facebook's growth from a college website to a global service playing an important role in the lives of over 400 million people."
You get a similar argument in the recently leaked ‘Boz memo’: please ignore our unethical behavior, instead focus on how many users we have. Growth at any cost is justified.
They're playing the status game. "Rewrite history" and "dated allegations" serve mostly to slander whoever made those claims. Then they raise Zuckerberg's status by pointing out his achievements.
They're effectively saying the accusation isn't valid because Zuckerberg is nobility and the accusers are not.
Note, again, this was their response when this article was written in 2010. "...since leaving Harvard for Silicon Valley nearly six years ago" is referring to 2004. Just clarifying, because when I first read this I thought, "what was Mark Zuckerburg doing in Harvard still in 2012?"
It'd be interesting to hear what they'd about it today though. Probably nothing.
> We’re not going to debate the disgruntled litigants and anonymous sources
"We're not denying it though. It is true. If they were false and we could debate and win the debate, we would"
> The unquestioned fact is that since leaving Harvard for Silicon Valley nearly six years ago, Mark has led Facebook's growth from a college website to a global service playing an important role in the lives of over 400
> [...] instead focus on how many users we have
Even more, it is interesting what they are implying here. If you can get people to give you their data and build a company on it, it somehow means you all of the sudden acquire a better personality, increased morality and are absolved of all the stupid things you said or did before.
Now sure, people do and say stupid stuff when they are teenagers. I've done it. It depends when and what was done and at what age, what happened before and after. I can see being forgiving some thing up until the early 20s. People are still developing and personality could change I suppose. Though when it comes to his "dumb fucks" comment, I give him less of a pass of being a "teenager" because he was 26 already. Additionally, if these were just isolated incidents and everything before and after pointed to him taken privacy seriously but the whole company is built on the opposite of that.
On the one hand, this is a very shitty thing to do. On the other, he was young and dumb and FB was very different than it is today.
I suppose it could be red flag and indicate larger character flaws that have leaked into how FB operates now, but I'm personally glad I'm not being judged today for everything I did when I was 19.
>I'm personally glad I'm not being judged today for everything I did when I was 19.
"Mark was a different person back then" would be much more believable if it wasn't for the fact he deceived users in 2011, has recently used his privileges as CEO to delete messages he had sent, and repeatedly tried to cover up the abuse of their api in 2014 (even going to far as to threaten lawsuits against the Guardian journalists a few weeks ago).
I agree that we shouldn't necessarily judge people based on something from a decade and a half ago.
But I'm all for judging people based on their attitude toward their past misdeeds. If someone fucks up and then years later they go, "Yeah, I fucked up, I'm sorry, I learned X, Y, and Z from the experience and now I'm a better person," then by all means, let's move on. But if their attitude is to smear the victims and essentially claim that the fact that they're now filthy rich excuses them from any past misbehavior (as is the case here), then let's criticize the crap out of them.
Yeahh we need regulations on Facebook. The fact that he retains a majority voting share in the company, the fact that I now have zero trust in Zuckerberg AND Sandberg into doing the right thing, AND that there is no viable competition/users are too psychologically entwined to make the decision to detach from Facebook means the only checks and balances left against this unscrupulous individual is the US government. Unfortunately 80% are in his pockets, but that's the best bet we have.
What's stopping him from using his master access to obtain any info he needs for a presidential election? Trust? Trusting him?
> there is no viable competition/users are too psychologically entwined to make the decision to detach from Facebook
People literally said the same thing about MySpace when it held the “network effect” throne. And in hindsight after it lost its users to facebook people came up with all kinds of “well, duh” reasons, such as the profile pages automatically playing music or being so customizable to the point of not having any visual consistency.
Well there’s a ton of things wrong with facebook too right now that will be so easy to point out in hindsight. Facebook is just as vulnerable as MySpace was.
Maybe nothing, but in practice this would be hard to do. Access to this data would amount to material support from a company to a presidential campaign which under campaign finance laws would need to be reported and scrutinized.
Additionally, Facebook is not just Mark Zuckerberg and likely the company would not like the data being used that way because it would risk their relationship with their users, which is far more important than Zuckerberg being president.
+1, I have absolutely zero confidence in Zuckerberg and Sandberg. The board should ask them to resign and appoint new people (obviously the most extreme ask from this scenario). As a user, I want facebook to stick around and be more useful to me in the future. Unfortunately I don't see the current people doing that.
People’s intelligence? People are still able to tell lies from truth, media pressure from propaganda. The best proof is all media told americans not to vote for Trump, yet they did so.
And to the point, Zuck’s understanding of its electorate will get him votes or not. For example, Facebook’s censorship of republican topic is not something that gets votes. Facebook’s employment culture of getting rid of males and whites won’t get him much votes. It doesn’t depend how you spin it. It doesn’t matter how many times we explain or how much data they have on us, what matters is whether Mark personally understands whites, cis, both genders including males, etc.
Milo even made a tutorial about how Democrats could win back the white/male/cis vote again, it’s not like it’s not ELI5’ed already. Some people, from the top of any aparatus, still wouldn’t understand that stirring up hate against whites doesn’t get them votes.
I don't necessarily buy this story because the facts don't really add up and there is no real evidence that this occurred.
The source of the story is described to be one of Mark's friends "Here's how Mark described his hack to a friend" and not the journalists "We reached out to Tim McGinn and Elisabeth Theodore for comment. Both declined to comment.". Given the evidence is based on a verbal account to a friend there is a slim probability that Mark made the story up.
It also seems odd that the details of the hack are laid out so precisely. It is stated that he found the passwords to exactly two email accounts, one of which belonged to Tim McGinn given that "In one account he accessed, Mark saw an email from Crimson writer Tim McGinn to Cameron, Tyler, and Divya.". Mark looked for "members of the site who identified themselves as members of the Crimson" but it would have been easier to find the specific people involved instead. And why use failed login attempts if you have access to actual user passwords. I can't think of any reason why you'd log failed passwords but not real ones (except for maliciously stealing passwords).
Finally, how did the email from Elisabeth Theodore to Tim McGinn become public given neither commented on the story. From other parts of the story, it seems likely that Tim McGinn was a source (who else would have known about Mark getting upset with Tim on the phone). So it seems that Tim gave the email to Business Insider however Business Insider does not explicitly state that. This suggests that neither they nor Tim have any real evidence that this "hacking" actually occurred.
Unrelated, but this reminded me of my very first real, salary developer job where I added logging to the web application. I remember logging failed password attempts specifically; I didn't give a second thought to simply logging the values of all form fields, seemed easiest at the time in case the developer changed the names of the fields.
It wasn't until a review by one of the senior devs that saw passwords in the log files - and with eyebrows raised asked "wth are you doing" - that it dawned on me, "oops". I'm glad that never made it out to production.
I'm not in defense of Zuckerberg, but I have seen and fortunately stopped some young entrepreneurs doing atrociously invasive things in order to better understand and expand their product.
I don't think this is necessarily a case of wickedness, but instead lack of knowledge and immaturity when the event happened.
Going into someone else's email to read what they have to say about you is something that even a three year old knows is wrong.
If you have dealings with people like that and you're helping them don't be surprised when you find out they have used their money to open a child rape hotel somewhere in the developing world.
Many comments here can be summarized "but he was only 19, young and dumb ..." However many 19 years olds do things that impact the rest of their life and don't get that excuse. "But doing illegal things is different..." Isn't accessing someone's email without consent illegal?
Ergo, a long history of double standards and hypocrisy.
Congresscritters on Tuesday are gonna set him on fire. Chances are that's all they do, unless setting him on fire brings about some actual political capital, and specific policies, to do something about facebook or privacy in general. But I think the critters have benefited from lax privacy laws, it's made them and their donor base wealthy and powerful, and a good deal of them will not want broad privacy protection for any number of reasons.
If their approval is around 10%, and Zuckerberg's is around 20% (estimates, but point being Zuck's is probably higher than Congress), they'll see making him look bad will at least in the short term make them look informed, sympathetic and serious. Even if they get a +1% for giving him a hard time, they'll see it as a win. It'll be a spectacle for fans of schadenfreude.
What I don't understand is how the important leaders and influencers of the world, like Obama, or Bill Gates, or others, are not ashamed to show themselves near Zuckerberg.
He started the whole Facebook with a theft from the Winklevoss brothers. That whole business is the fruit of theft. Yeah, he was young and stupid, but how many of you even considered doing such a thing to your employer? Yeah, he built a huge business based on it, but it's still built on thievery and deceivement.
No matter how many seemingly good things he does, he is still a thief (by my moral grounds, of course, not by law)
That would be a fun position for Obama to take; would he spurn Zuckerberg before or after giving Kissinger the Distinguished Public Service Award?
I rail against Facebook, and think it's a dangerous system, but Zuckerberg is a damn saint compared to many of the people Obama and Bill Gates have shown themselves with. And the two are themselves far from .
>What I don't understand is how the important leaders and influencers of the world, like Obama, or Bill Gates, or others, are not ashamed to show themselves near Zuckerberg.
Because they are just as shity as him. They just hide it better. Show me a rich person and I will show you a criminal.
Has he done anything to indicate that he's grown? 19-year old Zuckerberg seemed like a sociopath. Sociopaths tend to get smarter, but they don't usually grow souls.
I’m getting a 404 on the article link now. Did someone (on a Sunday evening) notice that this story resurfaced on HN and had their lawyer send over a cease a desist to business insider to get it taken down?
Why are the media talking so much about Facebook's mistakes of 10 years ago, while there are much worse problems in privacy at the moment ? Grindr, China's rating system, NSA's algorithm in Pakistan..
Corporate culture changes a lot in 10 years, Facebook is the wrong target.
It has to do with the general population's complete misunderstanding on how ads are targeted, combined with the fact that it's hip to upvote and share anti-FB hit pieces.
_0vzt|8 years ago
> "We’re not going to debate the disgruntled litigants and anonymous sources who seek to rewrite Facebook’s early history or embarrass Mark Zuckerberg with dated allegations. The unquestioned fact is that since leaving Harvard for Silicon Valley nearly six years ago, Mark has led Facebook's growth from a college website to a global service playing an important role in the lives of over 400 million people."
You get a similar argument in the recently leaked ‘Boz memo’: please ignore our unethical behavior, instead focus on how many users we have. Growth at any cost is justified.
loup-vaillant|8 years ago
They're effectively saying the accusation isn't valid because Zuckerberg is nobility and the accusers are not.
peacetreefrog|8 years ago
It'd be interesting to hear what they'd about it today though. Probably nothing.
rdtsc|8 years ago
> We’re not going to debate the disgruntled litigants and anonymous sources
"We're not denying it though. It is true. If they were false and we could debate and win the debate, we would"
> The unquestioned fact is that since leaving Harvard for Silicon Valley nearly six years ago, Mark has led Facebook's growth from a college website to a global service playing an important role in the lives of over 400
> [...] instead focus on how many users we have
Even more, it is interesting what they are implying here. If you can get people to give you their data and build a company on it, it somehow means you all of the sudden acquire a better personality, increased morality and are absolved of all the stupid things you said or did before.
Now sure, people do and say stupid stuff when they are teenagers. I've done it. It depends when and what was done and at what age, what happened before and after. I can see being forgiving some thing up until the early 20s. People are still developing and personality could change I suppose. Though when it comes to his "dumb fucks" comment, I give him less of a pass of being a "teenager" because he was 26 already. Additionally, if these were just isolated incidents and everything before and after pointed to him taken privacy seriously but the whole company is built on the opposite of that.
needToSay|8 years ago
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unknown|8 years ago
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TAForObvReasons|8 years ago
... captured in the infamous phrase "Move Fast and Break Things"
peacetreefrog|8 years ago
I suppose it could be red flag and indicate larger character flaws that have leaked into how FB operates now, but I'm personally glad I'm not being judged today for everything I did when I was 19.
sigmar|8 years ago
"Mark was a different person back then" would be much more believable if it wasn't for the fact he deceived users in 2011, has recently used his privileges as CEO to delete messages he had sent, and repeatedly tried to cover up the abuse of their api in 2014 (even going to far as to threaten lawsuits against the Guardian journalists a few weeks ago).
mikeash|8 years ago
But I'm all for judging people based on their attitude toward their past misdeeds. If someone fucks up and then years later they go, "Yeah, I fucked up, I'm sorry, I learned X, Y, and Z from the experience and now I'm a better person," then by all means, let's move on. But if their attitude is to smear the victims and essentially claim that the fact that they're now filthy rich excuses them from any past misbehavior (as is the case here), then let's criticize the crap out of them.
mainthread|8 years ago
fwdpropaganda|8 years ago
I have seen no evidence that he changed when it comes to unethical behaviour.
gowld|8 years ago
Ysx|8 years ago
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propman|8 years ago
What's stopping him from using his master access to obtain any info he needs for a presidential election? Trust? Trusting him?
mygo|8 years ago
People literally said the same thing about MySpace when it held the “network effect” throne. And in hindsight after it lost its users to facebook people came up with all kinds of “well, duh” reasons, such as the profile pages automatically playing music or being so customizable to the point of not having any visual consistency.
Well there’s a ton of things wrong with facebook too right now that will be so easy to point out in hindsight. Facebook is just as vulnerable as MySpace was.
unknown|8 years ago
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coss|8 years ago
danielrhodes|8 years ago
Additionally, Facebook is not just Mark Zuckerberg and likely the company would not like the data being used that way because it would risk their relationship with their users, which is far more important than Zuckerberg being president.
hcnews|8 years ago
tajen|8 years ago
People’s intelligence? People are still able to tell lies from truth, media pressure from propaganda. The best proof is all media told americans not to vote for Trump, yet they did so.
And to the point, Zuck’s understanding of its electorate will get him votes or not. For example, Facebook’s censorship of republican topic is not something that gets votes. Facebook’s employment culture of getting rid of males and whites won’t get him much votes. It doesn’t depend how you spin it. It doesn’t matter how many times we explain or how much data they have on us, what matters is whether Mark personally understands whites, cis, both genders including males, etc.
Milo even made a tutorial about how Democrats could win back the white/male/cis vote again, it’s not like it’s not ELI5’ed already. Some people, from the top of any aparatus, still wouldn’t understand that stirring up hate against whites doesn’t get them votes.
barbegal|8 years ago
The source of the story is described to be one of Mark's friends "Here's how Mark described his hack to a friend" and not the journalists "We reached out to Tim McGinn and Elisabeth Theodore for comment. Both declined to comment.". Given the evidence is based on a verbal account to a friend there is a slim probability that Mark made the story up.
It also seems odd that the details of the hack are laid out so precisely. It is stated that he found the passwords to exactly two email accounts, one of which belonged to Tim McGinn given that "In one account he accessed, Mark saw an email from Crimson writer Tim McGinn to Cameron, Tyler, and Divya.". Mark looked for "members of the site who identified themselves as members of the Crimson" but it would have been easier to find the specific people involved instead. And why use failed login attempts if you have access to actual user passwords. I can't think of any reason why you'd log failed passwords but not real ones (except for maliciously stealing passwords).
Finally, how did the email from Elisabeth Theodore to Tim McGinn become public given neither commented on the story. From other parts of the story, it seems likely that Tim McGinn was a source (who else would have known about Mark getting upset with Tim on the phone). So it seems that Tim gave the email to Business Insider however Business Insider does not explicitly state that. This suggests that neither they nor Tim have any real evidence that this "hacking" actually occurred.
crescentfresh|8 years ago
It wasn't until a review by one of the senior devs that saw passwords in the log files - and with eyebrows raised asked "wth are you doing" - that it dawned on me, "oops". I'm glad that never made it out to production.
acct1771|8 years ago
gabept|8 years ago
I don't think this is necessarily a case of wickedness, but instead lack of knowledge and immaturity when the event happened.
zeth___|8 years ago
If you have dealings with people like that and you're helping them don't be surprised when you find out they have used their money to open a child rape hotel somewhere in the developing world.
bdcravens|8 years ago
kerng|8 years ago
bsimpson|8 years ago
unknown|8 years ago
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dwighttk|8 years ago
cmurf|8 years ago
Congresscritters on Tuesday are gonna set him on fire. Chances are that's all they do, unless setting him on fire brings about some actual political capital, and specific policies, to do something about facebook or privacy in general. But I think the critters have benefited from lax privacy laws, it's made them and their donor base wealthy and powerful, and a good deal of them will not want broad privacy protection for any number of reasons.
If their approval is around 10%, and Zuckerberg's is around 20% (estimates, but point being Zuck's is probably higher than Congress), they'll see making him look bad will at least in the short term make them look informed, sympathetic and serious. Even if they get a +1% for giving him a hard time, they'll see it as a win. It'll be a spectacle for fans of schadenfreude.
tudorconstantin|8 years ago
He started the whole Facebook with a theft from the Winklevoss brothers. That whole business is the fruit of theft. Yeah, he was young and stupid, but how many of you even considered doing such a thing to your employer? Yeah, he built a huge business based on it, but it's still built on thievery and deceivement.
No matter how many seemingly good things he does, he is still a thief (by my moral grounds, of course, not by law)
icebraining|8 years ago
I rail against Facebook, and think it's a dangerous system, but Zuckerberg is a damn saint compared to many of the people Obama and Bill Gates have shown themselves with. And the two are themselves far from .
zeth___|8 years ago
Because they are just as shity as him. They just hide it better. Show me a rich person and I will show you a criminal.
heedlessly3|8 years ago
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bitmapbrother|8 years ago
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eecks|8 years ago
spaceman1331|8 years ago
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arnaudsm|8 years ago
Corporate culture changes a lot in 10 years, Facebook is the wrong target.
seattle_spring|8 years ago
jlgaddis|8 years ago
> Corporate culture changes a lot in 10 years ...
Not at Facebook, apparently.