Why is Mark Zuckerberg such a boring human being?

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_29920573/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-replacing-4-palo-alto

 

It seems like all of the big people in tech are all either completely dull or they're creepy.  Zuckerberg, Kallinick, Bezos, etc.  And the women aren't any better.  All these news articles try to hype up Sheryl Sandberg and the chick from Yahoo as if they're interesting people.  They're not. 

 

Bezos is the one who really scares me.  Like as soon as he gets off work and goes home there's a basement full of gimps waiting for him. 

It's like, if Zuckerberg really wants privacy, move the damn company to Omaha or Bentonville. 

Why is Mark Zuckerberg such a boring human being?

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_29920573/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-replacing-4-palo-alto

 

It seems like all of the big people in tech are all either completely dull or they're creepy.  Zuckerberg, Kallinick, Bezos, etc.  And the women aren't any better.  All these news articles try to hype up Sheryl Sandberg and the chick from Yahoo as if they're interesting people.  They're not. 

 

Bezos is the one who really scares me.  Like as soon as he gets off work and goes home there's a basement full of gimps waiting for him. 

 

It’s because in tech, the real difference makers aren’t the salesmen, accountants, or other “soft skills” people.  They are the programmers, the people actually putting the product together.  It’s kind of like if automotive was dominated by engineers and mechanics.

 

They aren’t boring per se, but they do tend to be very private.  This doesn’t mean loners, necessarily, but they have their circles that they trust and dislike personal publicity.

 

^ That's not necessarily always true. Cloud computing guys have to act like mattress salesmen since they're selling something a lot of people are highly averse to such as reverse mortgages.

 

 

 

So a friend of a friend got married over the weekend. I don't know these people, but you know how when people get married or for "Facebook Official" they show one picture of each next to each other? The woman's photo just happened to be of an ultrasound, so now these people have effectively been given a virtual shotgun wedding. Who knows if the ultrasound is even of his kid? It could be a five-year old picture of a baby she had with her ex.

^ That's not necessarily always true. Cloud computing guys have to act like mattress salesmen since they're selling something a lot of people are highly averse to such as reverse mortgages

 

That’s true, but it’s a more or less mature product that, as you say, people don’t trust for non-technical reasons.

 

Also, for an individual company, the salesmen and marketing guys also become important when the founders get bored or decide to step away.  As averse as a lot of those guys are to what could be called the “social” end of the business, they are often easily manipulated by individuals with those sorts of skills who gain some of their trust.  Indeed, many of them are fully aware of this and that’s why they shy away from those areas.  It’s a cycle of sorts.  Until, of course, they want to step away from it all.  Then the salesmen are in a position to take over.

 

A lot of the second generation management tech companies are indeed run by salesmen and accountants.  Just as “unsupervised” programmers will keep tweaking a program despite the wishes of the users (to get back on topic, Facebook is a classic example), salesmen with a free rein will introduce office politics.  The problem is they don’t understand the programmers the way the programs understand them.  A programmer knows he or she has a skill that not everyone has.  Some salesmen think anyone has the ability to randomly chat with anyone but some choose not to.  They try to drag the programmers into their mileu and the results aren’t good for the company’s ability to innovate.

 

My brother got married two weekends ago.  I was over at their house two days later when the wifey spent 1-2 hours updating her Facebook profile with a new last name and photos from the wedding.

 

Of course, brides these days can't just dump 200 wedding photos all at once onto their profiles.  They've got to keep trickling them out over a 4-week period as to keep hoarding the attention of all the girls they went to high school with.  I saw a girl do that 4 years ago -- they photos kept coming, 7 or 8 at a time, for month after month.  Now she's divorced. 

^Ran out of pictures, no doubt.

I've finally joined

I've finally joined

 

https://www.facebook.com/urbanohio/?fref=ts

As evidence that young adults and teenagers aren't using Facebook AT ALL...my cousin was involved in a car wreck with three other girls earlier this week, with three of them still in the hospital.  Zero activity on *any* of their long-dormant facebook pages -- no get well messages, none of that. 

As evidence that young adults and teenagers aren't using Facebook AT ALL...my cousin was involved in a car wreck with three other girls earlier this week, with three of them still in the hospital.  Zero activity on *any* of their long-dormant facebook pages -- no get well messages, none of that. 

 

Even with older folks, "get well" stuff doesn't get posted much unless the person in question says something.

 

My daughter's mom was 35, when she passed away there were a lot of condolence type messages.  Same thing with my ex who passed at 42 last year.

 

My college age niece uses it quite a bit so does Holly's cousin who is about the same age.

Jeez E Rocc, that's terrible to hear that happened to you twice. You've alluded to it a little here and there but I didn't want to ask.

A girl I went to college with died from cancer in 2012 or 2013 and somebody (probably her mom) is posting on her Facebook page as her daughter.  Like, when someone posts something there like "Gina I thought of you today..." then "Gina" will write back.  It's pretty weird. 

The continued use of Facebook accounts after people have died is really interesting, and definitely has potential to get creepy. Most times when someone dies (in my experience) people use that person's page as a memorial and place to leave notes and "visit" with the deceased. Kind of like a virtual grave visit. Other times, someone will take over posting for the deceased, and that is where it gets weird. A kid I went to college with tragically died by getting run over by a boat in NY harbor after either falling out of a boat or swimming during July 4th weekend. His mom or sister will periodically post things either using his voice, as in "thanksgiving was always my favorite holiday. Enjoy your time with loved ones everybody" or in third person "Derek always was stubborn about cuz..." That gets very, very odd.

As evidence that young adults and teenagers aren't using Facebook AT ALL...my cousin was involved in a car wreck with three other girls earlier this week, with three of them still in the hospital.  Zero activity on *any* of their long-dormant facebook pages -- no get well messages, none of that. 

 

This is my experience as well. Mark Zuckerberg IS Facebook. Perhaps he's just getting old, and he's simply not dialed in on what the kids want.

As evidence that young adults and teenagers aren't using Facebook AT ALL...my cousin was involved in a car wreck with three other girls earlier this week, with three of them still in the hospital.  Zero activity on *any* of their long-dormant facebook pages -- no get well messages, none of that. 

 

This is my experience as well. Mark Zuckerberg IS Facebook. Perhaps he's just getting old, and he's simply not dialed in on what the kids want.

 

Well Zuckerberg and the rest of the new tech guys are either lame or douche.  Zuck is lame, Kalanick is a douche.  Nobody got mad when Gates became the richest man in the world because he was a real nerd and nobody felt threatened by him. 

 

I think if Zuck really wants Facebook to be something more than what it is, he needs to step aside as its face and bring in somebody with some energy.  Compare the profile of pro bicycling when Lance Armstrong was the face of the sport as opposed to the current face, Chris Froome, who is as dull as they come. 

 

 

 

I read something on LinkedIn recently that said a majority of millenials are using facebook for their job search...?  Bizarre

Not really though. Almost every firm in my industry (architecture) has some form of social media presence, some a very heavy presence. I know quite a few people who heard about a job opening from a post from a firm they had interest in.

You know how a lot of young people have unpopular significant others since a lot of them select their mates for the wrong reasons, put up with too much BS etc.? Other people will hammer them to death on FB overy a crummy S/O. That makes young people avoid it.

As evidence that young adults and teenagers aren't using Facebook AT ALL...my cousin was involved in a car wreck with three other girls earlier this week, with three of them still in the hospital.  Zero activity on *any* of their long-dormant facebook pages -- no get well messages, none of that. 

 

Well I got a call this afternoon that things took a turn for the worse with one of the girls in surgery and she might not survive.  This grim news did finally motivate two posts and a handful of likes, but not the torrent of activity that no doubt is going on some other "platform".  Where is it?  Snapchat?  Instagram?  I've never touched Snapchat and I think Instagram is tied for dumbness with Twitter.  I've also never seen any of the dating apps, and don't care. 

Jeez E Rocc, that's terrible to hear that happened to you twice. You've alluded to it a little here and there but I didn't want to ask.

 

Thanks.  Daria passed away in November and the only contact we had had for several years was on Facebook, though Holly and Daria were actually FB friends.

 

With Holly’s page, we’ve made a conscious decision to continue to tag her in pictures of Ardyn.  So the page will continue, in a way.

 

Oddly enough, FB posted one of those "years of friendship" videos for Holly and I a couple weeks later.

As more evidence that young people don't care about Facebook AT ALL...there is a whole genre of dance videos out there (literally hundreds of theses things, with dozens posted every day) that teenagers are making where they promote their instagram and snapchat accounts, but make no mention of Facebook:

snapchat, instagram & twitter all give a level of anonymity.  Facebook does not.  alot of the urban youth like to create alter egos for these dance videos and such

That's why Facebook bought Instagram and tried to buy Snapchat. (And started adding Twitter-like features to Facebook and Snapchat-like features to Instagram.) They realize that young people might not be interested in Facebook, so they want to own other platforms where they prefer to be.

snapchat, instagram & twitter all give a level of anonymity.  Facebook does not.

Irony here, that's how Facebook passed Myspace.

snapchat, instagram & twitter all give a level of anonymity.  Facebook does not.

Irony here, that's how Facebook passed Myspace.

 

Myspace was low-class and obnoxious and mostly teenagers or young college-aged people when Facebook appeared in 2004.  I was on Facebook the first year it existed, 2004, probably one of the first 100,000 people on it.  I and a bunch of people I worked with at the newspaper got on it as a bit of a joke.  It originally gave the pretense of seriousness that Myspace didn't (like LinkedIn vs. Facebook today) and so it leant itself to dry humor.  There wasn't a newsfeed at the beginning...it was just a static page and you could only post a profile photo, no other photos.  You could pretty much just send messages and poke people and that was it. 

 

 

And the early-mid 2000s were really trashy anyway so that didn't help Myspace much either. Somebody would Princess up their page and then you wouldn't like them anymore. I created an old school Bigfoot monster truck theme for mine that was so in your face that I'm sure I lost friends.

And the early-mid 2000s were really trashy anyway so that didn't help Myspace much either. Somebody would Princess up their page and then you wouldn't like them anymore. I created an old school Bigfoot monster truck theme for mine that was so in your face that I'm sure I lost friends.

 

Yeah, the music would fire off right away, kind of like annoying old-school websites. 

It's cool that some of these young people are finding a national audience for stuff they are doing, but I think the very nature of the web means different things will take the place of what people struggled to promote in the past.  I just don't think that the average young person is going to care to sit around and watch other young person do stuff in the traditional performing arts when they can watch a real fight, some sort of violent prank, etc.  I think the future is quite grim for music, literature, criticism, traditional interviews (televised or written), and all sorts of things we took for granted and devoted a lot of energy toward up until the phones ruined everything. 

Facebook satellite blows up on the launch pad:

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1710969/elon-musk-explosions-heard-at-cape-canaveral-space-centre-during-test-firing-of-spacex-rocket/

Earlier this year, Facebook added "reactions" so that instead of "liking" a post, you can respond with different emotions. I still laugh out loud every time I see an article shared on Facebook that has gotten a large number of ? reactions. I guess I'm just envisioning hundreds of people making the angry face while sitting at their computers and reading a headline about something bad happening in the world, and thinking that clicking the ? button will somehow have an impact on making the world a better place.

Facebook's "marketplace" button is positioned so that you periodically hit it by accident when aiming for your iphone's main button.  Sorry Zuck, not interested in the lame stuff you're peddling. 

When using Messenger I regularly fat-finger the "send them money" button.

Facebook's "marketplace" button is positioned so that you periodically hit it by accident when aiming for your iphone's main button.  Sorry Zuck, not interested in the lame stuff you're peddling. 

 

Nothing quite matches Android's federally mandated undisablable "emergency call" button close to the enter button when unlocking.

It's cool that some of these young people are finding a national audience for stuff they are doing, but I think the very nature of the web means different things will take the place of what people struggled to promote in the past.  I just don't think that the average young person is going to care to sit around and watch other young person do stuff in the traditional performing arts when they can watch a real fight, some sort of violent prank, etc.  I think the future is quite grim for music, literature, criticism, traditional interviews (televised or written), and all sorts of things we took for granted and devoted a lot of energy toward up until the phones ruined everything. 

 

“Changed” everything.  There’s a big difference.  The OP sounds like Lawrence Welk circa 1956 saying rock and roll “ruined” music. 

 

Actually, modern phones are an extension of the internet, both physically and demographically.  So the changes they reflect are more a result of our dramatically increased ability to access information and communicate.  To more closely define our interests.  To keep in touch with our social circles even as our circumstances change.

 

I know this is an older post.  Call it a pet peeve. 

 

This article illustrates the growing gap between Facebook's techie/Brogrammer staff and its increasingly rural and older user base. People who work in tech are totally disconnected from Middle America, old ladies, hillbillies, rural teens and anti-intellectual right-wingers so the way those users use the site is blowing their minds. Honestly, these tech companies should probably hire extremely cynical former rural dwellers that hate their hometown to work on the idea side of things. They can forsee things that the average techie just can't. Sort of like how on average, only people between 16-60 can efficiently use a Coke Freestyle machine while everyone else backs up the line in bewilderment.

 

 

Facebook is trying to school users about spotting fake news

 

 

Facebook has been “working very hard to figure out how to get their arms wrapped around this,” said Lucy Dalglish, journalism dean at the University of Maryland. “Facebook was always very interested [in] technology but not the social and civic implications of technology. It's like they have become citizens.”

 

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tn-facebook-fake-news-20170406-story.html

^Yeah, back in 2004 it started out with people like them.  Now those people are gone or at least overwhelmed in numbers by people who WRITE IN ALL CAPS and crap like that. 

Reminds me of this article I read:

 

 

We Tracked Down A Fake-News Creator In The Suburbs. Here's What We Learned

 

"The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction," Coler says.

 

He was amazed at how quickly fake news could spread and how easily people believe it. He wrote one fake story for NationalReport.net about how customers in Colorado marijuana shops were using food stamps to buy pot.

 

"What that turned into was a state representative in the House in Colorado proposing actual legislation to prevent people from using their food stamps to buy marijuana based on something that had just never happened," Coler says.

 

During the run-up to the presidential election, fake news really took off. "It was just anybody with a blog can get on there and find a big, huge Facebook group of kind of rabid Trump supporters just waiting to eat up this red meat that they're about to get served," Coler says. "It caused an explosion in the number of sites. I mean, my gosh, the number of just fake accounts on Facebook exploded during the Trump election."

Coler says his writers have tried to write fake news for liberals — but they just never take the bait.

Coler's company, Disinfomedia, owns many faux news sites — he won't say how many. But he says his is one of the biggest fake-news businesses out there, which makes him a sort of godfather of the industry.

 

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503146770/npr-finds-the-head-of-a-covert-fake-news-operation-in-the-suburbs

Personally, half the things that come up on my wall (which FB unfortunately sorts by popular posts, by default - not by newest, unless I manually change it at each site visit) is a bunch of anti-Trump meme graphics and anti-Trump news articles from old liberals. They're not usually sharing fake news but what they do 'share' is definitely skewed and brings up the most more superficial or minor issues with Trump and his administration. Most of the people who are vocal on there don't actually know about policy and the important things going on with the administration or in the world. They're more concerned with pointing out the hypocrisy of Trump and his supporters. Same goes for the Trump supporters in my newsfeed who are just on there to point out the hypocrisy of liberals/Hillary supporters. It's so obnoxious.

 

This kind of stuff was never a problem until 2-3 years ago.

 

 

 

News Feed FYI: Addressing Cloaking So People See More Authentic Posts

 

By Rob Leathern, Product Management Director and Bobbie Chang, Software Engineer

 

We are always working to combat the spread of misinformation and the financially-motivated bad actors who create misleading experiences for people. Today we’re sharing additional steps we’ve taken to remove even more of them from Facebook, so that what people see after clicking an ad or post matches their expectations.

 

Some of the worst offenders use a technique known as “cloaking” to circumvent Facebook’s review processes and show content to people that violates Facebook’s Community Standards and Advertising Policies. Here, these bad actors disguise the true destination of an ad or post, or the real content of the destination page, in order to bypass Facebook’s review processes. For example, they will set up web pages so that when a Facebook reviewer clicks a link to check whether it’s consistent with our policies, they are taken to a different web page than when someone using the Facebook app clicks that same link. Cloaked destination pages, which frequently include diet pills, pornography and muscle building scams, create negative and disruptive experiences for people.

 

 

more:https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/08/news-feed-fyi-addressing-cloaking-so-people-see-more-authentic-posts/

Facebook's algorithms are crazy. I get the craziest 'suggested posts' all over my news feed from hitting the like button.I liked an article regarding Narcan now being available over the counter in every Walgreen's - great news for those who care about the opiate epidemic (it's a drug you can use to instantly revive someone who ODs and would otherwise die from respiratory depression and lack of oxygen.) So every 8th post in my news feed is a 'suggested post' (or what should be referred to as ADS) for detox and recovery centers and all this stuff about how I'm not alone and there's so much help for me, lol!

 

I tend to like or comment on articles showing my support for socially liberal causes like GLBTQ rights and basically anything that points out what a dumb@ss Trump is and now I have a 'suggested post' in my feed for an agency who apparently specializes in people like me who are specifically looking to connect with gay realtors to help me sell or buy a house.

 

I understand Facebook needs to make money and it's always smart to target ads to users based on an individual user's activity but Facebook definitely isn't as clean, simple and uncluttered as it used to be (that was it's allure) and the inaccurate news feed clutter with suggested posts is just out of control.

 

 

There are tons of fake accounts ruining The Cincinnati Enquirer's politics group.  Several weeks ago (during the UO blackout) I complained to facebook about one of them.  His account was taken down.  But then it reappeared the next day.  Facebook is asking people to photograph their state issued ID's to prove that they are a real person, but now the fake accounts are just using fake state ID's. 

The case against Facebook

 

Facebook is enmeshed in another controversy, this time over accusations that the firm Cambridge Analytica abused Facebook data to help Donald Trump win the 2016 US presidential election. But this is a big deal fundamentally because of a larger and more fundamental problem: Facebook is bad.

 

Lots of companies, to be clear, are built around products that are bad. Indeed, being bad is by no means an impediment to success in a capitalist economy. Cigarette companies, for years, made enormous profits off selling a highly addictive highly carcinogenic substance to millions of Americans. Even in their current somewhat fallen state, tobacco companies continue to be viable ongoing enterprises.

 

[...]

 

A large and growing body of research confirms what probably ought to be obvious: Spending a lot of time alone, disengaged from other human beings, staring at your phone, and clicking on little buttons on a platform obsessively engineered by some of the smartest people on the planet to keep you staring and clicking is not good for you.

^Elswhere, I have seen people point out what a snake the guy was when others started Facebook at Harvard and he stole the idea, and that that's the public persona he maintains today. He (like Musk) acts like a benevolent philosopher-king, but he's really just a cold-blooded capitalist. 

The case against Facebook

 

Facebook is enmeshed in another controversy, this time over accusations that the firm Cambridge Analytica abused Facebook data to help Donald Trump win the 2016 US presidential election. But this is a big deal fundamentally because of a larger and more fundamental problem: Facebook is bad.

 

Lots of companies, to be clear, are built around products that are bad. Indeed, being bad is by no means an impediment to success in a capitalist economy. Cigarette companies, for years, made enormous profits off selling a highly addictive highly carcinogenic substance to millions of Americans. Even in their current somewhat fallen state, tobacco companies continue to be viable ongoing enterprises.

 

[...]

 

A large and growing body of research confirms what probably ought to be obvious: Spending a lot of time alone, disengaged from other human beings, staring at your phone, and clicking on little buttons on a platform obsessively engineered by some of the smartest people on the planet to keep you staring and clicking is not good for you.

 

You are not necessarily "disengaged from other human beings", to a degree you are but that's a trend that is widespread because it's so strongly preferred.  I can't think of too many innovations designed to reduce extraneous interactions that have failed. 

 

You're interacting, but on your own terms in ways that interest you.  Interaction is much more content based, less geography/proximity based.  This is not necessarily a bad thing.

 

I call it "the brony effect", after a strange but harmless subculture that was born and grew strictly on the 'net and would never have happened without it. It's based upon a point in common, not inane BS.

 

Social media is "bad" for people who still value empty social rituals because it renders them less important.  It's "bad" like the internal combustion engine was for buggy whip manufacturers.

^Elswhere, I have seen people point out what a snake the guy was when others started Facebook at Harvard and he stole the idea, and that that's the public persona he maintains today. He (like Musk) acts like a benevolent philosopher-king, but he's really just a cold-blooded capitalist. 

 

I don't know if I would call Musk"cold blooded".  There's easier ways to make money than dragging humanity into the future.

 

Zuckerberg, maybe so.  The brothers intended Facebook to be a highly elitist entity.  Zuckerberg was more like Henry Ford in his approach.

^Elswhere, I have seen people point out what a snake the guy was when others started Facebook at Harvard and he stole the idea, and that that's the public persona he maintains today. He (like Musk) acts like a benevolent philosopher-king, but he's really just a cold-blooded capitalist. 

 

Same with Mark Cuban. He acts like he's such a technology expert and knows all about the future. The only reason he's a billionaire is because he bought broadcast.com's audio streaming technology from a guy who no one has ever heard of and paid peanuts for it, then hyped it up and sold it to Yahoo! for over a billion right before the dot com bubble busted.

^Elswhere, I have seen people point out what a snake the guy was when others started Facebook at Harvard and he stole the idea, and that that's the public persona he maintains today. He (like Musk) acts like a benevolent philosopher-king, but he's really just a cold-blooded capitalist. 

 

Same with Mark Cuban. He acts like he's such a technology expert and knows all about the future. The only reason he's a billionaire is because he bought broadcast.com's audio streaming technology from a guy who no one has ever heard of and paid peanuts for it, then hyped it up and sold it to Yahoo! for over a billion right before the dot com bubble busted.

 

At least Mark Cuban has the humility to say "somebody has to be the luckiest guy in the world".  Also, at least he has a personality, unlike Zuckerberg or Musk. 

 

 

^Elswhere, I have seen people point out what a snake the guy was when others started Facebook at Harvard and he stole the idea, and that that's the public persona he maintains today. He (like Musk) acts like a benevolent philosopher-king, but he's really just a cold-blooded capitalist. 

 

Same with Mark Cuban. He acts like he's such a technology expert and knows all about the future. The only reason he's a billionaire is because he bought broadcast.com's audio streaming technology from a guy who no one has ever heard of and paid peanuts for it, then hyped it up and sold it to Yahoo! for over a billion right before the dot com bubble busted.

 

At least Mark Cuban has the humility to say "somebody has to be the luckiest guy in the world".  Also, at least he has a personality, unlike Zuckerberg or Musk. 

 

 

 

Musk has no personality?  It's a little bit sarcastic and low key, but he definitely does.  Zuckerberg not so much.

He's sarcastic. No positive futurist is sarcastic. That's why he's able to manipulate futurists.

 

Years ago I was in a side project of a band with two brothers. For the first 10 years of the main band they were straight up with their music and fans. They were heavily Nirvana-influenced and shared that band's sense of humor and disdain for crappy bands and music. After a while though, (the mid-2000s when mainstream music had gotten really dumb) they wrote some dumb Kid Rock-style stuff. The fans ate it up and the band immediately switched everything over to that sound. They are trolls.