>told subordinates to examine why Mr. Soros had criticized the tech companies and whether he stood to gain financially from the attacks.
Well, he is an investor who has a history of causing financial damage to whole countries by betting against their currencies.
So, it shouldn't be surprising FB would want to know what might be in store for them if he went nuclear on them.
What is surprising is the odd bedfellows of Soros on the left and others on the right clamoring for FB regulation. I probably agree they need some kind of regulation --but one more generalized to all user-facing internet companies (colloquially "user is the product" companies).
If someone is publicly saying questionable things about your organization, then trying to find out what their motivations might be by doing research is just common sense (especially if the company in question is publicly traded). So I'm with you there, I don't get the outrage here at all. It comes off as cheap and manufactured from what I'm seeing.
I think the outrage is implicit in the the publication of the article. Why is this in the New York Times? He criticized the company, she asked is he had a financial interest behind the criticism. Okay? Why is this a story?
At least partly because up until this point Facebook has denied she did any such thing. If it's not a big deal they would have disclosed it before now.
Because Facebook / "Russia" is a lightning rod for leftists still suffering a narcissistic injury over Hillary Clinton's loss to Donald Trump (of all people).
She did previously deny knowing about the PR company doing the oppo research on Soros... generally when there's a denial at a high level and then contradictory evidence comes out, it's newsworthy. It's not airtight evidence that she lied, just more of a glaring red flag that a closer look might be warranted.
That’s another topic, and they are. We’re talking about an executive of a public company and the NYT isn’t the only one pointing out the problems, which are real.
Everyone should read his comments[0] about Facebook and Google, before you criticize the guy.
> what their motivations might be by doing research is just common sense
The rhetoric that you guys use, especially when you talk about someone who's probably as genuinely committed to a civil, liberal world as George Soros: you sound like a South Park character. You can watch a clip that uses conspiratorial rhetoric (and makes fun of it) here: [1].
And I think the amazing thing is, it's not that South Park turned into this right-leaning children's TV show. It's that Republicans, libertarians and just cocky, downvoting male engineers alike have all started to turn into South Park.
"What you gotta understand [Hacker News], everyone has an agenda."
Furthermore, the New York Times and friends are competitors with Facebook, Google et al in the market for online advertising, so their interest in taking down Facebook comes across as self-serving.
For myself, I'd like to see a 95% contraction in the online advertising market $ value, so I'm uBlock Origin all the way.
Edit: for clarity, I'm not here to shill for Facebook - they're toxic! I'd be quite happy if Facebook shrunk to $0.
It's not a judgement. It's just a fact. And the possibility exists he'd exact the same thing on a target like FB. It's just prudent on their part to look at the seriousness of the implications.
Why not? The guy has a history of pretty much continously manipulating markets for own gain by damaging foreign economies. That makes his attempts at political manipulation extremism suspicious
>What is surprising is the odd bedfellows of Soros on the left and others on the right clamoring for FB regulation. I probably agree they need some kind of regulation --but one more generalized to all user-facing internet companies (colloquially "user is the product" companies).
Your last point is worded as if Soros is the sole and direct cause of the clamor. I think the more likely cause is the large number of (elderly -- voting!) people for whom facebook is the internet. It serves politicians to play to this confusion, as it gives them a clear company/CEO to point the finger at to appear 'tough on the bad things happening on the internet.' Bill Gates used to be the 'computer person' to old people (the president said in 2015, "We have to see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what’s happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way." in regards to the internet), and now it's Zuckerberg.
I think this comment misses the larger point of the article. The narrative being constructed by the NYT and others is that Sandberg has at best been "forgetful" in recollecting her role in this "Definers Public Affairs" scandal. If we're being less charitable, it appears the insinuation is that she lied about and possibly even covered up her role. Keep in mind, Definers' smears trafficked in anti-semitic subtext (a powerful cabal of Jews manipulating world events). Sandberg is in a lot of trouble here. She has been very deliberately burnishing her public image for years, and has thus far deftly avoided being tarnished by the many FB scandals. There have been suggestions that much of this PR strategy was to set her up for a run at a major political office. Those ambitions look to be in serious trouble if her involvement in this scandal deepens.
> Well, he is an investor who has a history of causing financial damage to whole countries by betting against their currencies
Whole countries? I have heard of only one - the infamous british pound. And that too it caused the GBP rates to fall but then financial damage to Britian as a country? What is your source exactly?
Soros wasn’t alone, but the hedges funds certainly helped crush Thailand in 1997, triggering the Asian financial crisis. It’s not a stretch to suggest that his massive funding of political groups in countries in which he has bet against the currency is connected.
Thanks for the reference. It was an interesting read:
Yet Soros wasn't the biggest single speculator to hold a position against the currency. Julian Robertson's Tiger Fund had three times the exposure of Soros with almost $3 billion bet against the baht. If anything, Julian Robertson would have been more motivated to engineer Thailand's decline.
It seems there were only rumors that Soros had anything to do with it, all the while someone else was more profitable than him. And given that he was already famous for the GBP trade why not blame him?
What is interesting is that people don't seem to understand the consequences of pegs. It is much easier to paint a picture of greedy investor. But in most cases it has nothing to do with the investor and all up to the central banks. Something similar happened in the swiss franc and here's what happened to Soros:
> It seems there were only rumors that Soros had anything to do with it, all the while someone else was more profitable than him. And given that he was already famous for the GBP trade why not blame him?
because it's a conservative, anti-semitic trope. he is the ur-villian, the mega boss after people tire of you complaining about the clintons. it's been this way for twenty years
Well, he is an investor who has a history of causing financial damage to whole countries by betting against their currencies.
When the UK government made a commitment to prop up a fake GBP exchange rate and then failed, isn't it the UK government that caused the financial damage rather than George Soros?
You mean when the US would give you a fixed amount of gold when you brought in US dollars, like it did for most of its history? Or when it abandoned that and the resulting inflation wrecked the 1970s?
But let's say they look into it...are they likely to find his criticism to be reasonable and just walk away after that?
I just wonder if you go as far as to investigate such things if you've got some motivation or inclination to find / feel their actions are biased or uncalled for and that might lead to what Facebook did... fire up their own disinformation...
When the NYT first published "Delay, Deny and Deflect" [1], Sandberg pretended she didn't know anything about it and promised to investigate.
Later, she claimed the investigation turned up emails about Facebook's deceptive practices that "crossed her desk" [2], but made it sound like her involvement was peripheral and incidental.
Naturally, now we learn those were all lies, and she was personally involved the entire time actually leading the effort.
I'm not sure what "this" you're referring to is, but assuming it's Definers: where did you learn she was involved the entire time? This article says:
Ms. Sandberg [...] asked for the information in an email to a senior executive in January[...]. The email came within days of a blistering speech Mr. Soros delivered that month at the World Economic Forum, attacking Facebook and Google as a “menace” to society and calling for the companies to be regulated.
This seems like a pretty reasonable reaction. As far as I understand this has nothing to do with Definers.
I'm referring to Facebook's efforts to discredit critics through the same sleazy disinformation campaign tactics that Facebook continues to amplify for other shadowy groups.
You know, like targeting Facebook users who are racist and anti-Semitic with disinfo about George Soros, while simultaneously telling Jewish users that Facebook's critics are themselves anti-Semitic.
FTFA, first paragraph:
Sheryl Sandberg was directly involved in the social media company’s effort to conduct opposition research against billionaire philanthropist George Soros...
...reporting contradicts Sandberg’s previous portrayals of her involvement; she has said she was unaware of the campaign-style communications work done by Republican public relations firm Definers Public Affairs
It's okay, that game is already lost. The headline is "Sheryl Sandberg..." We've moved on from Facebook being the object of the scandal to Sheryl Sandberg. I'm sorry it worked out this way, but as you point out yourself, she lied, which is really very super quite bad.
Seriously though, Facebook is bad for reasons that have very little to do with bickering with George Soros or lies and more to do with its actual effect on human relationships and identity. As a person who doesn't care about a lot of things, I can't find it in my heart to get upset about Sheryl Sandberg telling lies. I don't find the moralizing over it to be genuine, given all of the things happening in the world, and even given Facebook's effect on culture-at-large, Sheryl Sandberg lying (which I don't even 100% believe) is so low on the list.
Let me bring Hitler in as an example. And I'm not going to compare you to Hitler. No, I am going to compare Sheryl Sandberg to Hitler, but I am writing in her favor (kind of), so I feel like this is fair to do and not in the spirit of whatever that internet law about bringing up Hitler is.
Let's say Hitler led Nazi Germany to systematically exterminate millions of people (he did). Now, let's say he lied about it. People said, "Hey Hitler, are you killing millions of people?" And he said, "No, I am absolutely not doing that." Time passes and, one day, we come to find out Adolf Hitler did, in fact, lead Nazi Germany to kill millions of people. Imagine waking up in 1944, visiting Hacker News, reading some headlines, and spitting out your coffee because, come to find out, Hitler lied and also btw he killed a few million people. And for weeks, headline after headline, Hitler lied, Hitler is a liar.
All I am saying is, can we get some content from NYT on how Facebook is genuinely bad that doesn't have to do with their PR lies? Because I don't care about what their PR is doing or saying. I also don't care if Sandberg's career is ruined, I just don't see how any of this is relevant to anyone's interests other than something like Two Minutes Hate.
This may be an unpopular opinion but here it is: Zuckerburg started this as a hobby with it being something he may never have thought of becoming full-scale. Fast forward to today and Zuckerburg is in over his head.
He has control over this !massive! amount of data that companies are chomping at the bit for. He’s trying to make sure his company survives and his product does no harm. But, he’s losing control. They’re trying to wiggle out of these wormholes they’ve sunk in and all of their fabrications are coming to light.
To address your first point: he started the company deliberately. He had sold a successful company before Facebook. He also turned down multi-billion dollar acquisition offers because he knew exactly what he was doing and what the opportunity was. Many of the funding rounds for FB were red hot and everyone was trying to get in.
And to your second point: what he built is unprecedented. And because it is unprecedented, there are a lot of questions that we as a society need to answer collectively about the role a product like Facebook plays in our lives (kinda just like with every other new, transformational technology, including email). But to call his execution "In over his head" is laughable. I don't think other leaders would have fared any better and many could have fared much, much worse.
Now, are there questions and valid criticisms about his execution today or his handling of the recent controversies? Of course! Does that mean he's a random guy with a side-project that accidentally blew up and suddenly he's in over his head? Absolutely not, your comment is more fantasy than reality.
Probably referring to the Synapse Media Player, which had a million-dollar buyout offer from Microsoft while Zuckerburg was in high school. IIRC he didn't actually sell it though; it was still a going project under Zuckerburg's control when he created FB, and just kinda died out because FB held more potential.
I don’t think a lot of poorly managed companies even get to a $1b valuation. Easy to be an armchair quarterback. One could argue that it’s been one of the beat managed companies and like most companies it faces ups and downs.
>I don’t think a lot of poorly managed companies even get to a $1b valuation.
I think any product can become valuable depending on how you market it to your targeted users. FB is said to be somewhere you can go to be with friends and family; share memories, no matter where you are. If we’re going to ignore all of the ads and data mining going on behind the scenes, it’s easy to say that FB is doing a good for society. But it has its flaws.
Just earlier on HN there was a link about FB possibly selling user data. We have the Cambridge Analytica mess from the election.
Zuckerburg is smart when it comes to programming and tech, but running a company ethically is a different ballgame and that is the problem a lot of people have with his company. Nobody is saying he’s doing a bad job at building the product. He’s doing a bad job of managing the trust his users put into him when they use his service every single day.
> I think any product can become valuable depending on how you market it to your targeted users.
Alright, not to be rude but this is a dead giveaway that you've never built a business or product before and you don't know what you're talking about.
I hate to call you out like this...I understand the sentiment you're trying to express, but any entrepreneur or product leader who looks at your comment will immediately know that it has no legs in reality.
This is not how any of this works.
Your follow-up is also a completely different argument than the one you initially presented.
It's because the establishment segment (clinton) genuinely fear him throwing his hat in for 2020. Not that I like him but honestly, if he can sells fb stock and promises to genuinely treat Usa like his firm, I'd prefer him over a politician who says what pays (which is all politicians in all sides).
Yes, he closed all those tax loopholes that he is an expert at exploiting (his words, not mine). He implemented his plan to win the war in Afghanistan. The wall along the border of Mexico is 30 feet tall and beautiful and Mexico paid for it. The opioid problem has been solved. He has released his tax returns. He has put his assets in a blind trust. He has Made America Great Again.
I'd be interested to see a study into that. Of course, not all promises are equal. For me, the big promise (and one of very few pluses I could see in Trump's platform) was "draining the swamp", and he's done anything but. Well, either that or making great affordable healthcare available to everyone.
Did you forget that Facebook used to play David to Myspace's Goliath?
There was never any shortage of competitors, and Facebook wasn't the first on the social media scene by any measure. It came out of nowhere and toppled the dominant incumbent, and is still going strong against competition from giants like Google.
That's why I posed it as a question and mentioned the spectrum that this sits on. Facebook got lucky in some ways, I don't think Zuckerberg meant to create artificial scarcity when it launched, I think he was growing it deliberately but the effect was unintended.
Facebook started with Harvard students. Then Boston area colleges, Ivy League, then it was expanded to most universities with a .edu domain. You didn't need invites (Google's preferred method), just to be a member of the right kind of institution. It launched to the public at large in 2006.
Those first couple years, a lot of the use of Facebook was reconnecting with old friends. High school classmates, or if you'd graduated but still had a university email your fellow college classmates. This was a distinct endeavor from Myspace. It was explicitly about connecting people who shared a particular geographic or institutional social context (not any context, school). There were no bands, no autoplaying music. Just you and people you may or may not know connecting to each other.
Now, they obviously intended to grow it into something larger. And they have done a great job with it. Here's the question:
The choice to open it to universities was obviously deliberate, but was the intent to test scaling Facebook or to create an initial critical mass of likeminded, like-aged individuals?
My wager is on the former, though I could be proven wrong. That initial smaller but focused group is what allowed them to successfully compete.
Luck: They stumbled onto a successful model for building a from-scratch social network with their focused approach.
Skill: They intended to be focused on college-aged students believing it would build their critical mass social network more effectively.
I disagree, I don't think they fear that. I'm not sure why Zuckerberg was ever really floated as a potential candidate. He's not particularly charismatic and fails the "beer test" with basically everybody in America, and would likely have a harder time connecting with the voting masses than Hillary Clinton. With his lack of experience added to that, and no real ability to run as an 'outsider' as a billionaire tech elite, I think he'd flame out in a primary contest quickly.
Eh? Obama, Kerry, Bill Clinton... I'd say they all pass the beer test with flying colours.
Obviously the exception here is Hillary Clinton. But I do wonder about the gender component of the beer test - while she was seen as aloof and alienating a lot of women didn't see Hillary that way.
Sorry I forgot, no jokes allowed on HN. On a more serious note if Zuckerberg did become the Democrat nominee then I could see the party splintering into a progressive party and a centre-right party.
Mr soros is known to move markets to make money. I don't see why media can just label someone beyond reproach and malign anybody who tries to even dare to look them up
She did what I would have done if someone was attacked my company for no obvious reason - I’d want to know if they stood to gain and how. Obviously when someone holds a short position and bashed a company it’s pretty transparent. That’s a big reason why Tesla was in the news so much the last 12 months.
It’s when FB went on the offensive and started attacking Soros with “factually questionable” information that they crossed the line.
Soros was long Facebook and Alphabet in the 13F filing before he gave his speech and was long Alphabet in the 13F filing that covered the period in which he gave his speech [1][2].
I would not be surprised if Mark Zuckerberg ends up becoming a Republican. He very obviously has political ambitions. A significant portion of the Left blames Facebook (at least in part) and by extension Zuckerberg for the election of Donald Trump. If he says the right things, I expect the Right to be more accepting than the Left which would still hold 2016 against him.
While it would be safe to assume that Facebook was being misleading from the start, it's important that news organizations do actual reporting to before coming to those types of conclusions.
The article seems to imply Sandberg approved of anti semetic attacks against Soros, conveniently ignoring the fact that Sandberg (& Zuckerberg) is a Jew herself.
I don't know what the editorial team at NYT thinks is happening, but I don't think Sandberg would condone anti semetic attacks against anyone, even rivals.
The NYT takes sides. They will unfortunately omit things or insinuate things to support their opinion. NPR is much better, even though they lean left -but at least they try with exceptions.
The NYT has been around a long time and at various times has written multiple glowing articles about Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler and other despots of all stripes which does not speak well of ye old NYT. It is difficult to find a disparaging word in any of their coverage of current day neo Nazis in the USA when they have done extensive interviews. One needs to judge each article on its own merits.
If you really think Soros' Jewish heritage, versus a plethora of political actions, is more fodder for Sandberg, you've thoroughly underestimated her.
My statement doesn't constitute a defense, because the NYT has failed to prove that Sanberg explicitly requested an anti-Semitic line of attack be launched again Soros. You'd expect a paper of NYT's stature to not omit the fact that Sandberg & Zuck are Jews themselves, and the likelihood of them conding attacks that paint their own heritage in bad light, is low, if not impossible
There's a difference between anti-Semitic attacks that are motivated out of antisemitism and attacks that are motivated out of self interest. I don't believe anybody thinks Zuckerberg and Sandberg implied anti-Semitic things about Soros out of their genuine hatred of Jews. Instead, the idea is that they tried to exploit antisemitism to obfuscate legitimate criticism of their company.
> The article seems to imply Sandberg approved of anti semetic attacks against Soros, conveniently ignoring the fact that Sandberg (& Zuckerberg) is a Jew herself.
That doesn't mean anything and such terrible logic.
There are many cases of Neo Nazi that are Jewish. Just cause they're Jewish doesn't mean they can't hurt other Jewish people.
Wait I didn't like the defense of your parent but your argument is equally worthless. Just because I'm attacking a Jewish person doesn't make me anti-Semitic.
Not surprising but definitely adds to the icky feeling surrounding Sandberg and Zuckerberg. Interestingly enough I think Scott Galloway makes some great points, Sandberg is probably the most powerful woman in tech right now, it's probably a bad look for the board to let her go; and I doubt Zuck would force her out. I think she'll leave on her own terms.
I think the reason why this is a story that is causing a lot of interest and outrage is that Soros was right! Sandberg, Zuck and co, instead of reflecting on what was actually happening, and investigating the issues that Facebook was causing, or was being used for, chose to try to play defense and attach the people and organizations that were criticizing them. If Facebook was serious about becoming a "good" platform, then it would have acted sooner. Instead, we can look back and say that they pretty much only care about growing revenue and did not care too much about these issues, until they because front and center after Trump was elected. There is probably some sexism towards the over criticism of Sandberg over Zuck. But at the same time, Zuck was more hands off while hosting facetime live from his backyard, and traveling around the US, and proclaiming how great Facebook was, while Sandberg is suppose to be the day to day operator. I think Zuck deserve a lot of the same blame for this, as the CEO and the founder.
We flag the story about Google employees discussing censoring conservative news sources but we push this story about Facebook to the front page? The intellectual dishonesty here is astounding.
Please stop posting these tedious off-topic complaints.
I don't know what story you're talking about, but if you think flagging is being abused, let us know at hn@ycombinator.com so we can take a look at it.
I think given George Soros' history and the fact he is an investor known for making big bets, it is possible he would have a big short position open against Facebook and could gain lots of money if $FB stock keeps going down. It's not outside of realm of the possibilities the he would make a big bet like that so investigating what are his current positions in the stock market, how many puts is he holding etc might be a good idea.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 124 ms ] threadWell, he is an investor who has a history of causing financial damage to whole countries by betting against their currencies.
So, it shouldn't be surprising FB would want to know what might be in store for them if he went nuclear on them.
What is surprising is the odd bedfellows of Soros on the left and others on the right clamoring for FB regulation. I probably agree they need some kind of regulation --but one more generalized to all user-facing internet companies (colloquially "user is the product" companies).
Because George Soros is a lightning rod for the alt-right and NWO conspiracy theorists.
Because Facebook / "Russia" is a lightning rod for leftists still suffering a narcissistic injury over Hillary Clinton's loss to Donald Trump (of all people).
> what their motivations might be by doing research is just common sense
The rhetoric that you guys use, especially when you talk about someone who's probably as genuinely committed to a civil, liberal world as George Soros: you sound like a South Park character. You can watch a clip that uses conspiratorial rhetoric (and makes fun of it) here: [1].
And I think the amazing thing is, it's not that South Park turned into this right-leaning children's TV show. It's that Republicans, libertarians and just cocky, downvoting male engineers alike have all started to turn into South Park.
"What you gotta understand [Hacker News], everyone has an agenda."
[0] https://www.georgesoros.com/2018/01/25/remarks-delivered-at-...
[1] https://southpark.cc.com/clips/mqwfxt/its-right-there
I have no idea what you're referring to with the South Park reference and George Soros, I don't really follow the show.
But South Park has actually long been considered right-leaning by some people, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_Republican
As far as I can tell the main people who hold this view are right-leaning, e.g. https://www.city-journal.org/html/we%E2%80%99re-not-losing-c...
I usually see the creators referred to as libertarians. E.g. Matt Stone saying "I hate conservatives, but I really fucking hate liberals."
For myself, I'd like to see a 95% contraction in the online advertising market $ value, so I'm uBlock Origin all the way.
Edit: for clarity, I'm not here to shill for Facebook - they're toxic! I'd be quite happy if Facebook shrunk to $0.
So you're judging him on the fact that he plays Forex and short?
If they didn't want that then it should be made illegal. This is a dubious statement.
thinking that this is possible is disingenuous and such a conservative fever dream.
Your last point is worded as if Soros is the sole and direct cause of the clamor. I think the more likely cause is the large number of (elderly -- voting!) people for whom facebook is the internet. It serves politicians to play to this confusion, as it gives them a clear company/CEO to point the finger at to appear 'tough on the bad things happening on the internet.' Bill Gates used to be the 'computer person' to old people (the president said in 2015, "We have to see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what’s happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way." in regards to the internet), and now it's Zuckerberg.
Whole countries? I have heard of only one - the infamous british pound. And that too it caused the GBP rates to fall but then financial damage to Britian as a country? What is your source exactly?
Soros wasn’t alone, but the hedges funds certainly helped crush Thailand in 1997, triggering the Asian financial crisis. It’s not a stretch to suggest that his massive funding of political groups in countries in which he has bet against the currency is connected.
Yet Soros wasn't the biggest single speculator to hold a position against the currency. Julian Robertson's Tiger Fund had three times the exposure of Soros with almost $3 billion bet against the baht. If anything, Julian Robertson would have been more motivated to engineer Thailand's decline.
It seems there were only rumors that Soros had anything to do with it, all the while someone else was more profitable than him. And given that he was already famous for the GBP trade why not blame him?
What is interesting is that people don't seem to understand the consequences of pegs. It is much easier to paint a picture of greedy investor. But in most cases it has nothing to do with the investor and all up to the central banks. Something similar happened in the swiss franc and here's what happened to Soros:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-23/how-swiss-national...
because it's a conservative, anti-semitic trope. he is the ur-villian, the mega boss after people tire of you complaining about the clintons. it's been this way for twenty years
When the UK government made a commitment to prop up a fake GBP exchange rate and then failed, isn't it the UK government that caused the financial damage rather than George Soros?
But let's say they look into it...are they likely to find his criticism to be reasonable and just walk away after that?
I just wonder if you go as far as to investigate such things if you've got some motivation or inclination to find / feel their actions are biased or uncalled for and that might lead to what Facebook did... fire up their own disinformation...
Later, she claimed the investigation turned up emails about Facebook's deceptive practices that "crossed her desk" [2], but made it sound like her involvement was peripheral and incidental.
Naturally, now we learn those were all lies, and she was personally involved the entire time actually leading the effort.
Just more Delay, Deny and Deflect.
Facebook cannot be trusted to fix Facebook.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/technology/facebook-data-...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/22/business/on-thanksgiving-...
You know, like targeting Facebook users who are racist and anti-Semitic with disinfo about George Soros, while simultaneously telling Jewish users that Facebook's critics are themselves anti-Semitic.
FTFA, first paragraph:
Sheryl Sandberg was directly involved in the social media company’s effort to conduct opposition research against billionaire philanthropist George Soros...
...reporting contradicts Sandberg’s previous portrayals of her involvement; she has said she was unaware of the campaign-style communications work done by Republican public relations firm Definers Public Affairs
It's okay, that game is already lost. The headline is "Sheryl Sandberg..." We've moved on from Facebook being the object of the scandal to Sheryl Sandberg. I'm sorry it worked out this way, but as you point out yourself, she lied, which is really very super quite bad.
Seriously though, Facebook is bad for reasons that have very little to do with bickering with George Soros or lies and more to do with its actual effect on human relationships and identity. As a person who doesn't care about a lot of things, I can't find it in my heart to get upset about Sheryl Sandberg telling lies. I don't find the moralizing over it to be genuine, given all of the things happening in the world, and even given Facebook's effect on culture-at-large, Sheryl Sandberg lying (which I don't even 100% believe) is so low on the list.
Let me bring Hitler in as an example. And I'm not going to compare you to Hitler. No, I am going to compare Sheryl Sandberg to Hitler, but I am writing in her favor (kind of), so I feel like this is fair to do and not in the spirit of whatever that internet law about bringing up Hitler is.
Let's say Hitler led Nazi Germany to systematically exterminate millions of people (he did). Now, let's say he lied about it. People said, "Hey Hitler, are you killing millions of people?" And he said, "No, I am absolutely not doing that." Time passes and, one day, we come to find out Adolf Hitler did, in fact, lead Nazi Germany to kill millions of people. Imagine waking up in 1944, visiting Hacker News, reading some headlines, and spitting out your coffee because, come to find out, Hitler lied and also btw he killed a few million people. And for weeks, headline after headline, Hitler lied, Hitler is a liar.
All I am saying is, can we get some content from NYT on how Facebook is genuinely bad that doesn't have to do with their PR lies? Because I don't care about what their PR is doing or saying. I also don't care if Sandberg's career is ruined, I just don't see how any of this is relevant to anyone's interests other than something like Two Minutes Hate.
He has control over this !massive! amount of data that companies are chomping at the bit for. He’s trying to make sure his company survives and his product does no harm. But, he’s losing control. They’re trying to wiggle out of these wormholes they’ve sunk in and all of their fabrications are coming to light.
To address your first point: he started the company deliberately. He had sold a successful company before Facebook. He also turned down multi-billion dollar acquisition offers because he knew exactly what he was doing and what the opportunity was. Many of the funding rounds for FB were red hot and everyone was trying to get in.
And to your second point: what he built is unprecedented. And because it is unprecedented, there are a lot of questions that we as a society need to answer collectively about the role a product like Facebook plays in our lives (kinda just like with every other new, transformational technology, including email). But to call his execution "In over his head" is laughable. I don't think other leaders would have fared any better and many could have fared much, much worse.
Now, are there questions and valid criticisms about his execution today or his handling of the recent controversies? Of course! Does that mean he's a random guy with a side-project that accidentally blew up and suddenly he's in over his head? Absolutely not, your comment is more fantasy than reality.
I forgot that he didn't actually end up selling. He did come very close to selling to Microsoft, though.
Here's a bit about it: https://www.revealingthestuffs.com/mark-zuckerbergs-synapse-...
I think any product can become valuable depending on how you market it to your targeted users. FB is said to be somewhere you can go to be with friends and family; share memories, no matter where you are. If we’re going to ignore all of the ads and data mining going on behind the scenes, it’s easy to say that FB is doing a good for society. But it has its flaws.
Just earlier on HN there was a link about FB possibly selling user data. We have the Cambridge Analytica mess from the election.
Zuckerburg is smart when it comes to programming and tech, but running a company ethically is a different ballgame and that is the problem a lot of people have with his company. Nobody is saying he’s doing a bad job at building the product. He’s doing a bad job of managing the trust his users put into him when they use his service every single day.
Alright, not to be rude but this is a dead giveaway that you've never built a business or product before and you don't know what you're talking about.
I hate to call you out like this...I understand the sentiment you're trying to express, but any entrepreneur or product leader who looks at your comment will immediately know that it has no legs in reality.
This is not how any of this works.
Your follow-up is also a completely different argument than the one you initially presented.
[1] https://a16z.com/2011/04/14/peacetime-ceowartime-ceo-2/
Lets see zuck try that - I think he will succeed too at least better than the "charming" presidents of the recent past on either side
TPP cancelled
Prison reform
NAFTA renegotiated (this is something that is nit clear how well he did)
China trade war (which by bloombergs account he has an upper hand in)
North Korea peace
Yes, he closed all those tax loopholes that he is an expert at exploiting (his words, not mine). He implemented his plan to win the war in Afghanistan. The wall along the border of Mexico is 30 feet tall and beautiful and Mexico paid for it. The opioid problem has been solved. He has released his tax returns. He has put his assets in a blind trust. He has Made America Great Again.
It’s a spectrum, right? Skill and luck. How much of each has contributed to its success?
There was never any shortage of competitors, and Facebook wasn't the first on the social media scene by any measure. It came out of nowhere and toppled the dominant incumbent, and is still going strong against competition from giants like Google.
Facebook started with Harvard students. Then Boston area colleges, Ivy League, then it was expanded to most universities with a .edu domain. You didn't need invites (Google's preferred method), just to be a member of the right kind of institution. It launched to the public at large in 2006.
Those first couple years, a lot of the use of Facebook was reconnecting with old friends. High school classmates, or if you'd graduated but still had a university email your fellow college classmates. This was a distinct endeavor from Myspace. It was explicitly about connecting people who shared a particular geographic or institutional social context (not any context, school). There were no bands, no autoplaying music. Just you and people you may or may not know connecting to each other.
Now, they obviously intended to grow it into something larger. And they have done a great job with it. Here's the question:
The choice to open it to universities was obviously deliberate, but was the intent to test scaling Facebook or to create an initial critical mass of likeminded, like-aged individuals?
My wager is on the former, though I could be proven wrong. That initial smaller but focused group is what allowed them to successfully compete.
Luck: They stumbled onto a successful model for building a from-scratch social network with their focused approach.
Skill: They intended to be focused on college-aged students believing it would build their critical mass social network more effectively.
Sounds nailed on to be the DNC nominee then.
Obviously the exception here is Hillary Clinton. But I do wonder about the gender component of the beer test - while she was seen as aloof and alienating a lot of women didn't see Hillary that way.
It’s when FB went on the offensive and started attacking Soros with “factually questionable” information that they crossed the line.
[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1029160/000114036117...
[2] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1029160/000114036118...
I don't know what the editorial team at NYT thinks is happening, but I don't think Sandberg would condone anti semetic attacks against anyone, even rivals.
My statement doesn't constitute a defense, because the NYT has failed to prove that Sanberg explicitly requested an anti-Semitic line of attack be launched again Soros. You'd expect a paper of NYT's stature to not omit the fact that Sandberg & Zuck are Jews themselves, and the likelihood of them conding attacks that paint their own heritage in bad light, is low, if not impossible
That doesn't mean anything and such terrible logic.
There are many cases of Neo Nazi that are Jewish. Just cause they're Jewish doesn't mean they can't hurt other Jewish people.
I don't know what story you're talking about, but if you think flagging is being abused, let us know at hn@ycombinator.com so we can take a look at it.