The ol' Zuck means well and I think he'd give the go a nice solid try with proper intentions. But I do not think he would be that successful in the office, whatever "successful" means these days.
Means well? God I hope you're joking. Where Trump is merely a narcissistic buffoon, Zuckerberg is truly evil. We should count ourselves lucky he has no charisma, and that his lizard-like soulless personality shines through as soon as he opens his mouth.
You could say the same thing about Nixon - he was a paranoid, anti-Semitic sociopath, but he created the EPA and tried (but failed) to pass healthcare reform and universal income.
"Truly evil" doesn't mean anything objective, every President I can think of is or has been considered truly evil by some significant segment of the American populace, and many have probably been more evil than people are aware of.
What would matter is what Zuckerberg's policy agenda was, whether it would benefit the US and whether or not he could be effective in passing it.
> The ol' Zuck means well and I think he'd give the go a nice solid try with proper intentions
What makes you so sure? Do you know him personally?
I don't see how any reasonable person could look at Facebook and say "the creator of that company means well". He's actively trying to destroy the concept of personal privacy (for everyone but himself, it seems), and his platform is designed to be as addictive as possible.
Their "internet.org"/"free basics" effort is a blatant attempt to fool poor people into thinking Facebook is "the internet", and permanently capture them within Facebook's data collection machine. Their emotional contagion experiment most likely resulted in at least a few people offing themselves. Etc.
He clearly wants people to believe he means well, but actions speak much louder than words.
Well, okay. Since we're talking about him as a potential politician, then I suppose our opinions are engaging now in political debate, so perhaps it's not an ideal candidate for HN.
That said, I agree with you that he is trying to make FB the center of the known Milky Way, perhaps the universe itself. But then so many entrepreneurs do that. I do not know him personally, to answer your question, but it does appear to me that the rather superficial ramblings he offers in articles and blog posts and interviews are at least skewed to the idea that he can do some good in the world, even if his idea of good is perhaps different than yours.
Incidentally, the addictive nature of FB is by no means unique to FB. Every social media company does this now, the whole concept of mobile notifications on any platform is enough to hook users into the gateway. And if you were a big media company, you'd most likely want your service to be addictive also (just as those who make TV shows or movie sequels want their stories to be addictive so audiences will keep coming back).
Yeah, but many people would choose not to pursue a business that sells out a large numbers of people on ethical grounds. That doesn't even get into his corporate backstabbing and other acts.
Simply because he can exploit a large quantity of rubes to make money doesn't change the fact its not exactly an ethically sound choice.
> I do not know him personally, to answer your question, but it does appear to me that the rather superficial ramblings he offers in articles and blog posts and interviews are at least skewed to the idea that he can do some good in the world, even if his idea of good is perhaps different than yours.
Every "liberal" CEO does that and tries to make themselves sound generous and empathetic. It is good for their income, it is good for their corporate image, and its good for the professional prospects.
Even his charitable acts are largely grandiose tossing of money that frequently fails due to a lack of even basic research. He doesn't genuinely care and its pretty damn obvious when people who donate a couple grand put more effort into researching how well its used than he researched pretty much any of his charitable attempts.
Facebook is a company that _badly_ needs public good will to remain in operation because if people lose faith they'll abandon the network.
I genuinely do not understand how people fail to realize these sorts of things are a combination of ego, self-interest, and political leanings rather than genuine desire. If they were genuine desire, he would have retired from running Facebook like Bill Gates and focused on charity.
I'll never understand what makes people take the focus-grouped, carefully worded speeches and statements of CEOs and politicians at face value, and then label those CEOs/politicians "good people" or "nice guys" based on that. It's obvious that critical thinking skills are severely lacking across most of society.
It's the equivalent of believing a company is "run by comedians" because their marketing team injected some dull humor into an ad that played on TV, or believing an oil company is "environmentally friendly" because they published a picture of someone wearing their logo planting a tree.
> The flip side of that is they can't really hide when they fuck up.
That's what they employ social media "reputation management" teams for.
You'll notice this entire thread we're commenting on was quietly deleted from the main post listing on HN after it started rising up the front page. Though, I'm guessing that was more HN mods doing someone a favor (or protecting the guy they want to see become president) than full-on reddit-style reputation management, where the entire thread is suddenly full of people who love whoever got caught with their pants down.
Why not? Zuckerberg is clearly a smart man, and he seems to be as qualified as any one else. Infinitely more qualified than the current occupant of the office. Just because you don't think of him as a politician doesn't mean that he won't do a good job.
Why is Zuckerberg infinitely more qualified than Trump? Both came from wealthy families. Both are billionaires. Both are only capable of running due to their billionaire status. Neither has any experience of any kind in politics.
Folks were worried about Trump's conflicts of interest, but Zuckerberg quite literally owns one of the nation's largest news redistributors which is already actively taking steps to control which news is shared.
> Zuckerberg quite literally owns one of the nation's largest news redistributors which is already actively taking steps to control which news is shared.
Not just the nation. He controls much of what the developed world sees and reads, and has access to and control over much of the developed world's public and private communication.
> Just because you don't think of him as a politician doesn't mean that he won't do a good job.
This is a really silly argument. Zuckerberg is not a bad candidate because it is hard to imagine him as a politician. He is a bad candidate because we can see the impact of Zuckerberg's attitude toward the general population in the way he manages the Facebook platform. That is not a society anyone wants.
The product zuck runs is sleazy by nature, and he's made a lot of statements that tell me he's either naive or out of touch with the average persons reality.
I think Trump is a twit but I would rather have someone that seems grounded, like bill gates for example, than a guy with floaty dreamland ideas that Facebook can make everyone like each other.
> Why not? Zuckerberg is clearly a smart man, and he seems to be as qualified as any one else. Infinitely more qualified than the current occupant of the office. Just because you don't think of him as a politician doesn't mean that he won't do a good job.
I'm pretty sure we'll see a Zuckerberg Presidency the same way we see Facebook being run as a business. He'll do the minimum to keep people happy and then quietly sell you out behind closed doors.
Intelligence is important, but intelligent people with very little in the way of ethical standards are far more dangerous than they are helpful.
If by "qualified" you mean not being misogynistic, racist and mentally unstable, then yes. Zuckerberg is more qualified.
But being a politician is not just having an opinion about things - it's also being a strategist, and having a sound knowledge about how the political system works, ethics and being able to cooperate with people you disagree with. Traits Zuckerberg has yet to show he has.
Being smart is not by itself a positive trait just like a hammer is not per-se a good tool. It all depends on how you use your smarts (and your hammer).
Zuckerberg in office could do better than Trump but for now I don't see him as a net positive to the world, magnifying that by handing him the keys to the kingdom could do a lot of damage.
I think the exact opposite. I still question his moral stature (he's certainly trying), but I'd love to see what happens with a techie in the office. The current abstract definition of success may not apply to that situation - tech has redefined business; politics is long past its due date for a shake up.
I don't know. Asian nations like Singapore and Japan have done very well with highly-technical public servants, mathematicians and physicists are often in government in Singapore. Anything that gets technical people into office is good in my books. Zuck is a great leader, smart at the level that politicians were in the past and have not been for generations. He could be extremely good. He could be awful. But he is at least an extremely impressive human being, which is more than can be said for recent presidents.
If he didn't own Facebook and was just a guy, I would take him over Sanders and Trump any day. But FaceBook is a scary thing to own, scarier still if you a president.
As a side note, Zuck's admiration for Caesar is a little more disconcerting in the context of politics than business, especially since he operates the most effective surveillance infrastructure ever constructed.
I don't think Singapore is the best study in comparisons with the U.S. as it has quite explicitly managed to place high-restrictive control on its population in a way that would not fly (explicitly, anyway) in most Western nations. Singapore is hardly what Americans would consider to be a democracy or free society, and by a very very large stretch.
