He created a company that tracks and profiles people, psychologically manipulates them, and sells ads. And has zero ethical qualms about the massive social harm they have left in their wake.
That doesn't tell me anything about his ability to build "augmented reality" or otherwise use artificial intelligence in any way that people will want to pay for. We'll see.
Ford and GM have a century of experience building cars but they can't seem to figure out EVs despite trying for nearly two decades now.
Tesla hit the ball out of the park with EVs but can't figure out self-driving.
Being good at one thing does not mean you will be good at everything you try.
I was rather sad when everyone moved away from MySpace to Facebook. While the interface today would likely be poor, I felt it was much better than what Facebook was offering. Still its hard to believe it was around 19 years ago many started to move over.
While I cannot remember the names of these sites, there were various attempts to create a shared platform website where you could create a profile and communicate with others. I remember joining a few at least back in 2002 before MySpace, Yahoo360. There was also Bebo which, I think, was for the younger kids of the day.
Lets not forget about friendsreunited.
Many Companies become successful being at the right place at the right time. Facebook is one of those companies.
Had facebook been created a year or so beforehand (or a year or two after) we would likely be using some other "social media" today. Be interesting how that would have compared to facebook. Would it be "more evil" ???
Regardless, whether its Facebook/MarkZuckerberg or [insert_social_media]/[owner]... we would still end up with a new celebrity millionnaire/billionnaire.. and would still be considered "a fool" one way or another.
I’m always fascinated when someone equates profit with intelligence. There are many very wealthy fools and there always have been. Plenty of ingredients to substitute for intelligence.
You can be a wealthy fool who inherited money, or married into it. It is also possible to be a wealthy fool who was just in the right place at the right time. But I would guess that people who appear to have "earned" their money are much less likely to be wealthy fools than those who appear to have inherited/married into it.
Aren't there enough examples of successful people who are complete buffoons to nuke this silly trope from orbit? Success is no proof of wisdom or intelligence or whatever.
$1.8 trillion in investor hopes and dreams, but of course they make zero dollars in profit, don’t know how to turn a profit, don’t have a product anyone would pay a profitable amount for, and have yet to show any real-world use that isn’t kinda dumb because you can’t trust anything it says anyways.
Meta makes > $160 billion in revenue and is profitable itself, of course they’re going to invest in future longer term revenue streams! Apple is the counter example in a way who have maintained a lot of cash reserves (which seems to by the way have dwindled a LOT as I just checked..?)
"that fool" created a $1.8 trillion company.
He created a company that tracks and profiles people, psychologically manipulates them, and sells ads. And has zero ethical qualms about the massive social harm they have left in their wake.
That doesn't tell me anything about his ability to build "augmented reality" or otherwise use artificial intelligence in any way that people will want to pay for. We'll see.
Ford and GM have a century of experience building cars but they can't seem to figure out EVs despite trying for nearly two decades now.
Tesla hit the ball out of the park with EVs but can't figure out self-driving.
Being good at one thing does not mean you will be good at everything you try.
> Ford and GM have a century of experience building cars but they can't seem to figure out EVs despite trying for nearly two decades now.
Your EV knowledge is 3 years out of date. Both Ford and GM have well liked and selling EVs. Meanwhile Tesla's sales are cratering.
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I was rather sad when everyone moved away from MySpace to Facebook. While the interface today would likely be poor, I felt it was much better than what Facebook was offering. Still its hard to believe it was around 19 years ago many started to move over.
While I cannot remember the names of these sites, there were various attempts to create a shared platform website where you could create a profile and communicate with others. I remember joining a few at least back in 2002 before MySpace, Yahoo360. There was also Bebo which, I think, was for the younger kids of the day.
Lets not forget about friendsreunited.
Many Companies become successful being at the right place at the right time. Facebook is one of those companies.
Had facebook been created a year or so beforehand (or a year or two after) we would likely be using some other "social media" today. Be interesting how that would have compared to facebook. Would it be "more evil" ???
Regardless, whether its Facebook/MarkZuckerberg or [insert_social_media]/[owner]... we would still end up with a new celebrity millionnaire/billionnaire.. and would still be considered "a fool" one way or another.
I’m always fascinated when someone equates profit with intelligence. There are many very wealthy fools and there always have been. Plenty of ingredients to substitute for intelligence.
Neither necessary nor sufficient.
I really don't see how a person can build one of the most successful companies in history from scratch without exhibiting intelligence.
There are many things we can and should say about Zuckerberg, but I don't think that unintelligent is one them.
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You can be a wealthy fool who inherited money, or married into it. It is also possible to be a wealthy fool who was just in the right place at the right time. But I would guess that people who appear to have "earned" their money are much less likely to be wealthy fools than those who appear to have inherited/married into it.
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No kidding, that would make Larry Ellison the richest, most intelligent lawn mower in the world.
Zuck is top 10% intelligence...possibly top 1%.
Aren't there enough examples of successful people who are complete buffoons to nuke this silly trope from orbit? Success is no proof of wisdom or intelligence or whatever.
can you point to someone as successful as zuckerberg, who was later conclusively shown to be a fraud or a total moron?
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past performance does not guarantee future results
also, great for the Wall Street, mixed bag for us the people
No the thousands of people working at Facebook did, he just got rich from it.
I'm no zuck fanboy, but i'm compelled to ask what purpose rejecting the role of a leader serves?
HN is "the smart reddit" as my brother coined, and i'm very aware of how much nonsense is on here, but it is in a relative sense true.
All to say, blindly bashing the role of a leader seems faulty and dismissive.
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Which they absolutely would not have done if Zuck didn't start it, get funding, pay them handsomely, and tell them exactly what to do.
I'm sure that Zuck is worthy of huge amounts of criticism but this is a really silly response.
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If you would let a billion monkeys invest there also would be a monkey billionaire by chance.
$1.8 trillion in investor hopes and dreams, but of course they make zero dollars in profit, don’t know how to turn a profit, don’t have a product anyone would pay a profitable amount for, and have yet to show any real-world use that isn’t kinda dumb because you can’t trust anything it says anyways.
Meta makes > $160 billion in revenue and is profitable itself, of course they’re going to invest in future longer term revenue streams! Apple is the counter example in a way who have maintained a lot of cash reserves (which seems to by the way have dwindled a LOT as I just checked..?)
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