Facebook Co-founder Chris Hughes Doesn't Recall Zuckerberg Discussing the Iraq War at Harvard (cnbc.com) 42
Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes has said that he doesn't recall Mark Zuckerberg ever discussing the Iraq War during the early days of the company, contradicting recent comments from the CEO tying the war to his views on free speech. From a report: "I had never heard that before, and the internet had never heard that before," Hughes said an event with the Bay Area Chapter of the American Constitution Society. "I don't remember ever talking about that with Mark." Last month, Zuckerberg told an audience at Georgetown University that discussion about the Iraq War at Harvard, where he was a student, and on Facebook in its embryonic days, played a key role in his controversial positions on policing speech. Unlike other social media companies, Facebook has said it won't ban political advertising nor will it play the role of fact-checker. In claiming that Facebook was meant to promote dialogue about the Iraq War, which began in 2003, Zuckerberg took a departure from the well-known origin tale that includes the development of Facemash, a predecessor to Facebook where students could compare females at the college and decide who was more attractive. [...] "I was at protests protesting the Iraq War," Hughes said. "I did not go to any with Mark Zuckerberg."
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https://hotornot.com/ [hotornot.com] still exists.
He said he said...who cares (Score:3)
What difference does it really make. Mark is lying or he isn't. This guy is lying, honest does not recall and event, or he inst.
If Mark wants to claim his experience talking about Iraq 2.0 at Harvard shaped his opinions on how to manage speech/paid advertising online so what? Sure it might help some of us understand where is coming from bat that is about it. I mean it does not change he is in charge of facebook not anyone else, and his view is what it is. If Mark claimed the best way to manage online speech was revealed to him during a teenage acid trip in bowling alley it would not really matter today!
So you can place yourself in the shoes of Harvard student with a nascent online social media company around 2003 and decide for yourself if that experience might lead you to some of the choices Mark is making, and you can independently judge based on your own experience and knowledge if those are good choices. As it if Mark ever had those specific experiences not really relevant unless and until facebook collapses and you are trying to decide if you want to hire its former CEO to help run your business/campaign.
Re:He said he said...who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is using bullshit to re-write history and justify boorish behavior, as though some thought-up moral rectitude is the motivation.
And we do independently judge him--- revenues are king, damn the details and full-profits-ahead is the message. He. like Brin, Gates, and others, found the gold mine and to prevent claim-jumping, they must defend their stake right into the mud. Deception, pseudo-altruism, anything goes.
That's the difference it makes.
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The problem is using not facts or reporting to try to write history how you want it at all.
At least from *that* article - there isn't even anything conflicting in the statements.
The "smoking gun" seems to be one guy saying the other guy didn't go to rallies. But the first guy never said he went to rallies (from the article). So the first guy is just virtue signalling he went to rallies. Great work!
Futher anecdote: I was against the "evidence" for the Iraq war when it came out (remember the pictures of th
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Lets keep our eye on the prize. It doesn't matter what Zuckerberg's motivation or history. How he *feels* is irrelevant. What matters is that the argument is he is making is correct. Opening the door to third party gatekeepers to define truth for us, especially the already FAR too powerful technology companies, is a nightmare concept that is far more dangerous than the everyday practice of politicians lying or giving false impressions.
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Ends don't justify means. Passing off pseudo-life experiences as moral justification is a dissonance that doesn't justify the policies.
FB can't police its activity well, but it can stanch the micro-targeting, the bot traffic, and the false impressions, politicians or anti-vaxxers. BS is still BS, and using it to justify still more BS is BS. The stench gets to be insane.
Integrity still counts. There can be both truth and integrity. It's not "who's version of the truth". Veracity, like integrity, is very impo
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"Passing off pseudo-life experiences as moral justification is a dissonance that doesn't justify the policies."
No, it is in fact completely irrelevant. The policies are needed to ensure FB isn't shaping and/or defining truth and information you'd use to judge the truth in the image of its own bias or that of the public or at least is making a good faith effort to avoid doing so. Each individual is entitles to look at the various claims and constrast and weigh those claims, determine which sources they trust
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And people don't look at the claims in the same way. Some are highly impressionable, and will try to align towards their biases. Others are more skeptical.
Banning political and issues ads is the best policy.
And despite your claims, truth is impartial, and not subjective. It's not possible to make truth from falsehoods. Yes, there are lots of philosophies, but shaping, cajoling, casting, a myriad ways to shine lights on facts influences perception(s). The predatory nature of social media "fact" dissemination
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"And people don't look at the claims in the same way. Some are highly impressionable, and will try to align towards their biases. Others are more skeptical."
And no person has the right to assert they know better than another where the right answer sits. Especially within a democracy.
"Banning political and issues ads is the best policy."
Perhaps then again social media represents an avenue for smaller parties and groups to get a message out and bypass the establishment. That is important too. We do not want o
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No, that's not true at all.
There's much respect for people in tech. There are instead, those that have used their wealth in tech to either become loathed for their actions, or whose practices dodged ethics, civil, and/or even criminal law on the way to their billions.
Others, not measured in terms of wealth (and a few that are) have done wonders for the world around them. The power that money brings is termed a success, but it's important to know the ethics and humanity of how the wealth accumulated.
A few we
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I left FB years ago. My partner still does. Millions listen to the pulse of their friends there. They don't behave according to your rules or mine. Some have critical thinking skill.
Many more are really impressionable. They are swayed by obviously (to a critical thinker) piles of BS. BS dissemination has become both simple and profitable. It's up to the adults in the room to help stanch mind manipulation. People aren't born with critical thinking skills and some will never develop them, but they'll continue
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They're gullible, naive, and have many other frailties. If $deity gave you brainpower, share it.
And they need you to save them?
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They need you, too.
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Not only that but relating to his motivation or outrage at his claim violates rational logic rule number one. You judge his argument on its merit not emotional plea (or your own emotional response whether he plead to it or not).
You are right, he owns the company and until or unless we deem it to be subject to regulation he can do what he wants within the law. But moreover, ethically he is absolutely right. Politicians lying or using spun truth to mislead to the point where it is essentially a lie has been t
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"What difference does it really make. Mark is lying or he isn't."
It makes a difference to those who care whether he is a liar or not.
"Sure it might help some of us understand where is coming from bat that is about it. "
And that is quite important to some people.
"If Mark claimed the best way to manage online speech was revealed to him during a teenage acid trip in bowling alley it would not really matter today!"
Yes it would, because this is not the last issue of importance that we will form opinions on regar
Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who gives a fuck what Zuckerberg may or may not have said during college? This reads like a rejected National Enquirer headline.
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I'm waiting for The Onion version of this.
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I'm waiting for The Onion version of this.
This isn't already The Onion version? We are doomed.
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Who gives a fuck what Zuckerberg may or may not have said during college? This reads like a rejected National Enquirer headline.
Indeed. This isn't even about what Mark said, which doesn't matter. It is about what his roommate said he said, which matters even less.
I discuss politics frequently. But I never discuss politics at work and rarely at home. The people that know me the best likely believe I am apolitical, which is far from true.
What matters is that Mark believes Facebook should not be engaging in pseudo-censorship. He is certainly right about that.
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I didn't see either one of them at the protests (Score:1)
Of course not (Score:2)
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As opposed to the rest of the seething masses of altruistic, empathetic humans on the planet, right?
After seeing Warren's and Sanders' immigration plans, I think most Americans need to start voting in their best interests again which you'd think common sense would dictate but I'm not so sure anymore.
Doesn't mean anything (Score:2)
In the type of testosterone heavy college environment where something like Facemash he is highly unlikely to have been expressing to others any "soft" sentiments like being opposed to war to other guys. Zuckerberg could be telling the absolute truth about his feeling with regard to Iraq while at the time having made comments about bombing them until we turn their sand to glass (what americans all pictured when talking about the middle east is someone riding a camel over an endless desolate landscape of sand
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Please don't try to tell me what I pictured. You are wrong.
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"what MOST americans pictured when talking about the middle east is someone riding a camel over an endless desolate landscape of sand dunes"
You know what is worse than speaking in generalizations? Pretending others mean them literally when generalizations are rarely intended that way. Ever hear the expression "there are exceptions to everything" or "the exception that proves the rule?" So has everyo... so have MOST other people, in the western world, in my experience, who are old enough to parse language, h
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Your link makes no such assertions. It's about Brett Kavanaugh, certainly a repellent character, who is of a completely different generation from Z-bag and therefore unlikely to be rubbing elbows together at a university alcohol-fest.
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My link was an example of what can be done to a man's reputation from thin air.
Yes, and he is "repellent", because he attending "rape parties". Well, we don't know, if he did, nor even even that there were such partie. But he's been accused of it, with TV and newspapers talking about it 24x7, which makes him repellent.
Maybe you hated him without it, but in order to destroy him with others, you and yours had to
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That's his point.
The Democrats didn't like Brett Kavanaugh's politics, so they dragged out some loons to try to tank him. The fact that you would call him "repellent" despite much evidence to the contrary would indicate that I'd never invite you to a dinner party.
The Iraq War was actually a popular idea. (Score:2)
The Idea of Weapons of Mass Destruction was actually considered as a known fact.
Peoples view of the Iraq War changed after a year or so, where no WMD of consequence were found, and further evidence that Iraq wasn't actively supporting terrorist and all the other propaganda.
There is a lot of people rewriting history of their own personal narrative saying they were
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While we have a lot of people saying they were against it. At the time most people were for it, with only the exception of a few Anti-War Pacifist.
The Idea of Weapons of Mass Destruction was actually considered as a known fact.
Peoples view of the Iraq War changed after a year or so, where no WMD of consequence were found, and further evidence that Iraq wasn't actively supporting terrorist and all the other propaganda.
There is a lot of people rewriting history of their own personal narrative saying they were oppose to the Iraq War, while they were actually initially for it, then had changed their opinion later on.
Some of us were against it from the very beginning. Not from any high moral ground like pacifism, either.
First, because we believed the story that Osama bin Laden was in Afghanistan, so invading Iraq was utterly irrelevant to the US reasons for war at the time. The sudden pivot to Iraq after invading Afghanistan was bizarre, from the outside.
Second, some of us are old enough to remember the Gulf War, and were immediately suspicious that Jr. just wanted to finish what his daddy started. Strong streak of c
harvard (Score:3)
Can we ask if he even went to Harvard at all?
I mean just because he can quote data privacy laws and has the faces of his classmates memorized from a yearbook doesn't mean he actually went even if his harvard transcript got hacked into the database.
(yes this is a reference)
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What is Suits?
Early Onset Alzheimers? (Score:2)
Perhaps this Chris Hughes ding-dong is suffering from early-onset alzheimers disease? Has this medical condition been ruled out?