Once a month or so, I check into my wife's facebook account...just to remain somewhat relevant at social gatherings...After about five minutes I can't take it anymore..what a bore..as to the level of political discourse..well, now I understand how Trump won.
16
To the local techies around me, Facebook has been the company you worked for if you did not like dealing with scruples. It was OK to mock users, look that their protected material, do detailed analysis on their likes and dislikes to better exploit them. While Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, and Google are not angels, it is not surprising that Google used AI and neural network technology to identify "cat video's" and Microsoft monitored their AI bot and shut it down when they found it could be misused (and it is a firing offense to even look at the contents of anything on One Drive you did not personally put there). Meanwhile, Facebook let its technology be used to steal an election funded by a foreign adversary, electing by far the worst president in American history.
Make no mistake, preference based narrow-casting has become the primary Internet delivery mechanism. This silo-ing of users for the benefit of advertisers also prevents users from learning about anything they are not already talking about. The ability to generate a national consensus has become much harder, and the ability to con, deceive, and abuse users who are painted into specific corners by narrow-casting is much easier.
81
He is no longer an atheist? Wow! That is about the best timing I ever saw.
35
Really, how much revenue would the New York Times and other "reputable" sites lose if they did not put all their staff on Facebook and encourage readers/viewers to link to it? If the NYT pulled its accessibility via Facebook, wouldn't starving the beast be worth it? I am not and have never been on Facebook (the potential vitriol plus ads is a total turnoff), but it makes me sick that some people rely on the site to filter their news (and ads). Finding out just how insidious the filtering is should be a Big Red Flag to detach from associations with Facebook and find another life elsewhere. Anywhere. Please.
22
Facebook also sent its employees to work in Trump's campaign office. Do they do this for all of their advertisers, or just the ones paying in rubles?
36
Yes any medium of the media can be usurped , even NY times. Pretty soon this witch hunt will result in only state run media. The government fears change by new technologies. That is what 911 was about, Government inducing fear.
5
Whoever thought George Orwell's "Big Brother" would turn out to be troops of 20 to 30-something techies? New millennial zealbots who feel free to work without reference to any of society's social or ethical frameworks.
(Years ago I thought something was wrong when it was so difficult to "leave " FB that a an "escapee" set up a website to help others disengage from this site's business tactic. I have a FB page only because it was a requirement in a course I signed up for. And no, the course wasn't about social media. So some educators forced social media upon their students instead of allowing students to make their own thoughtful, individual choices.)
With supporters like that, who needs advertisers?
19
The biggest problem we face is the power of money. Even supposedly reputable sources feed the public nonsense if enough cash changes hands. Take a look at AARP Magazine and you'll find ads for ridiculous, useless gizmos opposite articles about the exploitation of gullible seniors. And Facebook has the world in its hands.
13
Great article, finally, we have been fast asleep. Will Equifax even wake us up?
The digits know us better than we do. Scary indeed.
10
The time is right now to nip in the bud any Presidential aspirations Kid Zuckerberg has. Being a billionaire doesn't qualify as Presidential material. I've been worried for quite some time about some of the "advances" technology is dreaming up for us - of course, it's always for the betterment of our lives....oh, and making money too! "Follow the money"!
23
I think Zuckerberg does have presidential ambitions. There is no bigger tell than him renouncing atheism.
I expect that there will be some splashy baptism like ceremony in the future where he will be seen to come to Jesus, followed by church sightings.
The hypocrisy of the American electorate and those who run for office knows no bounds.
33
Help. No one hears our cry. No one can help us anyway.
I believe every word Dowd writes here is true.
Trump seems to be the First President in a horrific New World Order. Where honesty is not even a consideration. Trump tweets and rants about what ever is in his crazy mind.And, like an impermeable Robot out of control, we can't stop him. Trumps henchmen senators try to sell a rotten fish of a Health Care with every lying twitter abled tweet. Can't stop them.
Zuckerberg is so smart he's stupid. He actually believes that human beings, when left to our own devices, will actually police our selves.If we didn't have Laws we'd all be dead. Human beings are that vicious.Look at the police brutality epidemic, even the professional who are supposed to protect us are killing people lawlessly and getting away with it.
Trump is our turning point. And Zuckerberg was a huge part of his election thanks to being blinded by the Russian Advertising Money and charmed beyond reason by his own success. How stupid can a genius be..or is he.
26
Facebook has turned Americans into addicted, gossipy seventh graders.
Computer whizzes are generally left/brained people. It does not surprise me that Zuckerberg fails to see the threat FB can be to society and to our democratic government. Elon Musk for President!
23
Democrats still cant accept that they lost. Its Russians Russians Russians. No, you had an awful candidate who was as inspiring as a moldy rag in a basement and you forced her in over someone beloved by most of your party. Meanwhile the Republicans had the opportunity to tell the party they had enough business as usual after two absolutely awful candidates who proved that being a moderate and immigrant lover does not get you elected. Trump has proved the benefit of going to the roots, and this has upset a lot of powerful interests in the country and the world who realized the jig may be up.
6
Elmer hits all of Pavlov's levers, hope he liked his treat. He should check his alternatives for "immigrant lover" before his audience starts getting the right idea.
18
Ms Dowd struck the motherlode. Who doen't feel the future vulnerability as the Russian Hoax surfaces? With the Zuckerberg Apocalypse lurching into view, no better time for a peer review of all of the bot-traps needed to bulwark our freedoms.
I'm certain the alternatives are being "weaponized", meaning "monitized". Faceless Corp fears a capable alternative. Their leader is opening a portal, so he can acquire his "Sword of a Thousand Truths" and thus retain home field advantage.
4
Never let Facebook use my data and never will.
10
Yep, looks like the old gatekeepers are worried!
2
I own a small "tech company" and I have never used FB for the all the reasons that many tech savy people do not. Google is bad enough (though a must-use) whereas FB is just unacceptable. Maybe this disaster will inspire Zuckerberg to reform his profit model in some manner that serves his users.
9
What do we want Facebook to do? If my social activity shows I am pro-choice, do we want to order Facebook to send me antiabortion sponsored content? If I tend to vote Republican, should we require Facebook to send me 3.7 pro-Bernie Sanders articles a week?
2
This is a case study of a "free market" system on steroids w/o checks and balances. The victors become monopolies who eventually control the market for profit and power. It's what Trump and Repubs are doing now with deregulation and destruction of our check/balance system of Democracy. Just as we have lost our vote to the billionaires political puppets, their power is now dependent on how much "free speech" they can buy on tech platforms that will deliver "free info" to you 24/7 , no matter the content. Without checks/balances of policy, process, procedures Democracy dies.
10
Years ago at the start of the Ukraine crisis some of us who follow events there started noticing strange things on social media from subtle and not so subtle Russian mischief. Through my social circles I ran into one of the vaunted "security" experts from Facebook and expressed my concerns. He was arrogantly dismissive (after Googling Ukraine to find out more about it). He now is quite sheepish when I run into him. The young twerps of Silicon Valley are highly educated, but only in a narrow sense. They are completely out of their depth outside their specials fields of technical expertise. Their "disruptive" models were themselves disrupted. No more how much they might "lean in" they will be devoured in the political arena.
9
Meanwhile there are billions of dollars in domestic ads, mostly lies and exaggerations, on an inescapable scale with saturation coverage for years. And that's considered normal? You think Facebook posts about Hillary having Parkinson's is the tipping point? Look at the other 99% of the iceberg!
5
The movie "2001 A Space Odyssey" was made 50 years ago and released in 1968.
Musk says AI is a bigger threat than North Korea. How comforting to know that AI would not use North Korea sub rosa to attack USA.
4
He will not become President. This will mainly be because both Facebook and Twitter will likely be destroyed in the coming two years as their complicity in an attack on the US becomes apparent.
If they're not destroyed, they will be under new control, and nothing like they are now.
When the extent of this is truly revealed both companies will likely collapse as users and investors flee.
Although, I doubt Putin's investor friends will be dropping their investment very quickly, seeing as it's paid off for them so dramatically.
If people think Facebook's culpability here only extends to a few thousand paid ads on it's network, you are gonna get the shock of your life.
The information coming out right now suggests that both Facebook and Twitter have both been active participants in a coup against the United States (and other countries), working with a foreign intelligence service, and both Zuckerberg and "Jack" will be going to prison for quite a long time.
7
The truth is FB and Twitter censor conservative opinions with far more frequency than they do liberal opinions.
4
FB, Apple, Microsoft, Twitter, Alibaba, TenCents, SnapChat etc. etc. have all conned us into 'sacrificing our privacy for convenience' en route to becoming
'prisoners of mass surveillance.' What people, especially in the U.S. do not realize is that, by creating echo-chambers of like-minded rants and thieving our minds into atomized gazes at screens (where we've become POTS: people of the screen), both free speech and the right to physically assemble have been leveraged. That is big-data's and AI's game, and as the information amalgamates to the top, inequality will grow and state control will strengthen to again 'protect the opulent from the uneducated masses.' Couple this with Citizens United an the bought-and-paid-for Beltway of bafoonery that passes for today's so-called 'free speech' and 'doing the will of the people,' one should be able to see where all this is going. Not only I there an opiod crisis, but there's also a massive internet/social-media addiction in the United States and elsewhere. Nothing, nothing of substance and strength is born out of a quick, click-and-drag, ego-driven selfie 'like.' Rather, solid institutions and surely-protected Constitutional rights take time, ever-vigilant regulation, and the physical assertion of voice and presence in place. It seems as though that's the hard work we do not want to do. As for Zuckerberg and the cons, may Frankenstein seek his revenge. People are people, not things to be data-mined.
8
The notion of Mark Zuckerberg-- he of dubious ethicality who runs Facebook like a fiefdom-- running for the presidency is anathema.
Zuckerberg strikes me as egoistic and ruthless. No thanks.
On the other hand, I'd be interested in a Sheryl Sandberg candidacy.
7
Good column. It's also worth noting that Facebook has been caught goosing FB advertising metrics to put itself in an advantageous position in a market it wants to dominate. And of course, it follows you everywhere you go on the web, even when you're logged out of Facebook. This is without taking into account its increasing dominance when it comes to publishing and distributing news and other media.
By the way, Facebook's response to ever-louder criticism over its role in the spreading of fake news is to vow to more stridently regulate the content published on its platform. In a world where an increasing number of people get their news from social media - are we sure we want Facebook to be the arbiter of what news we are "allowed" to see?
We live in a time when corporations have more power than at any time during my lifetime, but it's no surprise that some people on the right and left are beginning to talk about regulating Facebook (and Google) as public utilities. Just as was the case with the phone companies a couple of generations ago. I don't see that happening any time soon, but it would not surprise me too much if it happened during my lifetime.
I recently read someone on Twitter ponder what would happen if the Silicon Valley titans pulled a John Galt and went away? I suspect in the end we might actually be better off.
10
Russian ad effectiveness.
I understand that the 3,000 or so ads supposedly placed by the Russians cost very little.
Both parties spent millions in ad buys in 2016. When the contents of the 3,000 are revealed, I wonder if there is anything the Democrats and Republicans can learn from them. Certainly, the current uproar in the media would indicate that the Russian placed ads were stunningly effective.
4
Seriously, you would think the Russians can pretty much take over Madison Ave if they are as effective as so many say.
1
I've never really trusted MZ and spend very, very little time on FB. All this "sharing" makes him ever wealthier while he hides behind a philosophy that seems disingenuous...or worse. He pretends he's making the world a better place, but, really, he isn't. And now it turns out FB may be making things far worse than we suspected. More evil than Google by many measures.
Eclectic Pragmatism — http://eclectic-pragmatist.tumblr.com/
Eclectic Pragmatist — https://medium.com/eclectic-pragmatism
5
Zuckerberg certainly has not made Hawaii better. He has bought a 700-acre estate on Kauai, put up a mile-long wall to block the views of the ocean, brought lawsuits against a couple hundred of Hawaiians whose land Zuckerberg and his wife wanted and asked for the Hawaiians to pay the Zuckerberg legal fees. The Zuckerbergs call this "joining the community" on the island.
The Hawaiians call Zuckerberg a neocolonialist. Zuckerberg also appears to be a neocolonialist of the American mind and a destroyer of democracy.
20
I find it interesting that Facebook, which is social media connecting millions upon millions, in fact a network which increases and makes diversity possible, connecting friends from all walks of life and geographical location, is being blamed for fake news putting right wing Trump into office. This seems to me like a bunch of Democrats, at a Democratic convention--because Facebook favors diversity, connection, is not some right wing device--blaming the loss of their party at election time on someone having distributed flyers for the other side at their own convention.
But maybe I don't understand, maybe somebody can clarify it. Is Facebook, this social media site which connects friends and allows one to connect with others, and which has millions upon millions of people on it, something which favors the success of right wing trends in society or not? Is not the advantage of the thing overwhelmingly in favor of democratic politics, introduction to the diversity of society? I wish someone would explain the problem. I'm having difficulty understanding.
3
The Russians persuaded Americans not to vote for Clinton. The New York Times couldn't persuade Americans to vote for Clinton. Really Ms. Dowd? I'll have to agree with Mr. Zuckerberg when he says people (still) whinging about Clinton's loss chalk it up to Macedonia teenagers persuading deplorables to vote for Trump.
5
lowest common denominador is highly popular
Well if voters read from both FB and The NYT you might have a point; but they don't. Sadly for our country, many people don't have the time or inclination to read up on both sides of issues. If they did we'd be in a lot better shape; maybe more understanding would also help reduce the anger and digging in.
2
Mr. Z needs to stay out of politics. He has done enough, thank you, inventing his monster, but I also know the millions of people who would vote for him, as the millions who voted for the current occupant of the Oval Office, will not see this comment posted in The New York Times.
8
Because atheism is un-American. Where as opportuneism is the height of American aspiration.
11
Shout the loudest by 'liking' silence. Turn it off!
14
If only Maureen and the rest of the media had focused on something other than Hillary's emails we'd be living in a different world today. The media gets no pass from me. Neither does Zuckerberg. Facebook is evil.
27
You mean like her corrupt and evil ways? I am not sure how not focusing on the inconvenient truth provided by the emails would have changed things.
2
Mark Zuckerberg is proof that a genius can also be a moron. I came to that conclusion when I saw clips of his speech to some graduating college class. The Russians did not influence my vote. I remember HRC from the 90s. In the 2016 election I voted against her more than I voted for someone. Even so, Trump is better than Obama. At least, Trump does like our country. Unfortunately, Obama left a huge mess for Trump to clean up. I never thought the American people would elect the likes of Obama or Trump, so it is possible that they will elect Zuckerberg.
10
Trump may like the country, but he doesn't seem to like or respect its citizens.
7
Facebook has shown it's evil in so many ways, just as google and others
and dowdy only focuses on election and loss for deplorable HRC...
God help us!
1
I never took up with facebook because my mother taught me how to avoid social diseases. This chump is just Trump with some manners.
11
Very good article from Maureen Dowd on Artificial Intelligence capabilities.
Zuckerberg will not win any political office , he does not have a
Bachelors degree from any college. The public wants to see some
academic rigor. He should pick an online college and transfer his
Harvard credits.
2
If you are looking for academic rigor, its best to avoid the college scam. The American public is learning to be better than that.
How easy many pile on to zuckerberg. Do they do the same with Robert j Oppenheimer, father of the abomb; Henry ford because terrorists use his vehicles, gun manufacturers because of gun deaths; and so on? No, it's how the technology is used. But of course hindsight is perfect vision. And talk about excessive advertising--I'm sick of the drug manufacturers bombarding is with all those dopy adds.
But at least Facebook recognizes that they could be responsible and will address the issues. In the meantime, we have the likes of an idiot president with the a bomb and Twitter at his disposal. The cat's out of the bag. Control and filter who's using the technology, don't shut down the scientists because we can't see the future
2
Kids can be smart, but never wise. Let's stop fetishizing youth.
7
Sure, Zuckerberg is no longer an atheist--he worships Mammon.
10
I work in Silicon Valley, and it strikes me the best online platforms are the ones that provide for self-policing. I had a two-star experience on Lyft recently, and within minutes was contacted by their customer service, received a partial refund and was decoupled from that driver - so I would never get picked up by him again. Likewise, buying and selling on platforms like Amazon or eBay is governed by personal ratings. Pierre Omidyar, eBay’s founder once said his platform was based on the principle that “people are basically good”. That qualifier, “basically”, is one Facebook would be wise to heed. My Facebook was full of fake news and hateful posts during the 2016 election. And yet there was nothing I could do to police this garbage, other than unfollow or unfriend. I tried the occasional Snopes-fueled response, or posting real news from a trusted source and real journalists, but it felt like trying to dam a rushing river. Many commenters have said Facebook is merely a forum for free speech, but with the ever deeper tribalism and algorithms that drive our circles of Facebook friends and what appears at the top of our news feeds, is it really free speech or simply bias confirmation?
13
"He has said he is no longer an atheist ..." If ever there was a "tell" that precedes a run for public office, this is it. In this country, an atheist would be in trouble if he ran for dog catcher. Zuckerberg knows this and is willing to compromise his own, long-standing core values to enhance his chances. What does that tell you?
12
Good news that he's hired Hillary's pollster. This means he can't win.
9
Too scary to contemplate. One crazy billionaire has shown profound lack of human and empathy understanding already (Trump) Why elect another.
13
The single most effective way to stop Facebook is for users to stop using it. Does anyone really believe that the 200 people who have friended you are your friends. What makes you think that other than your immediate family anyone is interested in little Johnnys first step or your cat poses, seriously. Want to connect, go visit your parents, go grab a cup of coffee with a real friend.
17
Superintelligent robots won't want to eat me. My Mom always said that I'm spoiled!
2
Zuckerberg is merely the latest generation of the swamp. Prancing around the country with his spaced out intellect and out of touch life, he turns out to be only about the money. His sales people knew exactly what they were doing (some have said so). Zuckerberg and Sandburg were not asleep at the switch,. No, they just looked the other way as FB coffers filled up. And in doing so, they helped elect Trump as not so unwitting accomplices of the Russians.
Zuckerberg as president would be as horrendous as Trump.
15
It doesn't strike me as scary, but I am taken with the assumption he may be seeking the Presidency which appears delusional, not so much on his part, but the voting public's.
It is easy to understand why a young, rich white guy who clearly has an unseen control over much thought throughout the planet would see his future in controlling as much information as he can.
The so called "old school" politicians, leader and diplomats are being exposed by the behavior or this, their administration as being inept and venal. That Mr Zuckerberg would be better is questionable. Off stage messianic perhaps
We as a people need a change in the way we run things and heresy of all heresies voting for those who make our laws may not be in our best interest. That isn't to say they would have no purpose.
Window mannequins come to mind.
1
The most alarming thing about this article is Zuckerberg saying "he is no longer an atheist". Why the need to cater to the religious zealots?...When will critical thinking finally win out over fearful beliefs?
13
Nothing is going to make me sign up for Facebook or twitter!
You make your choice,I'll make mine.A few friends are a treasure,
Hundreds of friends Is a ridiculous dream,brought to you at great
Advertising expense by some young folks,and your money multiplied
By many others.
7
You will be assimilated into the Borg. Resistance is futile. Or so we are to believe by articles such as this. Goodness, what possible chance does the average voter have at fending off their absorption into the malevolent whole, being as they are drones with empty heads just waiting to be filled with irresistible commands placed there by whichever Dr. Frankenstein (or Caligula, for crying out loud!) gets to their vacuous minds first?
1
I suspect Zuckerberg will just go on Charlie Rose and smooth out all this "negativity," and then just continue on his (in his mind) inevitable rise to the Presidency. Then Sandberg will write yet another book about how it has negatively affected women (probably intentionally) and, of course, update us on how she's dealing with her personal "challenges." And we'll eat it up because, you know, they're like billionaire celebrities, and we're like way too busy taking selfies.
9
I have said before, and this column underscores, the young math genuises (mostly male)who have cooked up the code for so many of today's "essential" devices and commuications services, appear to function somewhere on the autism spectrum: good at math, introspection, obsessive and repetitve focusing on arcana... but deficient in the ability to see consequences, consider others, relate with actual people, or even look you in the eye.
no wonder Sandberg finally had to admit the onus is "on us."
what took them so long?
14
The most important question for Robert Mueller to answer is did Donald Trump's campaign, operating through Jared Kushner and others, use Facebook to coordinate with Russian efforts to win the election for the Republicans in 2016. If they did, then, Trump, those from his campaign who were involved, those who knew and Facebook Executives and staff who operated this attack on U.S. Democracy need to be held fully accountable in our court system. Examples and standards need to be made.
Mueller's work on this is likely to be the most imporant political anti-corruption investigation in U.S. history.
12
I believe the underlying problem is that there are millions of websites, including Facebook, that display ads which are meant to take advantage of the naive. We have all seen them. They promise all forms of elixirs, disparaging information about celebrities, saving you money on your mortgage etc... etc...
The Russians were just the latest group to use this platform to prey on people. It is congress who needs to act and pass regulation for this market. You are not allowed to put this false advertisements on broadcast television - why can it be done on the Internet? If companies, like Facebook or Google, cannot be as profitable without these advertisers then so be it.
3
The scariest part is that he might win.
3
I don't think so--We Americans will still be polarized when the next election rolls around. He DID go to one of those "elite" colleges. Oh, wait! Extra points for being a dropout!
1
Regulation will only make a small dent in the problem when the greatest factor is a willing public that spends more time primping and preening for their public image than for addressing issues that matter. Regulation can't fix apathy or ignorance. It can't make people read more, learn more, or take action.
Regulation is usually about stopping something, but the real problem is how to get the majority of people engaged and into action. Regulation is no substitute for a more important tool called mindfulness.
6
Mark is the quintessential boy-man. Reminds me of an Old Testament Scripture- Isaiah 3:4:
"I will make boys their leaders, and toddlers their rulers." I cannot think of a more dangerous combination than Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook and Donald Trump as president. These two have more combined power than any two individuals at any time in history; neither understanding the magnitude.
7
The last thing we need is another businessman running for President. Our government is not a business, it is not for-profit, it is not a corporate spigot.
We need an individual of impeccable character and morality; one who is ethical, responsible, and respected; and one who will work toward the common good.
That person is certainly not Trump and nor is it Zuckerberg.
10
Zane you are 100% right and so you'd better light your latern and prepare for numerous walks with Diogenes. When big money is involved it will be very hard, impossible really, to find "a person of impeccable character and morality; one who is ethical, responsible, and respected; and one who will work toward the common good." Zuckerberg and Trump are just two examples of how twisted people become for and around money.
5
Good column today, Maureen, and very illuminating.
This is the stuff of which coups and the tools that can be used to perpetuate and weaponize them are made.
While Facebook was played one can argue, they are not innocent. Zuckerberg in his celebrity and fortune so young needs to understand how what seems like a great product for the masses can also be a great source of reaching the masses with ill intent. And that fact has to be considered when whining about 'freedom' from restriction and regulation.
The things we take for granted have been tampered with. It is hard to still believe that they are what they seemed before we knew how they were used.
Our election was used to make some rich and others empowered. None of this should go unchallenged. We are in danger of losing the power we have with our votes and our voice in democracy.
If Trump's presidency tells us anything it is how easily deception can alter reality on a mass scale when there are so many enablers.
6
I use Facebook sparingly. The internet, such that it is, allows anyone to voice there opinion about anything. The internet is like television on steroids. The young people who are presently charged with policing their services work very hard, but are severely limited in there scope of reality. I have a very high antenna for anything I encounter on the web, but even I am fooled repeatedly by folks hawking their wares. Most of these kids have no life experience to write algorithms which affect the rest of us profoundly. This, unfortunately will be exposed, crisis upon crisis.
3
I have always been slow to get on the bandwagon. I may be one of the last persons to break down and buy a microwave. Why would I need one, I thought? I have a pan and a stove.
I now use a microwave. But I have never crossed that dark barrier into Facebook territory. The bigger it gets the further away from it I want to be. And for those websites that make you "sign on," or "comment" through FB, who needs you?
As Gemli points out, we have too many ads hovering over us already. Get a grip and get away, from Facebook.
12
Perhaps one regulation of social media might work: the prohibition of targeted advertizing and commentary. So what I see on a timeline is what everybody sees in the same order. Nothing would be curated for specific users. If someone posts an offensive comment about a particular enthnicity/race, that comment would be seen by everybody. Perhaps that would provide some self control and limit abusive commentary.
3
Like all potential candidates ,regardless of his personal beliefs his approach to power of any kind in any office needs to be watched with a microscope.
Mr Zuckerberg,is no different from any man in the street.he has a load of money but like so many ,he believes it gives him the right to do anything he wants.I strongly suggest he looks deeply into history. The ground is littered
With men who ignored the needs of people in our world.He can choose.
4
"...this $500 billion company...turned into what...with Twitter, The Times’s Scott Shane called “engines of deception and propaganda.”
The American "freedom delusion" is wreaking more havoc. The "free market" means "free from law and logic" enabling fake news, fake advertising and alternate facts without limits.
Unless freedom claims specify Whose? From what? To do what? they are themselves just a rhetorical high--drunk on the Patriot Elixir--see the Times on Trump re NBA or NFL!
But given how the GOP pushed the Freedom Delusion for over a century, Congressional limits may not be a good thing. They might just find a way to privatize the internet--so a consortium of Trumpies own and control it.
Consider self-policing like the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Broadcast_Standards_Council
These mega-media corporations are like polities anyway--making and enforcing policy affecting the multitudes.
Alternatively, since the internet is a transnational public utility--maybe the UN should set up a standards council for the giants.
3
Facebook has the ability to spread hate speech like never before. We need a better handle.
I do not know what to make of all the apocalyptic talk. New technologies have been vilified and viewed in apocalyptic terms in the past: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2010/02/dont_to... . This was true with the printing press.
But nothing has had the reach--the ability to advertise and influence quickly and widely--of modern social media. And Facebook, whatever else its intent, is an advertising platform. That is where it makes its money. That is why so many people work for a company that can pay them well and hold their soyalty
1
Is Mueller going to investigate FB, too?
Perhaps, Zuckerberg and Sandberg are of Russian descent and are really agents of the Kremlin.
So many witches in America.
3
Mockery is not an argument.
6
Report from the Onion: Nothing Stopping You From Deleting Your Facebook Account Right Now
http://www.theonion.com/article/report-nothing-stopping-you-deleting-you...?
6
Zuckerberg is in as deep with the Russian oligarchs as Trump:http://gawker.com/5271530/the-hard-russian-oligarch-behind-facebooks-new...
3
Just read an article by Alex Halderman (Politico) about Princeton professor Andrew Appel hacking a Diebold Sequoia voting machine in 7 minutes. Louisiana, New Jersey, Virginia, Pennsylvania and others still use this computer.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/08/2016-elections-russia-hac...
When you consider that all 50 states function like 50 separate countries in voting requirements, couple that with weaponized unregulated A.I. and unregulated media including FB and Google and a congress that hasn't done anything but harm for over nine years the picture for the future begins to look mostly bleak. A recipe for catastrophic failure to use a pilots term.
Maureen's article points to the real threat that the next election could be hacked by the people running for office and running the media at the same time. There are other Silicon Valley boys who are looking at D.C. like Peter Thiel.
Compound this with N. korea in a twitter war with a deranged mentally ill American president and our spent, overstretched military fighting wars without end and reasons unknown, makes one want to give pause.
When I wake in the morning and the first words I hear are "President Trump" I start the day by losing hope.
7
Ms. Dowd is correct that Elon Musk has been in the forefront of those who warn that artificial intelligence poses an existential threat to humankind, but she doesn't mention the somewhat counter-intuitive, if-you-can't-beat-'em-join-'em strategy he's pursuing to counter that threat. His idea is to build a "neural mesh" capability to merge human minds with AI so that we can maintain a "tight symbiosis" (his words) with AI as it develops. This strikes me as more of a surrender than a solution -- one that raises the possibility of unexpected consequences even more troubling than the mess Facebook finds itself in. For more detail on Musk's plan and its potential downsides, see "The Wizard Hat Solution" http://thequestionconcerningtechnology.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-wizard-h...
1
Cut the electricity and you will see what happens to Facebook and other trivial "invention". Some pretty bright people develop trivial applications (easy to do if you have good skills in math and computer science). It would be better for the world if they used their talent to work on thermodynamically constrained technologies such as clean energy processes, environmental problems (clan and abundant water supply for all, etc..). But, progress is hard to achieve in these fields. If one looks for fast money and glory, look elsewhere.
7
The real issue is that there's a lot of money to be made in telling people the things that they want to hear, especially when those things aren't true.
9
The NY Times is the longstanding Facebook of the Progressive Elite, while Facebook is the new NY Times of Social Media Middle Class. How do you "like" that?
We keep waiting for the "thumbs down" emoji.....
10
So now he believes in god? What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? Oh yeah, he's gotta carry the bible thumpers to win in Bama and the other confederate states. I implore all citizens to do one thing today, shut down your Facebook account. Suggest it to your friends too. Start writing letters. The Post Office could use the business.
24
Do I hear a boycott Facebook? Anyone? crickets....
15
The kids are already bailing out, Jim, for that best of all social media reasons: it's not cool anymore. Remember MySpace? But be that as it may, I'm gone for good and not alone. And we're not crickets at all. So buck up, Bucko, the game isn't over yet.
5
Zuckerberg had best be careful with the deviationism and take a lesson from Bill Cosby. One of Cosby's accusers asked why it took thirty years for her to be heard. The reason is that as long as Cosby could be depicted as liberal hero Heathcliffe Huxtable, he was protected. But the minute Cosby began to criticize black underclass behavior, he lost that protection.
So, when his liberal interrogator asks Zuckerberg how many fingers he's holding up, Zuckerberg had best give the answers liberals want to hear. Otherwise, it's going to be open season on him.
8
You mean not everything on the Internet is true? Really??????? No wonder Hillary lost! The poor thing!!
Oh wait! Hillary had the entire print and television Main Stream Media on her side, doesn't that count for something? Does that mean the MSM is going to be even MORE slanted? Is that even possible?
8
Elizabeth, what universe were you in during the campaign?
5
He should at least be given credit for developing and implementing the world's largest surveillance system...the East German Stasi would be proud.
13
Go get em Maureen. Zuckerberg is just another empty head with lots of money.
11
Let me get this straight. Kushner needed the Russians to write up the "propaganda" to microtarget on Facebook?
5
To quote "Game of Thrones"..."shame, shame, shame". Or, in your vernacular, you killed the world, dude.
2
Zuckerberg is as close to the Manchurian Candidate we will get to. Watch him. If he gets into the Oval Office we will beg for Trump to return. Trump may be an imbicile but a cunning evil Zuckerberg will be far more scarier.
7
Maybe the NY Times could do an interview series with all those Hillary Clinton voters who logged into Facebook and then changed their vote to Donald Trump after scrolling past a Russian ad. Oh, wait, that's right: They don't exist.
10
OMG! Atheist or not...just OMG!
6
How about the New York Times deactivating the "Share this comment on Facebook" button? Being part of a solution, instead of the opposite.
16
This is why journalism is even more important.
10
Are you using information or is it using you?
7
Zuckerburg has shown no political leadership ability and seems wrapped up in a nether world of his own kind of perfection.....Looks like he had better stick to FB and live well.....
6
This is potent stuff. I think that I felt the Ruskies on FB when the Bernie people got all nasty on Hil. We'll see. People are idiots and have been since the printing press was invented so I suspect we'll survive this.
5
Who could possibly believe what they read or hear on Facebook, Fox, RT, or Breitbart? They are all purveyors of fake news, as credible as Donald Trump or Putin.
7
Tom, maybe so. But the mainstream media leaves out important information that may completely change the narrative
Income inequality is seen by many as society’s greatest ill and it is certainly a scourge but education inequality is what is destroying the Home of the Brave. Twain advised “You can easier fool people than you can convince them they have been fooled”. If our nation in its totality were more intelligent we would have gotten better candidates than either of the ones we had in the last Presidential election. Yes Hillary was a safer bet but neither can claim not to be corrupt and in it for themselves not the American people. I wore our nations uniform with Duty,Honor, Country tattooed on my soul but I will be damned if I could ever salute a draft dodging white Supremist sympathizer. I remember vividly Netscape 1 the first browsers starting and my has technology in silicon come a long way for good and for bad. Yin and Yang but at the moment Yang i.e. Evil is allowing the oligarchs to control us like sheep in the Matrix. Who among us does not spend an inordinate amount of time glued to a screen through which they feed us whatever propaganda they want us to believe. Trump has used I.t. Twitter etc. Brilliantly because he has divided a country that was finally. moving fast towards Unity. Diversity and immigration have been the backbone of America’s success and now our unfairly elected President is giving racists breathing room and moral support. A.I. is a real danger but a lack of just plain old Intelligence is our problem now.
12
Where is the investigation into the REAL problem of fraudulent votes by dead people and illegal aliens? (crickets)
6
Alfred, you must leave vet in the same universe as Elizabeth who believed the media was pro Hillary during the campaign.
5
Mr. Zuckerberg may not "like" the column;
but he certainly won't like the comments.
10
Just do what I did on Nov 9th, 2016 the day after the election............delete Facebook, and never sign back on....its easy!
13
A very rich punk, but a punk nonetheless.
11
Everybody, please, just dump Facebook. Go old-school. Read the news again, and far better yet, talk to all of your neighbors.
10
"Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity"
6
Hillary's name should be changed to Sarah Conner.
7
"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind." 'The Orange Catholic Bible', 'Dune' by Frank Herbert.
5
". . .competition for A.I. superiority would be the “most likely cause of WW3.”
Didln't Vonnegut write a novel about this?
5
Tech is taking us over the threshold of human evolution into a time when electronic intelligence will be the rule. In essence, we are the species that will "program" and effect its own extinction, by developing a form of intelligence that will replace us. I do not say "life" because AI is not life; yet it is the next step, and sole way that the human race will overcome mortality, which after all is wasteful.
This really does not worry me, and not merely because it seems inevitable. Every species thinks that it is unique and irreplaceable. Moreover, none of us now alive will be around to be replaced. Moreover, artificial intelligence, left to replicate and sustain itself, will not select a moron such as Trump as a leader, or allow cities to sink in the lagoon because climate change is not a politically popular reality.
Putting it another way, I would rather be a Vulcan, or live among Vulcans, than put up with Trump, Pence, McConnell and their supporters. "Live long and prosper," even in an AI bot form, works better for me than "Make America Hate Again."
4
And in South Africa, fake social media sites and bots, possibly created and likely planned by/in Russia, are stirring up racial animosity, creating fake "state enemies" as well as helping facilitate the large scale loooting of state owned enterprises, the revenue service and soon the public service pension fund, all for the benefit of President Jacob Zuma, his family and cronies, Zuma being a long time client-pal and obseqiuos toady to Putin. He visits Russia endlessly, and he's selling the country and its people to him.
4
You spent so much time and energy during the campaign fueling the hatred of Hillary Clinton. This article nearly makes me sick.
I find it sickening, too, that at the end you invite us to "follow you" on Twitter and Facebook. Off a cliff, perhaps? Such a gracious host you are, Maureen.
15
Guess I better get ready to flee to Nambia.
6
Just turn the darn thing off.
7
What kind of nut, except maybe for the old time Maoists, wears the same outfit almost all the time?
6
Now we know why countries China blocks Facebook, Google, and Twitter.
4
Zuckerberg is loathesome, and his invention is a mindless time suck. Who wants to see pictures of someone's dinner, for heaven's sake, and the narcissism of posting kids photos endlessly is surely contributing to the vanity and puerility of our culture. It may be a stretch though, to blame Russian bots for our current political predicament. All of the candidates had these resources, and some of them used them effectively. No bots can vote - yet. Our true problem lies within ourselves- how apathetic our electorate can be, how our elections fail to motivate responsibility for our choices. If the last election cycle did not have AI factored in, would the results have been different? Suppose only television, radio, and print ads were available -Trump would have still taken the EC and Clinton the popular vote. Racism, sexism, voter suppression of minorities, odious propaganda and indifference- these are the enemies of our republic.
10
I guess you are starting the GOP paranoia campaign against Zuckerberg. With the judgement that you have showed in past elections all I can say is ZUCK 2020!!!
2
Marcus Aurelius. Good. Caligula. Bad. Elon Musk. Prescient. Smart. Zuckerberg. Dangerous. A little knowledge and too much power.
5
Mark Zuckerberg is no longer an Atheist? Is his god Artificial?
Domo Arigato, Mr. Robato
3
Zuckerberg is touring the country because he wants to run for President?
Oh, I though he was doing it to make us think he's human, rather than a Cyborg.
2
Why Women and Blacks as targets specifically, Maureen?
Very strange statement to my thinking.
Had you just given up on White males, and were counting on Women and Blacks to hold the line?
2
You used your platform to vilify Hillary Clinton almost every week. Who needs the Russians.
10
Another issue is when people think that opinions being shared suddenly becomes fake news
1
NYT - next how about a column on Mr. Dorsey & Twitter's role in enabling the President. He has clearly violated their terms on numerous occasions - time for them to pull the plug.
5
Yup, that's what we need. Another one-dimensional tone-deaf dude in the White house. Eight years of Barack "the fraud" Obama should have taught the country a lesson.
5
The Lords of software are thoughtless kids. There are not many that deserve kudos for their morals. They are in the President's League.
I recommend that Maureen Dowd add a foot image to her columns that we might tap as a 'kick' to the rears of the thoughtless kids and their hero Boy Trump.
3
Why do you need facebook except to waste a lot of time and hook up with people you knew when you were 8?
8
Priceless!!!!
1
Anyone identifying as liberal should immediately shut down their facebook and twitter accounts.
2
One of the gest pieces Maureen has written in years.
Relevant, clever, and low on snark. Well done. Keep this up!
4
Fit's laughable to see The Times or any other news outlet of today's bearing referring to Facebook and Twitter as "engines of deception and propaganda."
5
"Zuckerberg for President" -- Truly terrifying. I assume his running mate will be NYTimes favorite Sheryl Sandberg. [Zucker-Sand-berg for President? Somehow I don't see this working.]
The irony of Musk and his deadly self-driving cars calling AI evil. The technologists are at war, and we just keep giving them free reign. I'm a bit surprised that Ms. Dowd didn't point this out.
Apple put a camera on a phone made a gazillion bucks. If they could only put a phone in a shoe...??? That would be progress.
3
I had a facebook account for a year. But after realizing that it was a place for nerds to whine and discuss conquests, I tried to remove myself and I discovered it was hard to kill the beast. Mark would not let me go.
Now the small fingered billionaire is getting his comeuppance. Better sell those stocks before they are worthless, folks. The magic of the marketplace strikes back!
2
"But all the while, the company was piling up the rubles and turning a blind eye as the Kremlin’s cyber hit men weaponized anti-Hillary bots on Facebook to sway the U.S. election".
Maureen Dowd furthers the lie that the Russians 'swayed the US election'. There is no evidence whatsoever that any Trump supporter was duped by the Russians into voting for Trump. None.
It is a leftist fantasy through and through.
3
My friends see all of my posts on FB except for my NYT articles that I share on my timeline. Why does FB screen these out?
1
Well, this column is sort of gossipy, reflecting "uber-competition" encouraged by the capitalist agenda over the trifling notion that some entity is going to rule the world, and, also over the macabre notion that AI machines are going to dictate nuclear weapons policy. Honest conjecture differs from gossip in that those who engage in the latter seek to make reality out of hearsay, while honest conjecture seeks to discover it. Cambridge Analytica's supposed involvement in the election seems more likely to be a smokescreen to obscure the involvement of Mercer's yuppie quants from his investment firms in this now ever-growing more trivial matter, that of the Trump presidency. That's the private sector; whilst on the other side of laissez faire, the government side, the poor ex-FBI director and his team are chasing a chimera, likely created for a similar purpose, to obscure the same thing. One thing about it, though, people in both sectors love money so much that, as Marshal Kim Jong-Un intimates what comes out of their mouths is always directed towards the idea of concentration of capital. Remember, their seem to be three ways of making money--work, war and scandal. So it is with the Capitalist imperium. Scary, you say? Bah, more propaganda from all sides.
2
Mark Zuckerberg for President in 20/20. At least there won't be need of door-to-door campaigning, stellar insulting shouting matches and most important, we won't need Russia as a hacker or financier of our elections. There would be no campaign contributions needed ( he has plenty of his own, thank you! ) and therefore he cannot be swayed by vested interests. And most important, he has plenty of grey matter ( pun intended ). And the whole country gets to chat with one another pouring out their hearts, sufferings and needs. For $10 a pop we will get real value for our money. As for hacking - it will not see the light of day. Zuckerberg a real value for our money!
1
Maybe what really irks you is that Facebook (with our with Russia) turned out to more influential and persuasive in the outcome of the presidential election than the NY Times. Maybe it isn't Hillary who, in the end, is not he real sore loser.
3
Well, Maureen doesn't spend time on the "evolution" of FB.....but I think that's important. ....central even to the discussion. FB was conceived as a simple tech/social media platform "by college students for college students" to "connect"......no grand vision there......
Who turned FB into the grand platform it is today?......The boomer parents of those college students......right!....my generation. Why? As already stated by another commentor, the (American) "narcissism and willfull ignorance." Point in fact:
Remember those ADULTS who so proudly posted their every personal detail, including their wonderful vacay dates on FB......then returned home to empty homes.....just shocked.....shocked....that they'd been robbed during their "magnificent travel to foreign islands in the sun.....blah....blah....blah?"
smh then and now.....seriously.....this is how our current society connects/communicates????.....Maureen's points may be well taken BUT......there is a huge, huge "societal" issue lurking in the background....
2
Dowd wrote, "Hillary is right...."
No sarcasm or snark followed.
A miracle has occurred.
It is much too early to make a formal application to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints.
6
I rarely agree with you, Maureen. On this issue, I do. I believe this pseudo-intellectual oppportunist is a bit complicit and a little too sanctimonious for my liking. His video reflects the type of response a young man wouild have when his mother walks in on him in the bathroom causing hair to grow on his palms.
4
I saw the words “Hillary was right” in a Maureen Dowd column and knew the world had turned upside down.
8
We don't need Mark Zuckerberg's artificial intelligence in the White House.
That's exactly what we have now.
4
I've seen no recent evidence of any kind of intelligence in the White House.
7
Facebook's business model is binary: life reduced to the subjective "I" that "likes." That's actually a more radical intervention into human culture than it may appear at first glance. They make money by aggregating affinity groups (without moral distinctions, like Werner Von Braun, in the song by Tom Lehrer). The result? Try making critical remarks on Trumps Facebook's page. Like me you might get responses from the Alt Right, blaming everything on "the dirty lying mouths of the Jews." I sent that one to Facebook's thought police, who replied that it didn't violate their "community standards." But my reply to a Trump supporter's racism that their moral code was "evil" was enough to get my account blocked for one month. In a binary world, Trump's blame "on many sides" is the route to profits. It's also the normalization of evil. There is no pleasant community standard to dialogue with Nazis. One should be able to call evil by its name. Zuckerberg's invention needs to be taken away from the child. P.S. Like surely thousands of others, I started to realize long ago that many of the memes repeated by Trump supporters were coming from dummy profiles. (It's amazing how many uneducated folks seem to think they know everything about George Soros', whose philanthropic and progressive largesse has become the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" for the Alt-Right.) Let’s hope the FBI and Congress will do their jobs. Regulation now. Regulation Forever.
3
I hope people turn away from Fakebook in droves or, like me, never join in the first place.
4
You already have a Caligula in the White House. That Zuckerberg is a person to avoid fastidiously should be evident from the story about how he started Facebook in the first place. Why not avoid his products as well?!
4
Hmmm, in the photo Zuckerberg does look like the young Octavian.
1
If Hillary's pollsters do to Zuckerberg what they did to the genius we ran against the Donald, he will become the smallest, most unimportant rich man in the US. That's hard to achieve, but Zuckerberg already starts out as a dwindling midget in ethics, brains and decency. Are we sure Donald's son-in-law isn't working for Mark and his nasty-face?
2
Virtually the only answer to the effect of social media on our democracy is to educate the public, from kindergarten to baccalaureate, in the need to think critically.
There should be only one degree offered by universities and that is a degree in the liberal arts. We have let our kids down by not educating "the whole man" as they used to say when I was a kid. Anything more should be post-grad.
There is so much more to life than algorithms and Breitbart.
2
Pull the plug. Return to Nature. Return to Your nature. Pornography exists in many forms and all iterations exploit both subject and participant. Politics has become a form of shameless exhibitionism, live and naked on TV. You are what you watch and click on, nothing more. You are the counted, the binary beings. You only matter when Amazon makes another sale, or Facebook melds you into it's dystopia.
2
Rather than cancel my Facebook account, I've started posting relevant articles from the NYTimes so that my Facebook friends and families have some "alternative" news sources to supplement their Facebook "news."
3
I recently asked classes of college freshmen if they are on Facebook, and fewer than half are. Those who aren't responded with the pity and disdain that this cohort are so fluent in, saying that it's for old people now. Not time to sell your stock, maybe, but certainly not time to buy.
51
The times is correct, as usual.
I can recall before the election checking out my Facebook feed, and in between FB posts of cats-playing-piano and my friends hamburger recipe, was a Russian Putin ad, telling me to vote for trump. I was instantly hypnotized -- cast under a spell, turned into a zombie if you will. And I found myself on election day casting my vote for trump, because the advertisement told me to. /Sarcasm.
The writer of this article is basically calling people stupid that they don't have their own brains, and two, that advertising is so powerful, it can control who people vote for. Really?
1
People are certainly swayed by advertising. Billions of dollars are spent by corporations and others yearly because that's so. People are also motivated to act by advertising when they would not have done so otherwise. And we don't consider ourselves stupid for it , but informed. That said, your assertion that people aren't stupid also needs some rethinking, given our current situation.
3
Wellllll, pretty scary for sure, but as long as he uses Hillary's pollster he probably won't get to far!!!
1
I used Facebook and I will tell you the pro Hillary advertising was 3-4 times greater than the Trump Ads. He didn't win the election because of Facebook he won inspite of Facebook. He won because Hillary believed the fake polls and didn't go to Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania! He outworked her and tapped into a disgust of the swamp. Zuckerberg is scary too.
5
Let me get my my news from fb. ok.
Ms. Dowd, while technologically more advanced, is Facebook spreading fake news any different than TV channels, newspapers, or magazines doing it? As a columnist at NY Times, what is your recommendation to solve the fake news problem?
We have truth in advertising regulations. Why not truth in news reporting? Why is Fox News for example allowed to promote known falsehoods without consequence? "Opinion" pieces that incorporate inaccurate info - Rush Limbaugh? Why is it allowed? If you are using the airwaves or the internet to knowingly spread false information - there should be a consequence. It's one thing for Joe Blow to unknowingly spread misinformation - but when Joe Blow links to a "news" source that appears credible - that's the problem. There needs to be real consequences to spreading/posting false hoods. I'm not buying the slippery slope argument either. We've got to start somewhere. I like that many European countries make it a crime to deny the holocaust. "Fake" news is destructive and should be criminalized. Force due diligence, credible sourcing, etc...
2
The very first thing under this article is a plea to follow Dowd on Facebook. You can't make this stuff up!
1
Love me love me I am a liberal. media CEOs say, but selling out USA means you are something else!?
How do we know if the comments here were written by people or robots?
How about Elon Musk for president?
1
Dowd fears a Zuckerberg run but lauded Trump's. Wow.
1
Gott in Himmel. From a 70-year old dotard to a 33-year young idiot savant in the White House. I would be forced to move to a 3rd-world country with no internet should this come to pass.
Facebook has never been the least bit attractive to me, but the possibility, even remote perhaps, of having Zuckerberg occupying the Oval, or attaining a governorship, or having some other governmental position of authority is just plain scary. The nature and amount of mass social manipulation would be unimaginable.
3
"The thought of Mark Zuckerberg running for president was always sort of scary"
Too bad Maureen you didn't think this about Donald Trump.
I hope you at least can devote the rest of your life in trying to understand what motivated you to vote for Trump while visciously attacking Hillary.
Until you realize the magnitude of what you did everything you now say has no meaning.
Please report back to us when you decide to confront this.
2
I didn't vote for Trump because Maureen told me to, and I did not not vote for Hillary because of Russians on Facebook telling me what to do.
Maybe "the walking dead" should be recast as "the attack of the killer Zuckerbergs"
2
There's an easy solution.
Quit Facebook.
Your life will go on, at least until
Trump starts his war with NK.
3
Wow. Something else to worry about. And the answer is? Alexa, any thoughts?
He shall be known as American Emperor Mark II.
1
One of many truly awful things to come out of the 2016 election is that it convinced every kook in America with big money that he has what it takes to be President.
2
Why not ?
Could he be worse than " Dotard " Donald J. Trump ?
At this time I welcome Mike Pence`s Presidency, he will never go out to dine with you Ms. Dowd but he will not threaten to blow up a whole Country with children.
Pence with his dull eyes will be easy to beat , but that is not the topic.
Zuckerberg is corrupt as it seems but he has an Asian wife as opposed to a Russian one who obviously has no voice of her own but Zuckerberg`s wife hopefully have some and will be able to put her foot down unless she is as greedy as him.
At this point anybody but Donald J. Trump unless the Hawk Bobby Mueller descend on him first.
2
A globalist with unlimited resources to buy anyone or anything.
1
Oh my god. Another not so sure you are an honest person seeking the white house? How big can I write EGO at the expenses of the citizens?
1
"Numb" America, unlock your front door and share, and like, be social.
Don't worry, be happy, keep humming the happy tune until, what, my data has been hacked, oh no, here look at the new photo of my grand daughter.
1
I was a college student during Watergate. I hated Nixon. He covered up a burglary attempt at the democrat party headquarters (he did not authorize) and was impeached. and resigned.
Obama's team, spied on the republican party chairman (and likely others)using the FBI and FISA court(probably NSA too). Illegally unmasked and leaking hundreds of names through FISA warrants. It wouldn't take much imagination to understand what this information was used for. Yet no outrage? Oh I forgot this is the Republican party that has been cheated. If reversed then there would be the outrage.
This is a 100 times worse than Watergate. What are we, a banana republic?
Here's a simple solution: Boycott Facebook.
3
Are we supposed to be afraid of AI or President Zuckerberg?
I am not a regular facebook-er, but Zuckerberg is not some dangerous politican for me because he lacks the people skills to win elections. Think Donald Trump or Judge Roy Moore and you will see what I mean.
Zuckerberg's threat to us is our greed and naivete. We think Facebook (or Apple or Google or Amazon or Microsoft) has to be always right since the market values them in the multi-billions and they continue to make profits.
Facebook, Google and other ad providers should have been regulated by the same rules that are applied to newspapers, radio and television. They are just another form of media, end of story. The whole "this time it is different" thesis needs to be discarded for the hype that it is.
If these guys had been regulated they would have teams looking into who is advertising, what they are claiming and whom they are targeting and they would have to be quite stupid or treacherous to go along with it at that point.
I give them the benefit of doubt on treason for a rational reason - atheist or not Mr. Zuckerberg is Jewish (like Obama said about his blackness, watch me hail a cab and tell me I am not black, it is not what the nice people know or think it is what the haters know and think that affects the issue here, and they know he is Jewish.) So is Ms. Sandberg. It is impossible to consider they were aware of the help Facebook's algos were providing for Jew-haters.
So I will stick to fearing AI.
1
Mark Zuckerberg is an unusual person who is less connected to the regular person than the typical 1%-er. His whole life is unique and atypical, yet he wages immense influence because of his wealth. His ideas on education reflect his uniqueness and are unsuited for the mainstream "typical" person. His inability to see the threats of AI is directly attributable to his independent and unique world-view. Mr. Zuckerberg needs to remember: THE ROAD TO HELL IS PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS.
2
The newest social disease - "TMD" - Too Much Data. It was inevitable, anything a person builds can and will be used as weapon. That's what the history of man has taught me.
1
just take a look at zuckerberg's picture..... he's 33. he's not all that different from any other modern 33 year old guy..... he's clueless. he created a massive money machine. he wants to be left alone now to enjoy his billions. his job, as he sees/saw it is over. unintended uses of his machine? details like russians hacking? human traffickers abusing? muslims being tracked down and killed? go tell it to the algorithm.
2
Democracy has always been a tenuous political model, and FB highlights its many flaws. The problem, of course, is that the technology that enables FB is only going to become more pervasive, not less, and efforts to regulate it will only empower the regulators. It's long past time for political philosophers to consider where we go from here.
5
I've no question that thousands of ptopoganda articles were shared on Facebook during the '16 election cycle and I'm sure some were from outside agitators intend on doing harm to the American electoral process. However, as a social worker that swims upstream with mostly liberal Democrats in Detroit my experience wasn't the Hillary bashing news articles but the news articles from RT, DemocracyNOW!, MoveOn.org and others which my friends shared with great fanfare and that, in many cases, I would read. At first my response was, "WOW, Mr. Trump said that!" but upon further review I discovered many of them were, if not outright lies, bent the truth in a grotesque manner. My point is that while Facebook needs to be honest and admit these things occurred (which it seems they have), we also need to be honest and admit there was a great deal of "propoganda" coming from folks left of center also. In Michigan, from the folks I know that have admitted they voted for DJT, they simply wanted someone that wasn't a political insider and yes some of them liked the bravado of DJT. Truth is he won and we should now move forward. Examine what happen, why it occurred and what to do in the future.
3
Facebook is built on the idea that everyone using the product is a known, and has a verified identity. Clearly that was not the case with the fake Russian accounts. We need to be careful that we don't give free speech rights to hidden foreign entities that want to manipulate us, or worse, do us harm. I don't have a Facebook account, and I am often unable to see links that people send to me. Perhaps I should make a fake Facebook account too, so I can see the content that is is shared to all Facebook user's.
6
FB is an evil that contributes to the cacophony of useless and misleading information on the internet. FB, together with Google, and many other sites on the web need more critical attention from the public.
I stand with Musk on the potential for evil of A.I. and the internet. I also believe there is potential for good, but guided by greedy business interests, I'm just not seeing it.
4
What began as an enjoyable and truly social enterprise during the digital age is now threatening to implode upon itself. And I feel Zuckerberg himself has been the catalyst for this new reality of a corruption of sorts. His hubris, newly found power through wealth and recognition has contaminated this brilliant mind. He may laud the rights of freedom of the press and of speech as we all do, but like anything else re communication - from the media to diplomacy - there must be discernment and boundaries. MZ certainly had the means to regulate better from where and from whom his creation was used....in this case exploited. Who knows why he let things get out of control. I would conjecture that this young man perhaps attained too much too soon. He skipped over that phase in life when all of us realize we are not omnipotent or omniscient. Whether he "likes" to hear this or not, many of us feel that he has done us a great injustice; and he should not be let off so easily. Perhaps, this latest revelation re our 2016 election will motivate him toward humility and maturity, both of which he seems to lack right now.
5
Thank you for your commentary, Ms. Dowd.
I have had this nagging question since the Women's March why Ms. Sandberg who is universally thought of as a leading voice for many women, did not show up or participate in any of them. Now we know why. It would have been completely hypocritical. The senior management has known all along the part they have played. They have been less than honest, transparent and in total denial about it and at the same time making billions off of us every day. Shame on all of them. I agree with many of your readers, it is time to break up with Mr. Zuckerberg.
With regard to his totally transparent political ambitions, let's not forget the origin of his 'visionary' platform. It was to rate women on their 'hotness'; sounds Trumpesque to me. I have always believed that even if only 20 percent of the film 'The Social Network' was true, he is far from honest, lacks integrity and was just lucky or sneaky at a specific point in time.
I hope America has learned its lesson: money does not equal brains.
10
I am reminded of the movie "The Social Network." Facebook was, from the start, based on a ethically questionable premise, and fight for control showed questionable morality. Now its hackable AI features place it somewhere between 1984's Newspeak and Brave New World's soma. It has become Zuckerberg's monster, but unlike Victor, he struggles to see the monster he's created.
Interesting that Musk and Sandberg have the distance to see Facebook's flaws more clearly. We need a task force including moral philosophers, social psychologists, lawyers, government security and the tech industry to be watchdogs and regulate the AI they build and implement with an eye towards our greater good. Otherwise, the next wars will be fought via technology, while the unsuspecting and ill-informed are unaware of creeping mind control. (In this case, a dose of Bloombergian paternalism, but like posting calories, may be no bad thing.)
I saw another comment suggest a boycott of FaceBook. Given the addictive nature of social media, that seems near impossible. The only real option, I fear, is to pull the plug. As Puerto Rico, without power, looks towards rebuilding, I wonder if any of its citizens consider FaceBook a top priority for future survival.
6
The ugliness of Facebook is not that credulous people use it and become swayed by fiction, they do that watching Faux Noise or picking up a tabloid at the supermarket checkout. It's the thing itself. Anyone who is minimally educated in web design and function shakes their head at the tangled morass of CPU draining entanglement it offers. You'd be failed in any web design course for coming up with their blind maze full of leg-hold traps, deceptive control structures, and visually confusion. It brings to mind the "help" pages for Ebay, once you get in, you neither ever find what you need, or get out.
6
This is what you get when 20-30 year old "optimists" run "disruptive" companies and the grown ups who should know better fail to reign them in because the gravy train is just too enticing.
6
The real news is that the French secret service and intelligence service are better than America's! The French run their 6 week election better than America. The French are more democratic than America. And Barack Obama was totally outsmarted by Putin. Our intelligence told Obama about the Russian manipulation of the election and Obama chose "to take the high road" rather than to actually do any thing about it - such as at least telling the American public - his constituents - about it when he first learned about it. Obama made some really bad decisions at really critical junctures in our history. He was gracious, civil, respected the Constitution, but afraid of transparency. He sold us short. I voted for him both times. He let us down.
5
No. He tried to wake us up. We failed.
1
This piece contained this sentence: On Thursday, touring the Moscow tech firm Yandex, Putin asked the company’s chief how long it would be before superintelligent robots “eat us.”
I had never heard of Yandex until about a week ago. That's when I received an email purporting to be from an old friend who had had her passport and funds stolen while traveling in a foreign country and now needed $1950 to get back to the States. I figured it was a scam and didn't send money, and I then noticed that although the email purported to have been sent from "[email protected]" it instructed me to reply to "[email protected]"
Now I'm wondering why there's a yandex.com -- shouldn't it be yandex.ru?
I sure hope Robert Mueller and his folks get to the bottom of this. How long have our foreign enemies been acquiring U.S. domain names? We already know that millions of voters believe what they read in National Enquirer, so it shouldn't surprise us that they'll believe what they see and read online.
Then maybe someone can try to figure out how to accommodate the garbage press and phony online sites without infringing on the First Amendment. Good luck. Individuals can boycott Facebook, or the National Enquirer, but the First Amendment will continue to allow them to exist. Ultimately, we have to count on individuals to be educated.
6
And ultimately this is why journalism and facts matter, from reliable, credible reporters and media outlets. Too bad so many people get their "news" from FB.
6
It is so reassuring when Ms. Dowd, reclaims what she does best. Sober, careful analysis of a subject which is quite vast and breaks it down for us plebians to get a sense of.
Elon Musk is indeed right in calling out AI as a potential threat, and Putis' wondering when AI will eat us at least in his case is something funny,I would pay to watch. Sheryl Sandburgs acknowledgment that jew hating, burning, etc, "hey, that is on us" is a sacharine response to something which should express real remorse n committment to see that there are real safeguards in place for anything which promotes hate and lies. Something which frighteningly has been pounded into us day after day to the extent that now, it is not so much that I can't distuingish right from wrong, its that I have that disturbing feeling of being numbed mentally and not caring all the that much. The luginpress, Hilters similar battle with the press, is a sign that DT is following a pattern. he is salivating at the potential loss of free press, non violent protest, nuclear war in which he flippantly mentions kills 25 miillion .Is this not the most heinous thing ever said on the floor of the general assembly? Meanwhile Puerto Rico has no power and no on the ground (from dc) transport planes getting supplies there as quickly as possible . Hopefully the generals have a big straitjacket hidden in the wh if needed if NK rhetoric gets too crazy.
3
Yay Maureen! The perfect voice for a piece that I've been wishing someone would write for some time now. Ugh what a quandary, I want to make sure my friends see it...
4
"Open the pod-bay door, HAL."
6
is it crazy to want a President of the United States to not be a college drop out?
6
@ Bob, Los Angeles "is it crazy to want a President of the United Sates to not be a college drop out?"
Too late.
1
You do not use Facebook , Facebook uses you.
11
Mark Zuckerberg is a very smart, focused man, and like many very smart people he knows what’s best for himself, and thinks he knows what’s best for the world at large, with ‘large’ being defined in his own terms.
Vladimir Putin is a very smart, focused man, and like many ……….
Looks like Zuckerberg finally figured out that he got jobbed by the master.
5
Zuck "scary"? You bet! What'll you say when Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson runs for President?
3
Trump isn't presidential material and neither is Zuckerberg. Time to re-read "It Can't Happen Here" and "The Circle."
6
Well, what did Zuckerberg know, and when did he know it? (I doubt he's as oblivious as he's letting on. The Russians bought thousands of ads, and you never knew the possibility was there????)
3
"no longer an atheist"?!
That's like forgetting how to ride a bicycle.
2
Thanks, Ms Dowd. Facebook, Twitter & c. are for lemmings--but the lemmings themselves will never admit it.
4
Friends don't let friends use Facebook.
9
My guess the reason why Facebook fake news had less effect in France than the US is because French voters are smarter than US voters.
11
The owner of a mega corporation that makes its living storing and sharing personal information... Who needs to worry about what the government knows if someone like Zuckerberg knows even more, including your personal preferences and associations? Ya'll ain't seen intrusion yet. As for Russia, please give it a rest already.
1
Why? Trump would like that no doubt. But trying , or succeeding in, stealing an American presidential election for a plant serving foreign interests is a possibility we must urgently investigate.
4
fb would be better without any second party content, with the exception of posts shared among friends, and with these posts monitored for fakes and hate speech.
1
All of the Silicon Valley stuff fascinates me, but I really don't trust those who lead there any farther than I can s...!
2
I must confess that I do not do Facebook, I suppose that I am "too old" to be comfortable with it. I also still do not understand exactly how Russian hackers manipulated the election for Trump. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote did she not? Was the Russian hacking sophisticated enough to target just specific voters in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin? I am a 56 yr old female college graduate from the suburbs of Philadelphia and I personally did not vote for either major party candidate because they were both so distasteful to me; however, I admit that I assumed a Hillary victory based on what I read on the front page of the online NYT every day " Hillary will win by 80%". Does that mean that the NYT has become a looming threat to democracy?
A "1 Hacker Way" traditional treat: two scoops of cagey unawareness doused with today's Eureka! topping and sprinkles of tomorrow's "do better".
It was one thing to read the NYT Editorial Board's suggestion to take Zuckerberg's "We got this" frozen custard to a non-partisan expert panel and answer "Is this really fat free?"
But Ms Dowd's alert of Mark Z's next coming as social-inventer-turned-populist is truly more frightening than Putin's genius-bots acquiring a taste for human flesh. But, admittedly less frightening than Trump 2020.
2
It seems to me that Mark Zuckerburg lacks the necessary experience for the job of US President. He should consider spending a few years in reality TV.
3
I have never subscribed to Facebook or Twitter. The mess that Dowd describes is exactly why
3
~”Some lawmakers suspect that the Russians had help in figuring out which women and blacks to target in precincts in Wisconsin and Michigan.”~
Thank you. Finally someone has identified the link that no-one has seems to want to talk about. If one provides a voter list to the Russians and that voter list is of “likely” voters to sway; or the list happens to be a voter list of one’s opponent that was hacked, then it is more than the “Russians” trying to influence the election: it is collusion.
The “fake” “election integrity commission” set up by trump is seeking voter information from all 50 states. All one needs to do is to make sure that information is less than secure and the next thing you know the Russian Bots will be winning another election.
If that happens then you won’t have the Russian Foreign Minister doing a victory lap around the Oval Office; rather, it will be Putin himself.
4
NYT acts as if William Randolph Hearst never existed or ever did what he did long ago, and what continues to be done today. Perhaps they simply don't like the competition.
1
Alleged russian ads totalled one hundred thousand dollars .FB advertising is in the billions .All of the media supported Hillary .This is lunacy .And no zuckerberg has better things to do than have the headaches of the presidency .Get over the election , hillary lost in 2016 and will lose in 2020.
And, how did all of this trick Hillary into not campaigning in those "blue-wall" states?
A squirrel, you say? Oh where?
3
Take warning from the Krell. FB will unleash the monsters from our id!
1
Facebook censors radical feminists and black conservatives, while allowing the behavior you mention. I don't understand who is in charge there, but whoever it is either has to let everyone use the service, or has to post a set of rules and enforce them.
2
So Zuck is no longer an atheist. Zowee, whizbang. Aside from the obvious qualifier for public office, what are the details on that conversion? Which theism hath he adopted? Mammon, for sure, is in his pantheon, and that rules out the Hebraic God. There is Khaos, "The nothingness that all else sprung from," sort of like Facebook. Which persuasive cleric do you supposed get the credit for turning Zuckerberg to the ?-side?,
2
Facebook I only use so I can access the comments section of news sites like the New York Times :) Seems Maureen that your ship of employment has joined the Facebook convoy. Twitter I never use. Zuckerberg is simply a business guy providing a service - and it seems we have a lot of very lonely people in this world who have to socialize online because they don't socialize very well otherwise. A creepy guy or girl can pretend to be something they are not - in fact everyone can be someone they are not - kind of like commentating journalists.
1
And the irony and cynicism of this story is that to post a comment we can do it either signing in or recommending the article using Facebook or twitter. Long live the king!
2
Can we just talk about the unusual Hillary Clinton references IN today's column for a second?
First, Dowd said "Hillary was right..." in the beginning of the column. Could it be that the proof of Russian election interference, combined with Trump taunting North Korea toward nuclear war, is helping Dowd finally see her arch nemesis - the QUALIFIED candidate she made fun of during the entire campaign - in a more positive light?
That said, Dowd's second Hillary reference, about Zuckerberg hiring Hillary's pollster - is HYSTERICAL. Who would want to hire the most inaccurate presidential campaign pollster alive today??!!
2
In the days following the Charlottesville terrorist killing of a pedestrian, I searched online and on Facebook for KKK, White Supremacist, and Neo-Nazi groups. Shortly thereafter and now at a maddening pace, my Facebook "Suggested Groups" were overwhelmed by gun fetish groups, long rifle groups, AK-47 groups, Glock groups, and so on ad nauseum. I reported these groups to FB as harassing me. The FB response was consistent: They review the group's posted content and remove what is necessary.
Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook business model, and they behind the scenes algorithms used to target likely gun fetish and potential terrorists all indicate that should Donald Trump not run in 2020, Good Ole' Mark is their to continue the Trump nightmare.
2
Which is scarier, an irresponsible narcissist billionaire president who compulsively exposes his darkest thoughts on Twitter, or an irresponsible narcissist billionaire president who knows how to talk in platitudes?
3
Just stop visiting the site. It's really easy.
5
"...to direct their pitches to the news feeds of almost 2,300 people.who..."
How many does MSNBC, Fox, HLN, CNN, CBS, ABC and NBC, and GMA reach?
It's not even Halloween and Zuckerthing is putting the scare in all of us, sans even a BOO!
3
I lead a non Facebook life and it is good.
5
FACEBOOK, TWITTER....ETC.... easy tools for sick,manipulative minds....like shooting fish in a barrel. READY, AIM, FIRE. Trump can fire away indiscriminately, at anyone, with no repercussions. Free speech is one thing.
Assassination is another. Trump needs to be held accountable.
2
Isn't there some pretty island that our tech billionaire class can buy and turn into their idea of paradise, where they can demonstrate to the rest of us dullards how a perfect world should work? They are all brimming with flashing, beeping, tech-driven recipes for utopia, yet they depend upon us suckers to be their beta-testers, come what may. Mass unemployment, declining wages, social isolation, universal vapidity and an omniscient surveillance state are the most likely side effects of their current protocol.
I'd bet that after a couple of months at Club Tech, Zuckerberg, Bloomberg, Thiel, Gates and the other Olympians would have to be pried apart, in the gutter, from a drunken brawl.
3
Don't forget the legions of fake followers the Clinton campaign had online.
My dislike and disrespect for Hillary goes back 30 years and my Trump vote was solidly affixed even in 2012. FB IS Fake News personified. . FB IS the Deep State. FB IS the CIA. Everything on FB was designed to elect Hillary, not Trump. Mark Facelberg is the MOST dangerous man (who sounds like a pre-pubescent girl) in America with Fake Russian ads attempting to upend a mostly free election by We The People. These globalists will go to any ends, and use any means, in pursuit of their worldwide domination and de-population plans.
We should all be wary of the power of the GAFA and AI. But as Patrick Moynihan famously argued: “You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.”
Ms Dowd, the agency in charge of cybersecurity in France said there was NO evidence that Russia had hacked the computers of Macron's party. No evidence. As far as the US is concerned the jury is still out (not to say that Russia does not spy but their capabilities are a fraction of the NSA's). Read an intelligence specialist: https://consortiumnews.com/2017/09/20/more-holes-in-russia-gate-narrative/
Saddam Hussein was a thug (long supported by the US & the West) but he did not have WMDs. Russia spies but did not swing the US election (even if all the allegations are accurate it's still peanuts compared to what the US does). Sadly the NY Times is caught in a bubble and cannot separate fact form best-selling fiction.
Facebook and Zuckerberg are dangerous (the anti-Semitic stuff is horrifying) but even in a well-written smart piece you need to check your facts and not to confuse allegations with facts. In this regard it's rather significant & sad that Plouffe works for Zuckerberg.
1
I just thank God for new Progressive Op-Ed columnists like Michele Goldberg to stem the tide of fake news. It was kind of funny to read a retraction longer than the review that was being retracted. p.s., All of the stories about Ms. Goldberg refer to her as a "Progressive". Is that a 'Dog Whistle' for someone who wants to revive eugenics?
So Facebook is really Fakebook.
Anyone really believe there are "only" 3000 ads? There's no way to verify that or anything else Facebook claims, beginning with what it just turned over to Congressional investigators because of negative publicity.
Keep in mind that these are the same slick operators who awhile back were caught generating false "likes" for businesses that run their websites and marketing campaigns on Facebook. Zuckerberg collected a bonus fee for every like, whether real or fake.
Helping grease the skids that Trump rode into the White House is tantamount to treason. Directly profiting from it is unconscionable. But unconscionable and treason at Facebook are anagrams for opportunity and profit.
The same way Trump used The Apprentice to reinvent himself, imagine the advantage Zuckerberg has with all the deep data he's amassed at Facebook. In the same way he taught his clients how to micro-target white supremacists and nazis with anti-Semitic and racist messages, he can micro-target every voter on Facebook with a customized, personal appeal based on Facebook's big data. Instead of a reality TV celebrity as President, we'll have Big Brother instead.
Now I get why Zuckerberg is so eager to wire the rest of the world to the web with his satellite network. His business isn't advertising or marketing. It's colonizing entire continents and subverting the sovereignty of nations.
Taking down America was just practice.
3
Stop using Facebook. It's a basically a great pile of garbage.
4
Shut down your Facebook accounts, get off Instagram, etc. The world orbited the sun every day without any of these "social" constructs. You will still count, you will still exist without them. Don't sell your information and identity down-the-river. Zuckerberg is a dishonest, untrustworthy power-monger who trades in information and misinformation. His baby-faced countenance is misleading.
4
Did anyone see the last season of Homeland?It's all there re targeting specific demographics with fake news bots in order to sway public opinion.
In the show it was a rogue CIA chief doing it through a Breitbart like group. In reality it was the Russians doing it through Facebook with American help on the targeting of the lucky Facebook users who were to be disinformed.
Americans who help Russia through Facebook have committed treason, which as of this writing, is still a crime.
2
'Bot-man' Zuckerberg will be destroyed by Trump in any debate so hopefully the Democrats will make yet another mistake and nominate him.
1
Zuckerberg owes America an apology. He colluded with the Russians for cold hard cash to smear Mrs. Clinton. Shame on him.
4
not so scary
Zuckerberg = Marcus Aurelius
Donald Trump wants his picture on the Bitcoin!
Zuckerberg and Sandberg have made a lot of money looking the other way while Facebook was used by Russia's Putin surrogates, hate groups, media manipulators and other unsavory characters. Dick Costolo and Jack Dorsey and their Twitter team are in the same boat.
They remind me of like the scientist who helps develop a nuclear bomb and then expresses shock and dismay that some politician or despot actually wants to use it.
4
The danger isn't the product, AI. It's who creating the product, private Corporations.
Believe it or not, I would feel better if the US government were the developer rather than a profit driven entity like Facebook. I have been trained, by real events, to not trust Corporations to do the right thing. Think GM and Volkswagen. Think credit card companies and banks. Think military industrial complex.
A Corporation will do whatever it wants if it will result in positive profits margins. They are not to be trusted.
6
I don't know - I like the idea of Zuckerberg running for office, maybe even President. Unlike Trump who inherited his wealth and proceeded to multiple bankruptcies before settling on reality TV and snake-oil salesman (bogus universities, steaks, the Presidency), Zuckerberg actually built something and knows about technology- more than tweeting that's as far as Trump goes.
He's young, he's smart. I imagine he'd be a Democrat. I'd like to hear more about and from him. We need young people to actually lead us through the 21st century rather than our current President who wants to bring us back to the 19th.
1
How much did Facebook pay you for that post? We don't need billionaire presidents. Ever.
3
I wonder whether American democracy was ever as great as we like to think it was. "The People" have always been manipulable. We've "supported" some truly awful things. (See the Burns documentary about the Vietnam War.) But whether it was or not, it is now clearly off the rails, and given what I see of us and the kinds of people that we elect, I doubt that it will ever get back on track. Certainly not in what's left of my lifetime.
3
Zuckerberg is scary. He started Facebook as a way to embarrass people under the guise of “community”. Anybody who uses it and is half conscious realizes the deceptive games it plays with you, changing algorithms randomly that alter settings, privacy and on and on. Its dna is to embarrass annoy and confuse. Zuckerberg is dangerous.
3
While Ms. Dowd quotes one "Facebooker" who asked, “Why did it take EIGHT MONTHS to get here?” the real question should be "Why did it take the Department of Homeland Security EIGHT months to notify 21 states that their elections had been hacked?"
Eight months, remind me once again how long Donald Trump has been in office, all the while denying that stories of Russian influence in the election was FAKE NEWS.
7
Ever been lied to and believed and acted on the lie? As American adults we probably all have. In advertising alone (Facebook & Google's main products are ads!) we are constantly battered by claims that are false or misleading. Amazon's "customer reviews" are filled with evidently false reviews which can be at least partly filtered by clicking the 'verified purchase' filter.
Mark Z has often shown what seems a blindly innocent naivety, as he did after the election, at the idea that his tech might be misused or be legally overreaching. But you do not build a $495B company in a few years by being naively stupid. He is smart & advised by very smart people.
If we have lack of empathy for Trump voters, it is because they were suckers played by a Music Man with his lies about Trouble in Every City. Mark Z and his super-tech pals studied the election process through proprietary analytics as it happened, also profiting from the ads true or false. Now he is shocked, shocked to learn that some false ads his engine targeted at vulnerable groups were from Russia.
Can his big analytics tell investigators which users clicked on those ads, how long they looked at them, posted them to how many friends, etc? Can we do the digital epidemiology of this kind of viral attack?
I have consulted in Big Data. I know we can! Will we? I would even bet that we can use it to get a really good estimate of how many votes were actually changed by this.
2
To think that a mere hundred thousand dollars in ad buying on FB ( 3,000 ads at an average cost of $30 an ad) did more harm to Hillary's campaign than her own close to billion dollars in campaign spending is to be hopped up on Kool-aid.
Ridiculous.
While the presidential campaign raged on, I was the subject of severe verbal harassment perpetrated by Russia American and Pro Israeli colleagues at work. I correctly guessed that Facebook and other media outlets overseas were in the mix and culprits. Where else would these men get such perverted ideas that were spewed forth in such juvenile rhetoric? I did research.
By the way I never revealed who I would vote for to any of them. As a contractor, I complained to the employment agency/out-sourcer. Bottom line, I never went back because I was verbally assaulted in a most egregious and vile way.
I now wonder what the "boys" think about their beliefs and behavior. Are they still proud and defiant, anti democracy, pro Russia and pro Israeli in the most negative ways? Some of us in day to day work environments were on to this.
I let people on FB know that I would seldom use it because I knew propaganda against our government was inherited from other technology "genes" of the abhorrent variety. I gave my example which truly harmed me. It was not pretty but sometimes the truth isn't. I was not protected, but I knew Mark Z. was. His eyes were covered with the scales of brilliance and affluence. If he could walk in my lab coat and try to treat patients as I did,
perhaps he could own up sooner rather than later. but now is the time.
Facebook and other social media are problems but they are relatively minor players in politics. The most devastatingly effective instrument in the great conspiracy by the privileged class to disinform americans about all things political is Fox News and its talk shows that pretend to present real news while pushing the republican agenda. In light of the republican effort to take health insurance from tens of millions of americans and hand out new tax cuts to the rich, it's obvious the republican agenda was developed by and for the privileged class themselves. Both Fox and Facebook are used by the Right to deceive people in vast numbers. It isn't surprising the Russians have done the same.
3
In his seminal work, In the Absence of the Sacred published in 1991, Jerry Mander (really his name) made prescient points about technology. Whenever a new technology is created, its inventors speak glowingly about all the wonderful things it will accomplish for humanity. But the very nature of the process and its enthusiasm obscures any examination of the possible downsides and unintended consequences. And all technologies have them. They are almost always discovered later, generally when it is much too late.
The internet has been a remarkable boon to modern life in so many ways. But the early promises about its ability to enlighten and communicate have fallen upon dark days driven by its equal ability to obfuscate, lie, propagandize and divide. "But I read it on the internet" has become today's mantra for ignorance.
3
In a nation where the average person cannot name our three branches of government, our real epidemic crisis is social media, Facebook, Twitter and the like, the 21st century opioid of the masses.
5
I don't Facebook. Never have, never will. Ditto all the other "social media" platforms and apps that crawl like maggots on the internet. As far as I've been able to determine, most users use these things to avoid social, face-to-face interaction. Seems this phenomenon has been misnamed.
Elon Musk is on target with his reservations and fears of A.I. Here is a man whose products are real, not ephemeral, digital pictures. Unlike our current president, Musk creates high paying jobs, not the minimum wage sheet changers and vacuum cleaner operators that keep Trump's real estate functioning. Musk shoots rockets into space, brings them back, fills them up and sends them off again. He makes clean cars that are so fast, if you stomp on the electron pedal (what we used to call the "gas pedal") and you wear a toupee`, inertia will leave your hair suspended in mid-air, Roadrunner cartoon style, while you are 1/4 mile down the road.
Now, I would seriously consider voting for Elon Musk for president. But we'll never get the opportunity. Constitutional problems, you know. Mark Zuckerberg? He'll finally be old enough, constitutionally, in 2020 to be president, but he won't be mature enough. From my perspective, he'll die of old age before he ever reaches that stage.
3
If Facebook swung our vote, then we have clearly elected the President we deserve.
1
“I had been the author of unalterable evils, and I lived in daily fear lest the monster whom I had created should perpetrate some new wickedness.”
Thank you, Mary Shelly, for your keen observation and morality tale, titled "Frankenstein: or The Modern Prometheus" published in 1818 during the romantic era, when love, emotion, and nature were celebrated in the arts. It was a reaction against the crassness and materialism of the Industrial Revolution that glorified machines, efficiency, and money, and increasingly disregarded craftsmanship and humanity.
Now we are in the technological revolution, and human being what we are, have gone too far once again, venerating our digital progress in the quest for money & power, while trampling all over responsibility, human needs, character, dignity, and civil society.
So like Dr. Frankenstein, Zuckerberg may have realized he flew too close to the sun, forgot or neglected to take responsibility for his "invention," and at least has expressed some remorse.
But we won't be seeing remorse expressed by President Trump, most of his cabinet, nor all those politicians willing to throw the Americans under the bus to please the mighty 1% & rig the system. Deny the people decent health care coverage, pollute the environment, trash education, and give us our tax cuts!
We can only hope this Age of Technology, Money, & Excess will soon give way to a new age of responsibility, accountability, and limits. It can't happen fast enough.
2
Looks like Facebook was leaning towards the 'media' vs 'social' wing of its character during last year's election, raking in as much money as possible by providing propaganda disguised as news to its community of readers. Gee, where have we seen that before?
Thanks, Maureen, for pointing out that Zuckerberg's innocent facade is probably just that-myopic and privileged.
2
Guess we'll all just have to wait until people get bored with Facebook and Twitter and move on to the next new thing...anyone remember DVD's?
Facebook is an almost evil waste of time. This country needs more people to read good books rather than chase experiences of their buddies. They should start with Frederic Bastiat, then go to Etienne de la Boetie, and then, maybe to Milton Freidman.
We have been dumbed down so badly by our media and educational system.
3
Mark Zuckerberg is nothing but a dull-ish boy who had an idea for a social media app that made him a billionaire. There are so many truly brilliant scientists and engineers in our country who now have to live with a president who belittles science because of people who are too stupid to get off Facebook and think for themselves.
Oh, and if Zuckerberg runs for office all we'll have is a repeat of his doomed and fruitless effort to revamp Newark's public school system. He failed at that, now he's thinking of failing at running America. Great.
He was just lucky, not brilliant. His app has damaged us and there is more to come. Sad that he's been too slow to see it.
1
I disagree. Facebook is the open arms of the community when your child dies and the friends you never thought they had post pictures of them day after day, year after year on Facebook, keeping their memory alive. It's the place where the marginalized find each other and organize. It's the place you find news that often is more local, more relevant and more true than what you find in mass media. And yes, because we live in a democracy and believe in free will, it can be used for evil, too. Just like mass media. Just like PACs. If you have a problem with Facebook it's because you have a problem with democracy and capitalism.
25
I salute your opposing view. Indeed, if you are parts of communities that are apolitical and you manage to avoid political marketing on FaceBook, good for you. However, I still suggest that you watch what is presented to you a little more carefully. Did you just post a picture of your dinner? How many comments about food are your then shown in your feed? First day of school pictures? Once you liked one, was the feed overflowing, not just with your sister and next-door neighbor, but also that person you haven't seen in 12 years? Facebook can be a force for good, but stay mindful of the fact that you are not alone in making the decisions of what you see and read, unlike, say, a search for a soup recipe on google, where you can specifically target "carrot ginger soup" and choose which of the AI sorted results you will choose to open.
3
@ Halley , It's not about having a problem with Facebook nor a problem with democracy and capitalism . This is what our nation is , but do you really believe that you have free will ? Yes we still have the freedom to express our thoughts in this country but gist of this article is about the dangers of targeting A.I. towards influencing people and thereby controlling what they think. You have to admit than other than the reasons you cited there is the negative side to Facebook , and again, it has nothing to do with "having a problem with capitalism and democracy" but with the ease in which it becomes so glibly acceptable that it is what it is , and you seem to be ok with that , but hey it is still a free country and anyone is pretty well free to let chickens roam inside their homes if they want.
2
Good point. I work in marketing. I understand the FB algorithm and how all of our searches and news media are being filtered based on our preferences. Even this very column is filtered through the very unique lens Ms. Dowd has of the world. I'm skeptical of "news" sources I don't recognize, I'm an independent voter, I have an issue with politics and entertainment presented as news. I think the same requirements advertisers have for "native advertising" should be required of news sources, i.e. content presented as news must be fact based. Facebook follows the cardinal rule of marketing: know your audience. I think before you respond to an individual, you should, too.
2
I always questioned and was puzzled by the addiction to social media sites and the gratification of having the like and dislike , not to mention the friending of fake friends . Perhaps I'm old fashioned but I prefer to meet people face to face and whoever becomes my friend fulfills what I need ie: spiritual , bonhomie , compassion , shared interests , sensible advice and yes at times a helping hand . Not one individual friend fulfills those needs and that is why we tend to have different friends , and I cherish each friendship I have been graced with . These sites are an abomination because they pervert the real meaning of friendship and are there to gull people into being manipulated with A.I. to enrich those whose only interests lie in making more money . Elon Musk is right , as was Eisenhower when he warned about the military industrial complex . I don't always agree with Maureen , but this column is right on the button.
2
There is one thing we all can do while not holding our breaths waiting for government action: we can stop pretending anything on the internet is or can be private or safe, and then acting accordingly. We can stop pretending every new gadget represents progress. The F.D.A. recently had a recall because even cardiac pacemakers can be hacked. Think what will happen if drones and self-driving cars are turned loose.
Facebook is no different from Wells Fargo, Equifax, Bank of America, Google, or any other large corporation. They have no allegiance to America, its values, or its people. Their allegiance is solely to profit, a portion of which goes to hire marketing firms, lobbyists, lawyers, and spin doctors to pretend their motives are noble.
However, the important thing to remember is that corporations do not make decisions; people such as Zuckerberg do. Unless and until those people at the top are held accountable, with criminal trials and serious jail time when appropriate, nothing will change, fines and such simply written off as the cost of doing business.
Facebook is not the problem; it is merely the surface manifestation of a fundamental disease.
5
The mainstream media is scared of losing even more power as social media, while similarly telling many lies, also tells the truth. As Holmes said, we need the marketplace of ideas, and not another and crucial part of American society being government or corporate controlled because of some exaggerated foreign threat.
Either we are for democracy founded on free speech, or just give the profiteers another area to exploit for $ AND in which to control the narrative. The corporatists would love to censor everything that contradicts the fake narrative championed by Milton Friedman that "free enterprise" built this country and we need it for democracy. Great good has come from the public sector in so many, many ways including almost all the basic research done or financed by our government, especially when it is run by decent people.
It was only due to FDR's championing of working people, including the middle class, that resulted in America growing greatly after WWII. Since then we have had mostly fake Democrats, like Clinton and Obama, and the greedy sociopathic GOP. Even with this motley crew of oligarchic sycophants, the public sector was still able to do a lot of good, including creating the internet. If we are ever to preserve any real democracy in this country we need net neutrality, not profiteers running things.
2
Facebook is despicable because it reflects the character of the man who created it.
1
Basically, Facebook and Twitter have destroyed America, the rest of you just haven't realized that yet. I, for one, am proud to say I do NOT have a Facebook account (that's right - I'm THAT guy!) and I have never sent a Tweet. In fact, I said - when Twitter first appeared - that, "Anyone who uses Twitter is a twit." Now we have a PRESIDENT ADDICTED TO TWITTER, sad.
1
Oh great, one of the alleged top geniuses of our time is no longer an atheist. Did he find God thru, or in, one of his algorithms? Did he post the proof of this alleged god? Is it a god with a lower case g, or upper? Which of the thousands did he find? Why isn't he detailing his profound discovery? Its way bigger then AI!
Frankly, Im tired of the Silicon Valley-ists, or wherever they might harbor, telling us not to be worried by the run-away train of Tech and big data. Of course they don't think its worrisome, they're making HUGE amounts of money pushing it like sugar and artificial flavors down our throats. If making money was difficult for them and their products, they'd be less optimistic.
It all has to be safe, because that's the underlying sales-pitch used to entice consumers to believe these "products" are absolutely necessary for our life to be complete/fulfilled. "Don't think about this thing, don't worry about any dangers - because you NEED it to be fulfilled. We've removed the danger, because we love you." Which was the same basic pitch for all the processed items (food,autos,chemicals,etc)that we eventually learned were not as safe as the pitch claimed.
Trusting these industrialist salesmen in absolute terms has never been the smartest thing for a society to do. But the rise of Consumption as a fulfillment of a life, esp in the US, is making us stupid as a culture, and highly vulnerable as a nation state.
Zuckerberg, et al, cant be trusted to protect us.
2
I agree, Ms. Dowd, that tech had gotten out of control with how much it controls our lives, most of the time, without our knowledge or explicit consent. I refuse to have an Alexa type object in my home, cover my laptop camera with electrical tape, and use my cell phone for a few basic functions (well, okay, and a couple of simple video games). Mark Zuckerberg for president? NEVER. Silicon Valley needs major legislation to rein it in. Thank you to Elon Musk for sounding the alarm.
2
Facebook has become a perfect platform for highly efficient mass propaganda.
Zuck doesn't care what is said or advertised as long as he gets paid. Is it any worse than Fox news? Only in its dimension. It will never be effectively screened or controlled. I will believe Elon's views well before I listen to anything
"Boy Wonder" has to say. The frightening thing is how Caligula will use his invention to get elected President. Can't happen? Trump couldn't happen either.
1
Mark Zuckerberg was not responsible for protecting the 2016 American Presidential election from Russian interference. That was Barack Obama's job.
Mark Zuckerberg did not derive any material socioeconomic political benefit from Russian interference in the 2016 American Presidential election. That was Donald Trump's job.
1
After experiencing the private setting on my fb page being changed to friends of friends or everyone, I did a test with a couple of other people. The same thing happened to them after a week or so on private. Who changed the settings? Zuckerberg. My tenure on fb was brief. It felt childish to participate. So maybe I don't awake to 'likes'. I also didn't vote for trump. Regulate the site. Zuckerberg's greed exceeds his sense of decency. After all, he stole the idea for the site to begin with. And now, he is a traitor.
2
Equifax Chief Information Security Office had 2 music degrees and NO computer science degrees. What a negligent company.
But the thing is, the Electoral College voted in Trump.
What difference does it make if Zuckerberg likes or dislikes the column? It's about us liking or disliking Facebook. If you like it, have the time and satisfying our own narcissistic needs and for approval from others, then use it, by all means. But if you dislike it, don't use it. Saves time and $10.
1
No amount of money Mr. Zuckerberg could ever give to charity will begin to make up for what he indirectly inflicted on this nation and on humanity last November 8th.
There simply is nothing he can do. It is all pointless.
Get lost, Mark.
2
Oh, posh. I don't blame FB bots at all. A few fake sensational news items cropped up on my FB link, and when I looked at the profile it was pretty clear they were not real people, and that the origins of the news were tenuous at best. What I blame is a US educational system that does not allow citizens to shoulder the burden of democracy. If they cannot read or reason beyond a seventh grade level they are going to believe anything they are told. They need to have a civid class in the pitfalls of the media, with discussion around how to use it wisely, just as they get education around driving, birth control, drugs and alcohol.
1
Little Markie had better slow his roll. Delusions of grandeur abound in his mind as he recently declared that Facebook was a new 'religion'. Zuckerberg is just another billionaire run amuck who would hate any constraints on his ability to make even more money.
Thank you for pointing out the possibility that collusion with Russia may have happened from the top down during Trump's campaign. Robert Mercer was/is the billionaire financial backer of Trump (and Bannon & Brietbart) who owns Cambridge Analytica which specializes in weaponizing data for trolling and bot use. Mercer, Jared and Manafort all together to make sure the Russian trolls hit their mark? Which voting infrastructure systems to target?
Back to little Markie. He should pause and look at recent events. America has learned the hard way that just because someone is a billionaire does not make them smart, competent, patriotic or able to be a President. Did Facebook give us Dotard Trump? Not by itself, but it helped.
2
I hope he does run. Then we'll see how long he advocates the complete loss of privacy as simply the way things are now so he can makes lots of money.
Let's turn loose the press and the Russian hackers on the haughty Mr. Zuckerberg. See how he deals with them rather than his loyal hacks at Facebook. Get him out of his bubble and have him face the public.
He'll last a month or two at most.
1
Just take away all of this little boy's money and use it to rebuild America's infrastructure.
1
We need a new government to make companies like asocial media giant Facebook and so called credit rating companies like Equifax accountable at the highest levels of their companies. How bad does it have to get---like gun uncontrol ?
2
I always thought Zuckerberg was cynical and dangerous. Look how he got control of what was a group effort at the beginning. President? Ha! Jail? Maybe.
I would never use Facebook! It makes you too vulnerable.
2
Mark Zuckerberg should be ashamed of Facebook's part in the 2016 Election Fraud! How could Facebook's management not be aware of the 1000s of Russian-purchased ads running on Facebook's so-called "newsfeed". A lot of people rely on "likes" in their social media to direct their voting clicks vs research into their candidates views and values to see if they are in alignment with their own. Facebook and other social media companies KNOW about the power of information (real and fake) and should have taken measures to ensure the accuracy on their web sites!
1
I don't usually walk away from reading Dowd with complementary thoughts about how she writes what she thinks, even when I agree on the substance of it. However, this time all I can say is:
WOW! Well done, well thought out and well presented.
And oh so true...and scary.
1
My oldest son reminds me: "Dad, stop getting into political arguments on FB. You're arguing with idiots and they'll drag you down to their level, and beat you with experience!" Maybe he's right.
People I know and like outside of politics post the most horrible reactionary stuff on FB, much of it based on false assumptions and weepy, phony (IMHO) patriotism.
For example, this very morning someone posted from the Conservative Daily: "While everyone wonders who will #takeaknee on Sunday some remember a hero who never would" with a photo of Pat Tillman, who died from "friendly fire".
I was SO tempted to post back: "But this is WHY Tillman died--to PROTECT and DEFEND the RIGHT of people to take a knee!" until I remembered my son's words...
There's a line in an old song "You can't talk to a man with a shotgun in his hand" implying that a closed, angry mind is nearly impossible, if not totally impossible, to open. America is FILLED with closed, angry minds right now and I don't see how to open them without violent conflict, which will be tragic.
139
I believe that the power of corporations over legislation, regulation... everyday life,
has reduced both sides to despairing behavior.
Having heard recorded: "...higher than usual volume of calls..we value your time" daily, all the way up to watching Congress approve legislation disliked by over 80% of voters-- produces angry minds. Of all stripes.
The treatment of individual Citizens is garnering responses. Some choose angry, closed minds.
We need to change it before we eat each other!
1
Yes there are a lot of closed angry minds: they are called Democrats.
Zuckerberg for President. Hahahahahahahahahaha. Oh, well, we just elected Donald Trump.
2
Boycott Facebook!!!!
3
"I invite you to...join me on Facebook." Maureen, NYT policy or not, please quit the monster.
2
I can't help but wonder if Gutenberg, et al, did not face the same sorts of critique with the introduction of moveable type. Ironically, of his time, it was to spread a specific Bible to the masses. We face as profound a moment now, but the radical foreshortening of the adaptive cycle, sheer immediacy of information availability and unfortunate lack of critical faculties and judgement make things far more precarious.
The great irony now is that the schismatics within the world have a self-reinforcing forum to reach others of their ilk, banding together in electronic mobs. That the uber clever have figured out ways to use technology to nefarious ends, and in the process to make gobs of money, is no surprise. But the fault is in humans, not technology.
Could we trust governments fairly to regulate technology to our benefit? As the possibilities of the space become clearer, I doubt it. For it truly to be democratized, it would first have to be truly available to all. It isn't, and there are few real efforts underway to ensure that, except from the commercial sector. Deregulation rants notwithstanding, the models of public utility regulation have for the most part simply reinforced providers' profits, rather than the public's access. Again, the fault is far less in the stars than within ourselves.
27
Guttenberg's printing press had far more limiting factors than the internet. The documents printed were chosen by a certain educated population. To be able too write and read was limited to an elite segment of the populations. Indeed, when one considers that Luther's 95 Thesis was one of the documents published soon after the Gutenberg bible, the printing press was revolutionary in more ways than one... arguably it not only changed information flows, it also changed a then corrupt religious "monopoly" in Western Europe.
The question "Could we trust governments fairly to regulate technology to our benefit?" is interesting. You raise an excellent point about access. However, I see the counter-argument as television in the 1950's, 1960's and early 1970's. Before cable TV and the 24 hour news cycle, newspapers and the Big 3 networks gave America a regulated version of the news. That did not prevent the Civil Rights Movement, the Anti-War movement, etc. However, editorial perspective helped Americans form differing opinions based on an agreed upon set of facts. Perhaps at times not all of the facts were publicly available, and sometimes people exercised free speech as hate speech, but overall our society seems to have benefitted from the flaws of humanity more than we are benefitting from the flaws of artificial intelligence.
2
Welcome to America where big money speaks louder than morals, ethics, principles, conscience, truth and facts. Where even our WH administration embraces alternative realities and alternative facts.
It is obvious that FB, twitter and other social media have to be reined in under regulatory codes and possibly placed under the FCC. Essentially, and effectively, FB became a propaganda network under Putin during our presidential election. This is very serious and frightening and cannot be allowed to happen again or still.
Mr. Zuckerberg, America is learning what a multi billionaire obsessed with personal greed and the abuse of executive power can do in our WH. Don't bother 'submitting your application' in the future because we would fear more of the same.
Good question as to why it took FB 8 months lag time before they released the information about Russian infiltration and propaganda ads and their targets. They should have been working with U.S. Intel much sooner than later and I am sure Mueller will be asking that very question.
7
Remember the first Austin Powers movie? There is this scene I am thinking about right now: A man stands and faces one direction. He turns one hundred eighty degrees quickly and sees a bulldozer, driven by Austin Powers, and screams in horror as he's about to be run over. Pretty terrifying, right? The mise en scene changes and gives us a long shot and now we see that the man is thirty feet from the bulldozer, which is moving at about three miles an hour. In other words, he can avoid being crushed. He just has to move.
Those of us worried about these evil geniuses need to think more. We just have to stop using Facebook (and other unnecessary media platforms) and smartphones. We do not need these technologies. Imagine engineers putting their minds to real needs. They would when these social media companies no longer need them because these platforms are losing their appeal. The controversy over Facebook and technology in general taking over and how we are standing idly by or conspicuously embracing it---basically, many of us seem to think, the inevitability of technological advances is too strong for us to resist---is not one for me, personally. When a site prompts to log in with my Facebook account, I leave. Anyone who is interested in keeping these creeps out of his or her life can do the same. And, yes, we should fight these benevolent dictator-types to their deaths by not giving them our money and not helping them make money through ad revenue. Unplug, Baby, and wake up.
7
I still come back to the gullible and moronic people who believe bad journalism, ads, and other misleading propaganda. Unfortunately, they will always be with us. And what's interesting is that Hillary lost because of people who believed Sanders' (ie. American) propaganda (eg. her speeches to Goldman Sachs being somehow bad and her being somehow untrustworthy). She only got about 79% of the Sanders' voters, and many of these are College-educated. Not the hardscrabble working-class that everyone says decided the election outcome. So, imo, this is not a matter of the Russians stole the election or got Trump elected. We Americans elected Trump under both our own volition and our own beliefs, theories and emotions.
1
First, Maureen, it's not "artificial intelligence" which is the problem, it's human intelligence.
Second, human intelligence is an oxymoron as we humans use the computing part of our brain primarily to justify the instinctive part of our brain (notably, our fears and wants) and to plan how to allay those fears and achieve those wants. If human intelligence were as storied and awesome as many believe, we would have long ago realized that what the computing part of our brain should be doing is HARNESSING, not coddling and enabling, those fears and wants.
Finally, as a consequence of our failure to harness our instinctive nature, we have, are and always will weaponize every technological advance. Then, of course, those who revel in our self-righteous certainty will blame someone else for the failure of ALL OF US.
2
That the French election was not as influenced by social media says something about European vs American awareness of issues. Having traveled in various European countries over the last two decades, it is clear that Europeans are much more attuned to global and their own country's political issues than many Americans. It is a sad commentary that Americans can be duped by social media "news."
5
I'm no fan of Facebook for many reasons but none because its founder Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook wasn't the first social media company and won't be the last. If Facebook didn't exist, I'm sure someone else would have created something quite similar.
The deeper cancer here is the "culture of free." IT is the tool, but the strategy that is eating us alive is money-less access to communication that is anything but cost-less. We sell a little bit of our soul every time we FB, tweet, or - for that matter - watch TV.
If each time we that shared, entertained ourselves, searched, or shopped electronically was an financial expense rather than an advertising-subsidized give-away, we would of necessity think harder about whether we wanted it, needed it, or could afford it. Rather than drowning in an orgy of unlimited, free self-gratification, we would engage selectively, because each choice would have a direct relationship to our budgets.
Even hackers and governments couldn't afford to pay for all those transactions ...nor could they do it in secret.
1
I joined Facebook when it first came out -- with bare minimum required info and nothing more. I never used it. And, it took me a while to figure out how to delete my account, as Facebook was not at all helpful in this -- other than to threaten me, that I could never join again.
Needless to say, I deleted my account and haven't regretted in one iota. It is mostly a usurper of precious time and brain power.
I think Zuckerberg is and was always after the power and bucks. I don't trust him, nor any corporate powers that gather and sell and otherwise misuse our data.
Drop your Facebook account now and find alternate means of communicating with your family and friends.
9
Putin's question to the head of Yandex doesn't seem as silly to me as it would have ten years ago.
If voters don't act before money completely controls government, we just might find the Supreme Courts deciding American robots are citizens and have the right to vote.
Sounds ridiculous! But if I had been told 60 years ago, speech and money will have the same rights, I would have said that sounds equally ridiculous.
5
Just give up Facebook. I did, years ago. It's very easy to live without it and folks that want to get in touch, really get news, they can. Takes a bit more effort but I think that means more care. You don't get as many birthday greetings but hey, the ones that do reach out mean it. I find the whole data/FB world scary. I don't want someone selling my life.
10
Zuckerberg and Facebook have been caught multiple times conducting experiments on users attempting to influence their behavior. If you think the 2016 manipulation of voters was bad, imagine what will happen if Zuckerberg ever runs?
3
Facebook has a function concerning 'friends', labeled "see less of". This could be expanded to 'see less & less of' or even 'see practically nothing from'.
The cavalcade of billionaires, philanthropic & otherwise, aspiring to lead the nation is getting tiresome. Don't these people have something better to do?
I mean, aren't they busy enough buying politicians? At least the old timers would provide drinks or small cash stipends when they wanted to buy votes.
2
I've never used Facebook, but now that I know so much of what's on it is junk set up on fake accounts, I'm not likely to start. From what I can tell, it's been pretty much co-opted by trolls, fake news outlets and Russians. It's beginning to look like people who use it are pretty much suckers.
2
Everyday people are bombarded with propaganda from every segment of society.Until an individual becomes responsible for their own mind by the use of critical thinking manipulation will exit and continue.The solution needs to come from one person at a time.
In his piece 'The Coming War on Business' David Brooks noted:
"Trump is nominally pro-business. The next populism will probably take his ethnic nationalism and add an anti-corporate, anti-tech layer. Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple stand for everything Francis hated — economically, culturally, demographically and nationalistically.
As the tech behemoths intrude more deeply into daily life and our very minds, they will become a defining issue in American politics. It wouldn’t surprise me if a new demagogue emerged, one that is even more pure Francis."
It would seem that Maureen Dowd, Time, the New York Times, etc., are already waging their war. Who will their demagogue be? It will probably be a Democrat as the tech industry has supported Democratic positions more than Republican ones, although recently PACs seem to find more support among Republicans at the local level.
And that, in a nutshell, is why I don't use Facebook.
5
It seems that political commentary is no longer the domain of the MSM, which is controlled by the Left. Now that vast audiences can be reached via social media, the MSM Leftists sees it as a problem that must be regulated. The Left seeks to limit speech and to control speech. They don't like the fact that their political adversary (in this case Trump) was supported on Facebook and Twitter by forces they cannot control. However, they didn't seem to mind making full use of social media in 2008. So now they are blaming Russia for using Facebook. They didn't have a problem when Ukraine was supporting Hillary. Now they want to regulate the use of social media for political advertising. The Left will always seek to infringe on free speech to control the message. That's what this column is all about.
Why are people so weak, vulnerable, and susceptible to external stimuli? Is it loneliness? Boredom? Lack of critical thinking skills?
Maybe its just me, but -- as one who has never paid a penny in credit card interest and never even bought a lottery ticket -- I've never clicked on a Facebook ad or otherwise paid FB or its sponsors a dime. I do not read "news" on Facebook and discuss neither religion nor politics there. I have about 120 "friends," three of whom I actually have met; the others are linked to me by a shared love of classical music, which is the ONLY thing I talk about on FB.
(Meantime, I have hidden my friends from public view -- I am the only one who knows who all my friends are. This is an important feature on FB that not many seem to be aware of.)
I've been thinking about closing my FB account for some time -- it is not an important part of my day -- and now, in light of these revelations, would seem the perfect moment to do so.
Yet I am not sure what to do. I am not manipulated by Facebook, I am not lured into online discussions which could reveal a political bias, and know not to click on links.
Lately I've started watching puppy videos -- puppies playing with kittens, being cute, you get the idea -- they are adorable, and for the moment are the sole reason I maintain my account.
Its a tough call.
1
Mark Zuckerberg and his social media compatriots have yet to recognize that ethics, morality and community are necessary elements of a healthy society. Social media's contribution, to date, has been a negative influence to these values in so many ways. One that I am quite familiar with is the loss of my grandchildren at any family gathering to their smartphones. When social media is more important than face to face conversation...............we are all in trouble.
2
Whether we like it or not Facebook is part of the world fabric intertwined in many daily events. Facebook, Twitter, all newspapers TV stations, especially FOX news, need to be legally responsible for all news, claims of advertisements and comments made on their media for veracity and verifiable from multiple sources. Significant fines need to be assessed and written in to law.
Defending democracy, avoiding unnecessary wars like Viet Nam, is expensive but in the long run will be cheaper and life preserving.
All sources need to be identified if not identifiable a 3 sentence disclaimer needs to be stated at that moment.
We have too many lawyers lets use them for something worthwhile.
1
FB can be good, if all of the humanity were good. So it's kind of impossible now to have a perfect newsfeed that you can truly like without changing any of the preferences. But it gets old to continually see updates from "friends" when you barely share anything and they don't have the time to actually chat with you. It's not just the ad sellers that take up your important time and data on your phone. It's also whoever else on your feed that add no value to your life with the silly information. It's not really Fb's fault. It's the fault of the social media and really any media or social setting. I don't need to add anyone from work to my FB since I get all the silly gossip and information in the lunch room already. And everyone talks about all kinds of silly things and I don't need any pictures to go with that. Using FB is like having ads of all kind in the background of any social gathering. Some of it can be good and it can be a conversation starter. Some can be bad like those related to the election. But how can we determine what is good and bad? For the Trump supporters, it's a fact that Clinton was evil, whether or not she actually was. It's all about perceptions. Should we really try to regulate what's on our minds? People are always afraid of the government keeping control and now tech companies are added to the lists. But it's really the problem of the people and their personalities.
It might be instructive to reread the commentary written after the 2000 election about the absolute necessity and self-evident wisdom of requiring states to use computerized polling machines.
If the digital age was itself not so effective in burying our memories, we would all view the opinions of the chattering elites with a great deal more skepticism.
I for one have had my "secure" medical information, computerized over my objection with the presumption by my betters that I was just an ignorant technophobe, hacked. Now, with Equifax releasing social security numbers and birthdates into the wild....
"No matter how cynical you get, you can never keep up"
1
I'm among those in the Baby Boomer generation who not only learned to navigate the digital world but came to cherish their smartphones for the eduational and organizational tools they brought to our lives (the reminder app alone keeps me sane and functioning). Yet I've always considered Facebook, Twitter and the like to be pointless at best, dangerously invasive at worst. There are many who share my view! Behold the devastation. Zuckerberg should create an emoji to convey the havoc his frat house invention has wrought upon our electoral process. An thank you, Twitter, for being a vehicle by which the most dangerous president in our history came to power.
5
I've been amused in these past months since Trump was elected, by all the people who have stated that the Russian ad influence did not affect the election. I chuckle, because worldwide billions of dollars are spent in advertising by companies to persuade us to buy their products. If it didn't work, these companies would have stopped it years ago, but yet they don't, because it is effective. So anyone who says that the Russian ad buys were ineffective, is just another ostrich with his or her head stuck in the sand ignoring the reality of this new century. I'm with Musk, there are a lot of benefits from things such as social media, but there is danger, and we need to start erecting effective means to protect ourselves. Unfortunately we have a president and Congress who will do nothing.
3
When airplanes became weaponized, countries reacted by imposing security checks. Facebook and other social media platforms are now weaponized, by anyone who cares to try, so the answer is to secure the technology , or if cannot be secured, abandon it.
If Q byte computers are unleashed on the internet without controls, the world as we know it is going to end, and not for the better.
1
Facebook and the internet in general?
I welcome computation, this increased communications system world. People point out this or that problem--that fake news is spread, that people hack, that trolls exist, that evil ideas are spread, etc.--but the fact is for decades American public life has been a next to artificial conversation, a rigged, controlled atmosphere where only certain questions and answers are allowed. After years of reading books on my own, educating myself, I have realized there is a vast discrepancy between what a person can actually learn and what makes it into the public sphere. And I have heard every excuse for not making the public sphere more rigorous, intellectually intense, honest, daring in conversation: That it conflicts with civic life, manners, norms, that it compromises national security, is subversive, affects polite conversation--on and on.
I disagree entirely with this political theory which is essentially that a population should be kept in a state of being naive. When I think of typical American public life prior to internet, the good old days of Overton window, it makes me think of that Mr. Rogers character on television talking to children, as if I am in a world of mental defectives who can't even treat me with respect of basic truth. Let's be honest with ourselves here. The internet has been causing a lot of trouble such as fake news, but a lot of people are also invested in preventing intense, honest, intelligent, national conversation.
1
My slogan for the candidate I represented was "Pull the lever for Weaver." The slogan appeared on TV and in the daily newspaper. He lost. Today, on Facebook and Twitter, if I would have changed the slogan to "Pull Weaver's lever," I would have been famous for maybe an hour or so and most likely Weaver would have won. Imagine the comments and retweets.
Facebook is too big to fail, but at least we can regulate Zuckerberg. Right?
1
When did we all become so frightened of "fake news", lies and propaganda? Every national election, for as long as I can remember, has featured lies and distortions by the major parties and their candidates. That most of us still believe in these people may be an accomplishment of deceit, but it is more a problem of very poor analytical skills of voters. Anyway, attempting to fix the problem with regulations that control speech is the worst possible "solution". Maybe more honesty and common sense in our education systems is where we need to address the problem of people being influenced by deceit.
1
After the election, I became aware that people use Facebook as a platform for news. I was shocked. Is it not easier and more productive to go to news sites? Silly me--I thought Facebook was for photo and event sharing, for humble bragging about your life or your family. Let's keep it that way.
2
It would be ironic indeed if Zuckerberg ran for office and was defeated by manipulation of FB posts. Sandberg's assertion that “We never intended or anticipated this functionality being used this way — and that is on us” is a reflection of the need for basic engineering ethical standards in software development. Functionality to prevent abuse is expensive, and will be deprioritized unless those missing standards are implemented and enforced.
1
Until education--IN THE HOME, K-12, and higher education--includes critical thinking dispositions (skepticism, checking credibility, empathy...) and actions as the number one priority, people will be gullible and social media will be disproportionally influential in effecting elections and our real futures.
1
Mark Zuckerberg's fantasy is about as invalid as was Trump's in 2016. Unreal but could happen with long odds. Mark Zuckerberg failed the "faith in America" test by dragging his feet and distorting the truth about Russian participation in the 2016 election. We can't do another one of these and expect to be OK.
1
With technologies developed by unrestrained mega-monopolies intruding into and influencing every aspect of human life, the possibility of techno-totalitarianism is growing daily. cCompanies like Google and Facebook and Amazon have grown out of control and become "too big to fail" and with wallets too fat to loosen their grip on politicians. The battle against corporatism, neither capitalist nor socialist, has long since been lost since enforcement of anti-trust laws has been dropped. Politicians in collusion with the corporations divert attention and political debates to such world-shaking and world-shapiang topics--not--like abortion, LGBT rights, evolution. Thus, the end of democracy approaches at an accelerating rate. It is good to be 77 and going on 78.
1
It's interesting to see how moguls like Zuckerberg approach the policing of social media. Zuckerberg, like many of his brethren--Steve Jobs among them--famously started as hackers. So the climate that spawned Silicon Valley's libertarian approach to the web is the same one that fostered Donald Trump's rise to power.
1
This whole country runs on the big sell. Facebook is free but you get hit by the big sell. They make heaps of money and you are the potential sucker. TV once was free and you had to put up with a few ads. Now you must pay for TV and also get hit with even more ads. When pumping gas I've gotten hit with ads. Candidates for office are bought and sold (no wonder truly intelligent, gifted people don't run). Power and money for them and we get to feel good by spending our hard earned money on things we don't need. As George W said after 9/11 'go shopping'. What a terrible world we have created...all of us.
1
What is truly sad is that people invest so much of their consciousness in Facebook. (What vacuous lives they must lead.) If Facebook transcends national boundaries or entities, what has it done wrong? I don't participate in Facebook and don't like the twerp who runs it but I have to agree with him on this. If you choose to lay down with dogs, you get up with fleas.
2
One interesting detail of Zuckerplot is that while this Russian stuff was going on at Facebook, Mark himself was invading the Facebook accounts of people who had never friended him, like me, with posts on an almost daily basis. if there were legal recourse for me I would certainly take it. (Were it affordable, of course!)
1
At old style political events, men with evil intentions would circulate at the back of crowds and pass out rumor filled fliers on opposing candidates. Some people believed the rumors eagerly (Lyndon Johnson was said to have helped circulate a lie that one of his opponents in Texas had sex with pigs). These kinds of efforts have long been an undercurrent of American politics and probably around the world, too. Now, Facebook, Twitter and others are the primary forums and the circulation can be nearly endless.
People believe what comes to them on their news feeds and they act on it in the polling booth. This, in scale and virulence, is something entirely new in American democracy. It is a threat to the very foundations of our system and inn our belief that, if voting is not completely perfect, it can at the very least be trusted to reflect honest public opinion.
Alarm bells should be ringing across the nation. Getting a handle on this threat, one that is both foreign and domestic, should be an urgent goal of academic and public interest groups and associations. If we lose the foundation of Democracy, we lose a stable, reliable and responsible nation. Chaos would follow and, because of America's role, would spread around the world.
There are clear signs that this is happening, has happened, with the rise of Trump to the White House, but it is much more important than one man, one election. Who will work assiduously to save us?
3
By choosing artificial intelligence for their ad tools, instead of human moderation (like tv, radio & newspaper have for their ads), Facebook made undermining democracy possible in the 2016 election. The consequences of that decision could lead the US into unnecessary war, and the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives. Robots may not take over control of the world in the future, but its starting to appear that Facebook's use of artificial intelligence has unleashed something they cannot control right now.
2
I read an interview with Gary Kasperov recently. The gist is that he sees that Americans are hopelessly naive about evil and the potential for fascists to gain traction here.
It is as if most Americans feel that evil is such a weak force of nature that it can't affect them. That is largely because the rule of law does for the most part keep evil somewhat in check for most people most of the time. It is a very fragile state of affairs. I look around and see a world where evil is just as potent of a force as good ... it is right there and we are blessed to live in a society where it is somewhat kept in check.
Facebook is a tool that levels the playing field in favor of the evildoers and they know it. If you want to start to understand evil better, read the book People of the Lie by M Scott Peck.
1
Don't give a hoot in hell WHAT Mark Zuckerberg likes. He's proven himself to be a thoughtless elitist, whose only concern is making more money, and screw the users, his "product."
3
Mark is self centered to a fault who stole other people's ideas, work, and screwed his friends. He seems like the male version of Hillary. Perfect for the role that has to come when Hillary transitions into a man and runs for president again.
I would like an "unlikely" button. A button that I press to express a wish for objective reality.
79
This is absurd. Facebook isn't the Bible or a scientific journal. It isn't the New York Times. It isn't even Fox News. It is -- by definition! -- a place where anyone can post anything.
It's not easy to teach people to read critically. In many cases, it's impossible. But censoring Facebook is not going to help us make progress. Facebook can -- and should -- tweak this and that, but it won't make any difference. The same people will just pop up somewhere else.
Go find a videotape of any Trump rally and really listen to the audience's reactions to his ideas. Forget Facebook or Twitter. They aren't the source of the problem. The problem is sitting in front of Trump at his rallies. Our task isn't censorship of Facebook, it is teaching people to think critically and rationally.
If someone thinks the National Enquirer is the best place to get facts, the problem isn't with the publisher, it's with the reader. If someone believes some stooge on Facebook, the problem isn't the medium, it is the all-too-credulous reader.
For good reason, we have freedom of expression and an open Internet. We decided these issues long ago.
139
Perhaps greed and the desperate need for superiority has something to do with this as well.
1
Exactly. Your fellow Leftists who think so "critically" don't realize that this is merely some conduit for people to speak or give their opinions, and they think this needs to be censored and "regulated". Once again showing their authoritarian tendencies.
I voted for Donald Trump is precisely because I think critically. Possibly 50% of those people who voted for Hillary Clinton, are young people who voted for her because of what they have learned by late night comedians, and because they have never in their entire life even been exposed to the other side of the arguments, neither in college nor in media. They have not even HEARD another side.
You literally have to "think critically" to go against an entire system of one-sided indoctrination.
It is easy to argue that we need to teach people to read critically, but that is harder than you think. When is the last time you sat down with a twelve year old and asked that child to discern between a credible and non-credible source? Something as simple as the difference between Wikipedia and Everpedia, as a real-life example, shows how confusing it can be for a kid to learn how to test for validity on the internet. Additionally, as our education system continues to falter and teachers bring their own biases, who is to say what is correct?
There was a time when the role of the editor was a valued one in our society. Its why we continue to read The New York Times, and why the World Book Encyclopedia was a more trusted source than information found on the Internet. AI does not come with an internal fact-check, only educated and ethical humans can do that. Unless we find ways to accomodate free speech wile also teaching that editorial expertise is worthwhile, we are on a road to nowhere.
2
Superb article. Thank you.
I would be fascinated to know if anyone can recall a time in history when we were able to "put the genie back in the bottle"? Unfortunately, I cannot.
Perhaps all of us who want to see a kinder global village win the day will simply need to write A.I. code faster than the bad guys?
1
"Zuckerberg told a tech conference that the contention that fake news had influenced the election was “a pretty crazy idea,” showing a “profound lack of empathy” toward Trump voters."
Zuckerberg was right about that. The Democrats are showing a profound lack of empathy toward the Trump voters. That will cost them if they keep it up. Political parties need voters.
That there was foreign propaganda can be true at the same time. Zuckerberg's comment was on the political attitude of the losers toward the voters. Democrats need to get real, or they'll just go down their own rabbit hole.
4
I live in Trump country.
I talk with them every day.
They live in a different universe with different facts.
They still believe the Clintons had Vince Foster murdered.
My neighbors say the Democrats lost and they need to get over it. These are the same neighbors with their Confederate flag license plate.
2
Empathy needs to make its way back around our WHOLE society. It is tempting to blame the democrats for identity politics and abandoning the white middle class, but what about all the republican donors who support candidates ready to pull the pull on the Affordable Healthcare Act with repeatedly heartless alternatives?
2
Most people voted for Clinton, so if any have been disregarded, it's them. As far as rabbit holes go, republicans in my state have wrecked the place and now stand around going "what happened?" They'll do the same to the whole country if they can, though, and with Mr Grabby as president, they may. (It's sad that you've let trying to justify your mistakes about the election lead you to defending monsters, btw.)
2
Capitalism has turned into the Frankenstein Monster in more ways than
one (see Wall Street) And we've been once again lulled into a deep stupor
and once again we've bitten in the butt. The Russian's understand the
psychology of this country and they are successfully using it against us.In
Zuckerberg's mind personal company profit and power is more important than country in my opinion.
7
Mr. Z is still in his post-adolescent "holy crap I did this" phase. And one hopes after our current experience with politicians suffering from arrested development that the country won't make the same mistake again.
It seems that the most noxious part of Facebook is its capacity to encourage the congregation of like-minded nefarious individuals. How that will be constrained is unclear. What is clear is that there is a naive and uncritical acceptance of anything posted on Facebook as fact and that people fritter away their lives on Facebook in lieu of useful pursuits. For much of the latter we have only ourselves to blame.
12
Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s C.O.O., apologized for this on Wednesday and promised to fix the ad-buying tools, noting, “We never intended or anticipated this functionality being used this way — and that is on us.”
Wow, that is probably the biggest piece of crap FaceBook could ever pull from its mouth.
Where the hell were you guys in the 90s, when Netscape Navigator was all the rage, and there were daily skirmishes in AOL and Compuserve between the right and left??
And you didn't expect this? BULL.
You DID expect it and you welcomed it because you could pocket the money. You don't care about the people.
You care about the profit.
18
If we as Americans formulate our political views from facebook ads then we are already screwed. I remain hopeful that people don't rely on facebook to tell them how to vote.
12
They do. So we're doomed.
I have never been on Facebook, have never used Twitter or any of the social media, gave up TV 20 years ago and do not have a cellphone. I may be a Luddite but think not, as during all the years I taught college, computer tech was important to me and to my students; I use the internet frequently, reading the NYT here daily, among other things. I meditate 2x daily, do art and embroidery and just resigned from 40 years as a hospice volunteer because of health problems and having given up driving. I love riding the city buses and going where people are. Basically I feel people on the street respond graciously, with caring and kindness, and I would be stunned if A.I. could change us from our innate humanity into something different. Something to think about though. Thank you, Maureen, for a thought-provoking column.
5
I have made several attempts to rid Facebook from my life, to no avail. It's like a virus for which there is no medical cure. Yes, Maureen Dowd is correct in saying of Zuckerberg's potential end-run at the presidency: scary. I would only add to that: very, very scary.
10
Disable your account. It never contact you again. Did it 3 years ago and never looked back. Acrtually quite easy, unless of course you have addictive traits:
2
Readers might be interested in Franklin Foer's new book, "World Without Mind, The Existential Threat of Big Tech." About the enormous power of GAFA: Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple.
7
Hey, Zuckerberg has seen what Facebook can do to win elections - why not have it help elect himself?? Who can put it to his own use better than Zuckerberg??!!
2
Mark Zuckerberg sees what we all see—a vacuum in our leadership. Zuck can afford to run; he is not a politician; He created the digital platform, Facebook, that is of value to billions of people worldwide. Facebook may be characterized the digital bricks on the road to world peace. He brings more than Silicon Valley and digital know into play, rather enough experience for at least a seat at the table.
We live in an interesting time.
http://thegovernmentinexile.live
2
That people seem confident that someone who has made a billion dollars and is a business person with no political experience would necessarily make a good governor, have the country's best interest at heart, and be able to govern effectively has always seemed odd to me. The lack of political experience should not be seen as a qualification for the presidency. This kind of thinking gave us our current president who the country only now has a chance to see what kind of a leader he is.
If Zuckerberg is serious about wanting to be a public servant, he should run for local office, do some good for his community and demonstrate what type of a leader he can be outside of the corporate world before aspiring to higher office. Nobody would hire a kid with no management experience to run a multi-billion dollar high tech company because they did well in college. Zuckerberg did well in business, but didn't start at the top. We have no idea what type of a politician he would make or how his ideas would translatate into actual policy.
1
Just what we need another fake politician, raised in the unethical world of American capitalism, preening himself to govern America.
Yes, very scary
14
As compared to "real" politicians..... good grief! I'll take the fake ones any day.
Here's the top quote from the NYT on Oct 20, 2016:
"In a remarkable statement that seemed to cast doubt on American democracy, Donald J. Trump said Wednesday that he might not accept the results of next month’s election if he felt it was rigged against him...“That’s horrifying,” Mrs. Clinton replied. “Let’s be clear about what he is saying and what that means. He is denigrating — he is talking down our democracy. And I am appalled that someone who is the nominee of one of our two major parties would take that position.”
Now who is the one 'talking down our democracy'? The NYTimes.
I guarantee those Fakebook ads were nothing compared to the propaganda that was put forth by the NYT, WP, CNN, CBS, etc
Sorry if I suffer from schadenfreude watching the dems do everything they said Trump would do if he lost.
2
I did not and would vote for Trump. But I think that we would all do well to look honestly at ourselves.
1
The media was only doing what their masters were telling them to do. because of the lack of investigative journalism on Trump's past, and the breathless focus on negative coverage of Hillary, we are now contemplating the breakdown of American democracy.
1
Propaganda? Try "the facts". I find it highly unlikely that "NYT, WP, CNN, CBS, etc." are all in on the same joke. Where''s your evidence for the raft of secret meetings they must have convened so everyone could get his story straight? (Oh, and I guess FOX and Breitbart never got the memo.) The problem with your schadenfreude is that it's rapidly turning into ours.
1
"A billion robots, now that's cool."
It is more than a little ironic that Trump can never stop lying about "fake news" and "fake media," but he is in office with the help of fake news and fake posts on social media.
10
Maureen,
that's all well and good, but why is it tht th contacts bracketed
around your article are facebook and twitter "coordinates"?
Since when is it obligatory that all our communications be
mediated by private media?
Email is a democratic, decentralized messaging system.
What's wrong with email, Maureen?
7
I hope David Plouffe likes this article more than he likes the payment he is receiving from Zuckerberg. I was on facebook until 2 weeks ago. I went off for the personal reason to reclaim my life, but also with the heightened awareness Maureen here deftly outlines, that at best Zuckerberg has allowed facebook to be the "wild west", infiltrated by real "bad hombres".
6
The problem is computers grind such vast amounts of information how are you going to prove anything? Government needs to hire computer whiz as Google, Oracle. Chances are government cannot afford it but now government cannot afford not to.........
Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook have so much to answer for.
8
You helped elect Trump don't ever forget that.
23
Zuckerberg is nowhere unless rupert Murdoch gives him permission to run.
Whom he hires isn't important: it's the support FB provides to News Corporation & Rupe's consigliatore, that's the key.
4
Mark Zuckerberg for President? You must be joking! I think putting a "man-child" in the Oval Office has already been shown to be disastrous. Let's not make the same foolish mistake again.
17
America makes the same foolish mistakes over and over again. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria. Along the way, America learns nothing.
Zuckerberg for President of Russia!
Both Sheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg has presidential hopes. They aren't as uneducated and dumb as Donald Trump, but they are certainly as evil. And to think they have such a large propaganda machine ready to roll is scary. Let's hope there's a robot there to gum up the works. Fox is evidence on how far you can go with a propaganda machine at your back.
11
It's becoming more clear that Trump's dealings with dark election forces are making Watergate look like child's play. G. Gordon Liddy's actions were critical to Nixon's resignation. Will kushner have the same role?
12
Maureen,
Neither Russia, nor bots, nor facebook had anything to do with Trump winning the election. But just keep telling yourself and your readers that they did, and then watch Trump get re-elected in 2020.
4
Isn't rich that billionaire leftist democrat like Zuckerberg would sell his political soul to collude with the Russians and destroy Mrs. Clinton for more cold hard cash that he doesn't need? This makes Gordon Gekko look like a Franciscan nun.
9
Watch out! Those nuns can be deadly fanatics!
1
Zuckerberg makes Soros look transparent and democratic.
5
Best column ever. But while so apt in it's calling out of the phony-rebel-frat-boy, it's really really depressing to know that if he wanted to run for president, Z might win. There are millions of people who don't see his eagerness to sell your metadata as an ethical problem. And that address to the American people, (you know, Captain America takes on Russia), I have no words for the arrogance, except to say all I see/hear is his big lie. Imo, FB ranks right up there with cigarettes and opiods as addictions we could and should do without.
9
Interesting column but I do have one question: A the bottom you invite me to join you on Facebook. Considering the subject matter, why would I want to join you or anyone else?
9
It has been my experience that Facebook is nothing but a ruthless crib of personal knowledge -- which it never lets go of without a relentless fight. When it first was thrust upon an unwary public, it seemed a great way to keep in touch with people. After a short while, and I decided to remove myself from it, and it from my life, I discovered that it would have none of that. Only after over a year of trying everything to get out of its clutches, I simply posted every entry again with outlandishly absurd and ridiculous nonsensical facts geared to showing how much of an idiot it was. Someone took notice and finally erased me from (at least) it's public viewing, but hopefully (I doubt) from it's back room files.
I do not use it -- I do not trust it - I will not read it - I can not, in any way, give credence to anything which appears on it. It is a lousy forum for any sort of decent discussion.
5
As far as I'm concerned, Zuckerberg is the reason Trump was elected. Trump should give him the Medal of Honor, or maybe Russia can give him a "best friend" medal.
6
Yep. Very, very scary.
I've always been glad I have the wisdom to not 'do' Facebook. I encourage others to get off this platform. It'll be the ruination of us and I wish fervently Zuckerberg had stopped before he made his monster.
And god forbid he runs for the presidency. All of a sudden he's not an athiest? That's a sure sign something's up because we all know to become president one has to profess a belief in the Protestant old white man god. We don't need this creep with his desire to rule the world in the Oval. We've got one in there now. Let's not make another mistake.
I'm with Musk. A.I. is frightening. The evil it does far outweighs the good of oohing and aweing over baby pictures. We certainly need to be having in depth conversations about how it will change our world. But we humans are too stupid for that.
The robots will surely end us - maybe even before climate change does.
10
Mark Zuckerberg is brilliant, as brilliant as Trump.
Yes, I'm being facetious. Both are con men extraordinaire. One got people to think they need so badly to be "liked" they will sign their lives away and the lives of their children and grandchildren so the rest of the world can make fun of them and their goofy photos. No, they're not cute, and not professional, thank you very much.
Kudos Mark Z., you fooled the world. Trump only fooled 60 million Americans, not even enough to beat Hillary. But the great Founders put in this EC loophole because they didn't trust the people to whom they handed a republic to govern. How dumb the American people be? Well, what can you say about a nation that gave the world Trump, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google. Making America not proud or great. Just the opposite, making US a laughingstock for handing the world more things we don't need to make our lives complete.
If you retain nothing else, remember this old saw:
The more you know, the LESS you need.
DD
Manhattan
3
Facebook started off as fun and good And as Maureen said, "A sight for sharing baby pictures" and it turned in the into Darth Vader and the Empire. Scary.
4
While I'm sure that many more people use Facebook than read your column, Maureen, pointing the finger at FB for pumping up Trump doesn't absolve you of all your own sins in normalizing him. I'm sure it feels great to excoriate Zuckerberg (he surely deserves it) but some of us still remember. I'm sure Hillary put you back on her invite list after reading this. Not.
So, you always thought talk of Zuckerberg running for Prez was scary, but that Trump running for President was just peachy? How screwy is that?
Maybe now the rest of you all will listen to those of us in education who've been trying to tell you that just accepting whatever these Silicon Valley "geniuses" have to say about the future is totally wrongheaded. They are 'reforming' your kids into utter stupidity so they can sell more devices, software and ads. More Trumps to come.
9
Maureen saying another billionaire running for President? Weren't you in the crowd that President Trump was lying about that?
2
And yet he uses that platform in unending support for the Democrat Party. Is Facebook evil and Zuckerberg a tool? Yes. Should we all be worried about technology companies, their algorithms, and their sheer footprint on our lives and data? But don't pretend he's dangerous because he got Trump elected. he was doing everything he could to get a different result.
The failure of Facebook to protect its subscribers could easily become the catalyst for restriction on freedom of speech. Those hateful trolls and bots work and the unsophisticated respond like trained seals. Mr. Zuckerberg needs to remind himself that with great power comes great responsibility. As to his running for president? Haven't we had enough of amateur hour by now?
4
So Mark Zuckerberg is no longer an atheist. I am racking my brain trying to determine if this is good or bad.
One thing Facebook has done is to reveal the absolute and utter ignorance of a huge portion of the American populace. Read a random selection of comments on any given post on Facebook. The breathtaking stupidity of many Americans will have you ready to renounce your citizenship. It's a national embarrassment to see the inanities people are willing to reveal about themselves. That's the real national security issue. No wonder the Russians could buy so much influence with only $100,000 ... the audience is a pack of fools.
5
Want to help? Check your FB no more than once a week.
i have no idea who looks at ads. I have totally learned to ignore them on Yahoo mail, except that thy slow my computer down.
Why shouldn't Zuckerberg run for public office? (He should be harder to bribe I mean lobby than the others.) The media should be required to set standards for all political ads. E.g. this Bill Murphy who wants to raise taxes... what office is he running for in which state? (I found out today that it is apparently the race for gov of NJ -- and what party does B.M. belong to? Column voters whose ranks might well include the illiterate won't notice or care.
No longer an atheist-- what does this mean? Not a good thing either. I pefer one of those Socialist (Commie) atheists to an Atlt-right fundamentalist.
Don't pray for me, Argentina.
1
In my FB profile (which I quit 4 yrs ago), I put my residence as some city in Turkey. I was in Chicago at the time. All the ads were in Turkish. Made them less annoying.....
1
So, now we find out that Mark Zuckerberg is not nearly as smart as he thinks he is and maybe more stupid that we think he is. This is going to get very interesting.
2
It breaks my heart to know the injury Mark Zuckerberg and the likes of him have brought upon humanity and the legions of dunces (aka users) who blindly boost him in the process.
4
I quit Facebook when this news came out last week. Glad I did.
3
Mark my words: insecure nerds will destroy the world
4
Please pass a law prohibiting anybody owning more than a million dollars to run for office.
Any office.
Please pass it now.
(Fat chance ? Obese chance.)
Great column! It's not enough for Zuckerberg to have made billions and acquired billions of Facebook slaves, no, he wants to take over the government too? Sounds as selfish and full of self-regard as Trump, another duplicitous megalomaniac. NO THANKS.
No way did I ever join FB but it seems obvious to me that if you stay on you should realize and admit that you are being manipulated by Russian propaganda, with Facebook's acquiescence.
3
Oh Mo,
I'm moving to St. John's.
1
I have a FB account, but barely go on until I am forced to due to an invite to a party or to see baby pix. I had no idea it was a source of "news" until my TVless hairdresser told me about "something I saw on FB." I asked my 30 something staff who told me they don't read the NYT etc. to get news. FB feed. I had been clueless. Congress needs to start regulating these platforms just as it does the media if they are moving from ads to remove belly fat for everyone to targeted Fake News. It is no longer a platform to find old friends, see baby pictures and RSVP, but a willing propaganda arm. And Maureen is right to mention Kuschner - this is a rarely told story in Russiagate, but I do think this is where he is vulnerable.
With that said, i have lost all respect for David Plouffe if he is asssitng Mark Zuckerburg.
3
Maureen Dowd, Thanks for this ! As a public scbool teacher I can see how tech companies are using our children to promote product and to capture their future consumers; all under the guise of educating our youth. I just finished reading, Jonathan Taplin's book , whose takes its title from an alleged Zuckerberg quote: Move Fast and Break Things. The future is now and it is one big scary world ruled by a few monopolies. Oh Brave New World!
2
The more adults use facebook, the more childlike they become.
Perfect for them to fall for the ruse. This person and his program have turned society into a high school hallway.
209
That's one of the best sentences ever!
1
Facebook has a reporting mechanism for pages and quotes that are questionable but they have no way to report hate speech unless it directly threatens someone's life. But if a right wing site posts something that, for example, singles out a local reporter, inflamming the lunatic fringe and putting the reporter's safety in danger, there is no way to report that and FB takes no responsibility for the thousands of shares.
2
Yes. It might not even be great when the emperor is Marcus Aurelius!
1
Gee, it's been so long since I've been impressed with a Dowd column, which is meaningful only to me, I know. This piece is well-researched and convincing. I ask myself why we don't have an FDA for other inventions besides new medications and foods? As it turns out, the market doesn't do such a hot job of anticipating consequences, except for financial gain.
1
I think Mark Zuckerberg does imagine himself as being a marketable name,in the same light as Donald Trump,except for more resources by far and the mere fact David Plouffe is overseeing his 50 state project this year can be taken as a sign Zuckerberg see's himself as capable of running our country.If Donald Trump,with his limited grasp of the English language was successful the skies the limit for someone of Zuckerbergs obviously intellectual superiority not to mention his more than similar ego driven sense of self worth.Trump builds high rises,with other peoples money with obvious failures such as Atlantic City where 25,000 people were left jobless,and banks stiffed.The notion of Zuckerberg running would actually make perfect sense,with his mastery of the tech world.
The fact being, Zuckerberg might actually be better qualified than the author of "the art of the deal",hardly a business mans bible as the habitual liar has often stated.At least Zuckerberg would be far less an embarrassment........one would think.He would be extremely hard pressed to be a bigger one anyway.
1
You can always turn off the TV to avoid Trump. Zuck can control the very data you are allowed to see.
2
I'm an American latino and I was using fake facebook and twitter accounts to spread memes.
I was part of the group that made the memes that said you could text to vote for president like it's American Idol.
1
Wanna control the out-of-control Facebook?
Then boycott Facebook.
Deprive Zuck of his primary assets: all of you.
Without you, Zuck is over. And finally under control.
5
Just say NO to Facebook. Case closed.
4
Zuckerberg is “no longer an atheist”?
As an atheist, and one who converted to atheism from Christianity, I’m pretty sure that’s a one-way street. Not 100% sure, but sure enough not to believe Zuckerberg.
But we all can probably agree on one thing - it is next to impossible to get elected POTUS and be an atheist, unless said atheist is willing to lie.
That would cover our current POTUS, who lies as easily as he breathes, and it probably covers Zuckerberg as well.
Ironic, because virtually all of the Founding Fathers were atheists, or, to be careful, militant agnostics.
Does AI contain the seeds of our destruction? Yeah, probably.
2
The Facebook fake news didn't faze the French voters. They voted Macron 2:1 over Le Pen. 21M Frenchmen can't be wrong.
Here in America 60M Americans WERE wrong and trump won the election by MINUS 3M votes. Only in America can you hear the party that got 3M MORE votes ask, 'Just what do we have to do to win an election around here?'
4
We have to elect a Democratic Congress with honest brokers who are willing to address the Reconstruction horror aka the Electoral College. We need a national election for President, as the rest of Western democracies have. We do not need the chopped up, jerry rigged system we have. Have a national election without the middle men who take our votes and negotiate who we actually voted for. Trump lost the popular vote by 3M votes. Clinton should have gone to PA and WI; she didn't, but she did win a popular vote majority. A grifter now occupies the Oval Office. As Mencken stated: the time would come when we would elect an absolute moron to the Presidency. Trump golfs; the government is run by Mnuchin, Zinke, Tillerson et al. Zinke will cost us our National Park system via mining interests. Tillerson will sell us out to his oil interests in Russia and the Balkans. Mnuchin is just a garden variety crook. The guy who flies around on chartered jets has nothing to do with national security. Jared's only expertise is in rental leases; Netanyahu and the Saudis will write our ME foreign policy.
2
I believe Mr. Zuckerberg should be prosecuted for election fraud and Facebook fined in the billions of dollars. Zuckerberg has unleashed a digital monster to afflict the Nation with real "fake news".
2
If you pass by an ultra-rich neighborhood and see a home being walled in up to twelve feet high, Zuckerberg may have bought it. He ALWAYS insists that all his estates around the world be fenced in so the ''little people'' never bother him.
And yes, this is the same Zuckerberg who wants our borders to disappear so his average worker salary can drop even more.
5
If and this is a big if, he was ignorant of the Russian attack used by Facebook- he really shouldn't be In charge of anything.
3
Mark Zuckerberg, for all his wealth and success, sounds like a very immature young man who doesn't care to see the "big picture" and what is really at stake.
4
What exactly are the standards at US intelligence agencies if they were shocked at Russia's annexation of Crimea, got Iraq's WMD wrong, were surprised when NK detonated a hydrogen bomb. and are playing catch-up on widespread Russian manipulation via social media?
3
Those made up stories on Facebook go viral and yes they did affect the vote. I had many friends say that they could not vote for Hillary because she has a violent temper and demonstrated that by trashing and destroying her hotel rooms when she got angry at something. Never mind that no hotel or hotel employee ever complained about such behavior and no other media reported it. It must be true if it was passed around on social media. And what about the pizza gate lie? That almost got people killed!
People that are the subject of such lies need to start suing these people and organizations that propagate lies. Drive them out of business.
2
I'm an old left-leaning guy who gets his daily political fix by reading the NYT and the WSJ and by watching MSNBC and Fox. I really try to listen to both sides. The only social network I've ever participated in was set up to facilitate an upcoming 50th high school reunion. But despite the right mocking the idea that a $150,000 expenditure on Facebook ads could influence an election, it seems very possible to me. Flipping a total of 40,000 votes in the right districts in PA, Michigan and Washington would have done it. I wonder how many voters in those states believed that HRC ran a child sex ring out of a Washington pizzaria or that Obama was a Kenyan-born socialist who hated America?
3
Never forget: if you are getting something for free online, it means YOU are the product.
5
Much ado about not much at all, really - precisely the sort of thing about which we can expect to hear grousing from the likes of Dowd. Zuck's importance is overstated nonetheless. Fake clickbait stories posted by 'bots in Russia and Ukraine are nothing new either. And if the American electorate were stupid enough to be influenced by such fakery they would get what they deserve. I don't believe that to be the case, however. This is just more scapegoating by the losing party, who will go anywhere to avoid facing the fact it was the poor quality of their own candidate which was the major factor in the election of Trump.
Facebook needs to grow up as well as grow big, and Zuckerberg has more than some explaining to do, but why gild your column with a careless, lily-white lie at the very end. As anyone has done the homework knows, the charter change you refer to is not focused on any "run" for office but merely on holding an office. Scary as it may seem to you, it could be a sub-cabinet or cabinet post, for which Zuckerberg could be better qualified than some of current officeholders. When you jump the shark, you punch your whole case in the jaw -- why, because it reminds the reader to to watch out when someone doesn't let the truth get in the way of a good hit job.
2
Yup, he is not an atheist, but a firm believer in the "American Religion," the worship of the Almighty Dollar.
Clearly if GOD didn't want him to become rich, he wouldn't be rich. QED. (LoL.)
2
Mo, that was rich, just rich! The pen is mightier than the sword. All I can say is that I hope you've long retired to East Hampton by the time Zuckerberg chooses to run for President. Nice fake-out but no one was ore complicit in the election of Trump than you!
4
Mr Zuckerberg is much maligned and I am tired of all the sinister motives ascribed to him. I'm sure he is a good little capitalist
I would appreciate being taken off his lists however. I confess to going on Facebook under an alias to "track down" an old boyfriend who rejected me. I owed him an amends. I did not check out his status. I deleted his contact info and tried to terminate my accounts after he accepted my amend. If Mr Z could help alcoholics figure out how to contact old friends on FB without endless exposure to potential relapse through the dopamine stimulation of FB I would support a run for president. MD 28 years in AA
America has been interfering in other countries' elections since the dawn of the CIA.
American Hypocrisy at its best/worst.
1
The problem is not theFB adds, the problem is what, who you believe.
America believed the lies of Trump, in plain sight!
3
What's missing here is consideration of the fact that Hillary and pal David Brock weaponized social media against Sanders. She's hardly an innocent in all of this.
2
Shame on you for mentioning the ONLY proven election meddling and it was done by the DNC, Wasserman Schultz, and the Clinton camp.
2
As an older woman who lives in a different state from her many nieces and nephews and grandchildren, I love Facebook for enabling me to see postings and pictures, and keep a sense of closeness.
As an intelligent older woman I wouldn't dream of getting my information about the world from Facebook. Can we just say it?? The Russians targeted naïve easily persuaded Bernie supporters and flooded them with anti Hillary information. This accompanied by Bernie's constant unsupported innuendos about her, and his seeming delight in all of the phony anti Hillary sites set up by the Russians using Bernie's name, and for which he could deny responsibility, and which he admits he knew existed, gave leave to a bunch of ill informed worshippers to self righteously withhold their votes for Hillary. Both Bernie and the Russians continuously perpetuated an idea, totally ridiculous, of a stolen nomination. You could see of this in the comments sections of the NYT, where pro Bernie was running 20-1. The Russians knew what they were doing. This needs to be spelled out more in MSM, who dances around what really happened.
2
Boycott Facebook!! Do not open an account on FB and if you have one close it immediately. Down with Facebook; support Face-to-Face.
3
Fakebook has suborned treason against the USA. For that alone, its founder and board of directors need to tried on treason charges and proven guilty or innocent. Greed is behind its policy of taking people's posted material and mining it for ads. Greed is the exact same motivation that induced this social medium to accept spurious ads of Russian origin without scrutiny. Let the facts speak for themselves in a Federal courtroom.
3
Until a few weeks ago, one major financial website that refused to sensor even its most offensive and racist comments used to attract advertising from some large discount stock brokerage firms. Then the ads all disappeared. I wonder who made the decision to place TD Ameritrade, Charles Schwab and E-Trade ads on the web site and who pulled them.
Zuckerberg should stick to running his company and counting his billions, lest he unleash anti-semitism the likes of which this country has not seen since the 1930's.
1
So the silicon-based life form and wunderkind has proven feet of clay. Say it ain't so Mo.
1
We need Aaron Swartz.
1
"In July, the chief of Tesla and SpaceX told a meeting of governors that they should adopt A.I. legislation before robots start 'going down the street killing people.'"
We don't need AI for that. We already have more than enough guns.
1
Listen to Elon Musk!
1
Facebook has a lot of help from other companies, including the Times, as it keeps trying to extend its influence over people. So it is disingenuous to complain about Zukerberg's "little invention to warp democracy."
Op-ed columns end with: "I invite you to follow me on Twitter (@------) and join me on Facebook. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion)...." Paid subscribers such as myself are given the option to sign onto the Times web site by using Facebook or Google credentials.
I may be in the minority of people without a Facebook and Twitter accounts. I don't feel the need to provide Facebook and other social media companies with data that they could use or sell for nefarious purposes.
The point is don't help the social media companies to influence you and then complain that their influence is too much. Use tools such as Ghostery to block companies from tracking you.
2
Hillary Clinton lost the election because she was a lousy, disconnected Canidate. She was not Entitled to the Office, and she is solely responsible for her defeat. Russian ads not withstanding.
1
The people that rely on Facebook as their primary or even secondary source of news are the same people who believed Hillary Clinton was the the evil mastermind of a child sex ring run out of a Washington, D.C. pizza shop.
In short, they are mainly nitwits who would have voted for Donald Trump whether Facebook existed or not.
Facebook is simply showing us who and what we are, and it's disorienting for many who preferred to mentally reside in a soft fantasy where these uglier aspects of our nature were mostly hidden.
If it had as much influence as many left wing pearl clutchers seem to fear, Trump would have won in the landslide that his "election fraud commission" keeps insisting did really happen.
Zuckerberg's uninformed and hurtful interference in public education puts him in a category with Betsy DeVos. Would we elect her to be President? This guy is an immature dope with nothing to offer.
1
Several recent polls prove most Americans are ignorant unintelligent fools unable to understand that very foundation of American democracy. — Bill Mahr, Friday, September 22.
The press is partly to blame for this along with Facebook, and crappy schools, but mostly the people themselves who see individuals who have bothered to educate themselves as elites.
7
If anyone is still interested in empirical evidence, Anderson presents them in the September Atlantic. . ."Americans'. . .promiscuous devotion to the untrue". No wonder we have a national mess!
Imagine a newspaper pretending to not know how advertising works and I'll show you the NYT.
6
If we were a serious nation we would require candidates to discuss contemporary issues for liberal democracy, and our electorate would be interested and qualified enough to grade them. Since that's way above reality we will continue to vote for personalities who will lead us over the brink, which we may well have just done.
8
I wish Facebook users would encourage the company to include a "Dislike" button. Right now the default is silence, or approval (Like). But no simple explicit social signal of disapproval exists.
It would enable a more balanced view to comments, articles, and ads in our new 21st Century Town Square.
20
I closed my Facebook account in 2014 and never started Twitter. Nothing really happened. I still have friends. I still get invited. I still get informed myself using a variety of internet media sources. Most people stay on Facebook because they are anxious about losing contacts and social relevance. That fear is not justified but the danger of widespread manipulation is real. Time to log off.
40
Robots with A.I. have already taken over in at least one place, the comics. In Dilbert robots with no soul are threatening to kill human workers. I think that it won't be long before Silicon Valley starts working on equipping robots with an artificial soul. I hope they don't use the Donald's as a model.
http://dilbert.com/strip/2017-09-15
5
Thank you Ms. Dowd.
Zuckerberg needs to listen. Mr. Musk is right and obviously Putin believes the same thing about the misuse of AI.
Do not let up on Facebook and its leader.
12
Zuckerberg is the fox in the chicken pen. He is not to be believed about anything and his ideas are absurd.
Trump complains about "fake news", why complain that's what got him elected. "Sad". I have a friend who said she could not vote for Hilary because of what she read about her on face book. Now that's sad!
16
@ mark stysiack, Long Island, M.Y. "I have a friend who said she could not vote for Hilary because of what she read about her on face book. Now that's sad!"
I could not agree more.
If I had friends like that I'd be very sad, too.
Or is that not what you meant?
Lol, I think there was plenty of evidence outside of Facebook for a reasonable person to reject Clinton.
"He has said he is no longer an atheist"... Does that imply that at least God (and his many followers) might be on his side when he runs for President? Does the world need another immature billionaire to precipitate the next catastrophe?
11
I ask,
Why should this 33-year-old guy be worth over $70 billion [and I don't care how much he is planning to "give away"]? And why should he have control over that stupendous amount of money.
What we have is the remarkable invention and tool known as "the internet"—run amuck!
6
Next billionaire? We haven't had the first one yet.
7
For heaven's sake, Maureen, the Russians didn't use Facebook to sway our election. We use the Internet to spread our propaganda a lot more effectively than Russia does.
4
Facebook has proven to be an effective tool for mind manipulation - on a mass scale. The creator defends his monster against such allegations with claims of innocence....until after great damage has been done, its evil no longer deniable.
The monster is unrestrained. Its master protests government regulations requiring transparency to reveal who purchases the ads, who is behind the propaganda circulated by his monster. Facebook is a monster infected with bots and trolls outside Zuckerberg's control and he resists any government oversight. What is government for if not to protect its citizens? Should our government do nothing while Zuckerberg releases his Trojan Horse to run free, unreined over our country?
We believe in the right to free speech, but we should demand to know who is behind the speech. When Trump spouts lies, he is free to do so, but we know there is a demented conman behind the lies. When Facebook circulated defamatory stories about Hillary Clinton, how would they have been received had we known Vladimir Putin was behind them?
We know that Republicans in Congress will not pass legislation to regulate Facebook to protect our country. Americans must decide: do we sit by as Trumpikins push our government to build a boondoggle wall along our southern border to protect us from Mexican immigrants. or do we demand our government regulate Facebook to prevent Russians from ever again influencing the gullible to elect a dangerous duffus our president?
6
I think most of the entrenched HRC haters, and Trumplodites, would have simply been thankful that Putin was getting the "truth" out there.
There's a simple way to destroy Zuckerberg's machine. Delete your Facebook account.
24
Mark Zuckerberg exemplifies the wisdom of requiring a president to be at least 35 years old. Maybe we should increase it to 40, recognizing of course that some people never grow up.
10
Especially when we're seeing these millennials not maturing the same as previous generations.
Social media have become the opium of the people. They have been segmented, so that the 12-16 year olds have their drug, the 17-24s theirs, etc...
And the problem is not just political ads: The amount of nonsense and hoaxes on the site is literally training people to accept fake stories as golden truths. The content is irrelevant. Each of the rare times I log into FB, I find myself correcting my "friends'" posts. There are those soppy disgusted feel-good ads about guys giving beggars 10 dollars, or the one about Daisy the guide dog who led people out of the WTC on 9/11... On and on and on.... People wasting their time and burning up fossil fuel for servers to hold all that garbage.
4
Musk is a doer and visionary. Musk is right.
Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me. Wanna bet? There are 12 million humans dead in Europe because of words and many people in the US still touting them.
9
This is just the beginning. Imagine Google and everything it knows about us being put into the service of a political candidate. Facebook is nothing compared to that.
3
I'm not sure that we are ready for a president Zuckerberg. Even if he isn't an atheist.
2
Congress is ill equipt to fix the American health care system, repair our broken roads and bridges, or improve an underperforming educational system.
Does anyone seriously think can regulate cyber world?
7
Will to power.
Imagine Zuckerberg looking in the mirror in the morning and asking himself, “what should I do today?” He’s not a scientist or poet. He wouldn’t win any athletic competition. Doubtful changing diapers and reading stories to his kids is satisfying as a full-time occupation.
Zuckerberg is however, a visionary, like Musk and probably Putin and perhaps even Trump. Put Jeremy Corbin and even Bernie Sanders in that category too.
That Zuckerberg should be considering politics should be no surprise. As a visionary, his look in the mirror question is more likely, “what should I do for the next sixty years of my life, and what can I do with all this money?”
“Will to power” he has, and money and time.
3
Like Trump, who are these people with opinions? What is their background that I should trust one word they say? Getting lucky that some stupid app goes viral?
It seems luck is the one thing in common with modern capitalism - we worship the lucky.
2
Facebook probably has been going bad but we have been brainwashed to think it only promotes the good. Now we know, all those plates of food, baby pictures etc. are just a cover up for what may well be a political agenda, easily manipulated by clever fb identities. The dark side of the force is there and doing well. And Zuckerberg well should have been aware of all those Russians creating obvious fake identities.
3
Hilary spent $1 billion on a losing campaign and we, the unwashed, are supposed to believe that the Russians spending $150,000 on Facebook was the reason she lost? I'm glad I'm no longer a liberal.
3
Here's some "ColdHardTruth" for you; first, Hillary won the popular vote, and second, what H.L. Mencken said in the 30's is still true, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people." $150K was just a shrewd bet on the time-honored dense American mainstream.
1
The irony is that the Russians and their business partners spent much more money when Hillary was Secretary of State and they were trying to buy a US uranium mine. The NY Times published two stories on this topic in 2015. Read here: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-... and open the graphic as well to better understand how the money flowed.
Am I the only one who sees the idiotic humor of accusing Facebook (owned by a radical Liberal Loon) to be the causality of HilLIARy's loss in the Presidential Election of 2016? Would Zuckerberg actually allow Conservatives (and Russians, I guess) to bastardize his Social Media Platform to their advantage? Is someone looking at what role Facebook played in support of HilLIARy? If this isn't a tempest in a teapot I don't know what might be!
1
To all those who call themselves liberals - this should be a sign when a seriously maniacal oligarch uses the "liberal" banner. It is scary how under liberal tenure how powerful and scary the oligarchs like google, facebook and amazon have become. They do not represent blue collar or the middle class. Scary trllionaires controlling everything and all information.
4
Well, Maureen, it's very re-assuring to know that this is all Zuckerberg's fault, and that Trump, Kushner & Company have no responsibility for colluding with Russian in the 2016 Election . . . however, I'd still take Zuckerberg over Trump as president.
2
So Zuckerberg was wrong about how malevelent people could exploit Facebook. Ok fine- but has the columnist ever been wrong about anything?
Making mistakes is part of life. Let's see how he fixes them.
But even so, he would be a better, more honest, more moral, President than either Trump or Hubris Hillary.
Nice to see Dowd write a serious column for a change, and congrats to her for not taking a gratuitous shot at Hillary regarding her problems in the 2016 election. A refreshing change all around.
Social media is viewed as somehow superior to all other media because it is hip and sexy and "in" when compared to radio, broadcast TC, wired cable and printed newspapers, and so it gets a pass on what it does lest one be labeled a Luddite.
Time to regulate social media like a public monopoly at the federal level. Use an updated Patriot Act, in conjunction with the Espionage Act, to monitor it for any attempt by anyone to hurt national security or deny Americans their constitutional rights. Start campaigns that paint FB and Twitter uses as suspect in terms of their loyalties until users decide it's just not worth it anymore.
And haul Zuckerberg before Congress and grill him until he cries for his Mommy.
5
Some Russian oligarch spent 100,000 dollar to influence US public opinion and the extremist Mercer family spent tens of millions and yet Dowd tells us we should be afraid of the former.
Facebook apologizes! Wow how magnanimous! People are hooked on Facebook and Twitter without realizing that they are being tracked - likes, dislikes, and opinions. Power wielded ouside normal protections. Companies controlled by people with little education. Bill and Melinda Gates use the profits of technology for good - Facebook and Twitter for power and control.
To be elected President a person has to first be a person, second have a modicum of humanity, third be able to relate to voters, fourth be at least slightly likeable and finally have a natural base of supporters.
Suckerberg has none and is probably behind only Gates as the most disliked person in the US.
Musk for POTUS. At least he has a sense of morality and honesty and understanding of human behavior as well as technology.
1
Zuckerberg can kiss those dreams of being president goodbye. He better figure out how to stop Facebook Frankenstein from ruining the country. I'm not on it. I hate the idea of it. I hate the reality of it. Get to work, Mark.
3
I'm used to finding humor in Ms. Dowd's essays, but this left me feeling like I had read a Stephen King story with chills going down my spine. Facts are rarely scarier than our imaginations, but this is one of these moments.
Why do people who strike the "mother lode" with a combination of imagination & serendipity think that qualifies them as great thinkers"? Zuckerberg is as ignorant & feckless about world matters & strategies, not to mention AI, as our pathetic President Drumpf.
I have hardly posted on FB for the last few weeks & shunned LinkedIn for a few years now. I fear being hacked & think twice before accepting a "friend request", after finding I had previously friended religious fanatics & bigots unwittingly.
It would behoove us all to be aware of the things in this column when we use FB, Twitter, Snapchat, or any of the other social network & media that cater to our vanity & desire to be "liked". I fear we may fall into the trap of AI using us instead of the other way around.
If I am given a choice between Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Trump in 2020, I will vote for Mr. Zuckerberg. He's older and wiser than the current infant.
Dan Kravitz
2
Could the real access of evil be: Facebook-Google-Apple. We willingly give them everything. Look where it has gotten us.
2
In the movie "Social Network" Zuckerberg was portrayed as a smug individual who has no concern for others and totally lacking in introspection. He appears not to have grown since his privileged days at Harvard.
2
I keep looking for something worthwhile on Facebook but haven't found anything yet. I am beginning to think maybe I am wasting my time. Some people I know who keep posting about cats and tattoos certainly are wasting theirs.
2
Zuckerberg and his cohorts are such money grubbers that they would take money for snuff films if they thought they could get away with it. Boycott is the answer.
4
Likelihood that boycott would work? 0%
Looks like Facebook violated even their simplistic "Do No Evil" corporate credo.
2
That's Google's motto.
Maybe, but that's Google's Code of Conduct, not Facebook's.
Thank you Maureen for raising such a scary issue affecting virtually all of us, everywhere.
FB is populated by many FB addicts, can't get through the day without a fix. The thought that FB helped elect Trump is an example of AI gone awry. Z is like many successful entrepreneurs and VC's, they believe they are infallible. Why not run for POTUS since I am infallible, see my billions?
To further the AI fear: I know Phd's in CS who have worked on what they call "Evolutionary Computing": Writing code that 'evolves' to perfection depending on how its mission is defined.
The likes of Musk have raised the flag and it is up to us to resist. The fear is that many will succumb to 'willful ignorance' and fall into what NB below says quoting Draper "People want to be told what to do so badly that they'll listen to anyone." That describes the Trump followers I know personally. Good people otherwise but who have been conditioned to follow 'orders'.
Soon to come: Who issued the order, a person or a program?
2
I don’t think FB favored Trump over Hillary at all. From my perspective I saw as many anti Trump posts as anti Hillary posts, all equally hostile.
Um, Facebook isn't AI.
Clinton is the rightful President. The more information that comes out about the 90k voter plus wins across three states , Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, the more evident it will be Mr. Trump is an imposter.
3
Time for a tech tax to replace income tax. Now that's influence.
2
What woodwork are these people -Zuckerberg, Hillary, Trump- and many others coming out of. Or to say it another way, out of what woodwork are these people coming?
We are coming up on the 100th Anniversary of the October, 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and most of this year has celebrated the Russian Revolution of 1917. Most of this year in America has felt like we are more than ripe for revolution or civil war throughout our land and culture. Now we are fighting some kind of allegiance and loyalty wars, if not church/state wars on football fields of all places.
Things are going from bad to worse as we wake up to each new day. Having read David Remnick's "New Yorker" interview with Hillary last night, all of this feels even more compounded. The woman is out there by herself, isolated on "Hillary Island," largely of her own choosing and doing.
Facebook has already proven itself to be a corrupted, infiltrated, sabotaged enemy of the American People. It has already been taken over, hacked as they say, from regular everyday Americans. The last person we need as president is Zuckerberg. He has lost control of his own device and is a Frankenstein monster of his own invention.
I don't know from where it is going to come, but if the USA evolves no rational, competent & successful leadership in statecraft, businesscraft, etc., between now and 2020, we may as well put out welcome mat for Kim Jong, Putin, et. al. Our leadership has failed us badly.
3
With Facebook, like Twitter and other social media, YOU are the product. Facebook had the information about these nefarious "advertisers" all along and was happy to take their money and target their users because that's what they do; it's how they make their money and increase their value. Only now, that their caught with their pants down, is it a matter that needs to be addressed; "we'll get better."
Terrific! And yet people continue to blithely use the service as their sole news feed. Oh yeah, we're ready for the 2018 election!
2
Perhaps one part of the answer is to turn OFF the news feed from Facebook?
Consider me an ex-facebooker. I have better things to do with my time anyway.
3
One interesting tidbit here is that out of some 1 billion users Facebook could only dig up 2,300 people with grossly anti-Semitic interests. Given recent headlines this provides some perspective regarding the most-altered of the alt-right.
3
Seriously folks. Zuck in not the enemy here. He's fabulously successful, give him credit and hold ourselves accountable for common sense and awareness. If you can't tell a story is real, you're concerned about it, do some research - it's never been easier. As far as AI goes - we should be very worried. Not about Hal but about Russian military, Chinese military, etc use of AI to offset our current superiority. Think they won't use AI to harm us? They already have!
2
It's good that Elon Musk is sounding the alarm about the Fearsome Five -- Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. The problem is that it's far too late to reign them in. They're completely entrenched in the fabric of global digital life. Microsoft started it all. Like the Borg, it assimilated countless companies and their products and stuffed them into Windows, turning it into a python able to crush still more independents. The others have followed Microsoft's model. They stifle independent thought and impose their own reality. Like us, click on us endlessly, the stream never stops. Give us your soul, we'll replace it with chips answerable to us. Oh yes, they want to rule us with the viciousness of the machines in The Matrix. They want to drain our neural energy to satisfy their endless hunger for "content." We had a chance maybe 10+ years ago to preserve our mental and spiritual freedom. That opportunity is now lost forever. Bow down before the one your serve / You're going to get what you deserve.
2
I have yet to hear or read anything about or from Zuckerberg that could ever prompt me to even consider voting for him as selectman in Meddybemps let alone POTUS.
Talented programmer? Doubtful, a $300 million pay out says otherwise.
Robert Mercer, on the other hand, is a brilliant programmer but with very distasteful political views.
So here we are in 2018 being pushed from pillar to post by the likes of Zuckerberg and Mercer. This will not end well.
This excellent column by Mo (you're back!) doesn't even touch on the role FB, twitter, instagram and snapchat play in bullying and especially teenagers' lives, No one is held accountable for anything. Trump bullies, slanders (should it be considered libel?) his enemies and he is never held accountable for it. There are laws governing what reporters write in "the press," of which Trump has used frequently against legitimate reporters who well source their reporting, yet he accuses the former president of illegal wiretapping and everyone shrugs. A classmate can write anything about another classmate and no consequences.
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Zuckerberg is the quintessential bully. FB was created or coopted by him to bully and humiliate his classmates while pretending to be a way to connect. Sly little bully.
Isn't it outrageous that Musk would call for regulation of A.I. when his 'autonomous' vehicles would rely on such A.I.? Musk confuses science fiction with science, and any innovation can be abused for nefarious purposes: who knows, one day, his autonomous car might be commandeered to plow down innocent pedestrians? The problem is not with the technology but with the abuse any technology can be put to. Apple phones could be used to detonate IED's etc.
FB and Google use analytics and mining of your posts to gather information about you and to direct advertisers to you. That is not A.I. That is data interpretation.
More dangerous than Zuck is Elon.
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Well said. Dowd is not exactly tech-savvy and she's the one who is confused about A.I. and information.
The combination of old age and ignorance is scary as we are experiencing right now but the combination of young and arrogance is even more scary.
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I’m constantly hearing about Russian ads, and the fake news that swayed the election away from the favored establishment candidate. And about how our hallowed democracy was tampered with by Putin. Unfortunately I haven’t actually come across any examples of these ads or fake news that was rampant across social media.
I know the media and concerned citizens aren’t talking about Fox News – they’ve been manipulating information for years and years and have never been accused of working for Putin – at least so far. Other than Fox loyalists, I’m pretty sure most people don’t believe much that comes from that source.
So…I know – from nearly all establishment sources, that Russia has run these propagandistic ads and fake news things of some kind – but I actually haven’t seen an example. I’m sure they must be out there – tons of information – clear examples of Russian meddling – with slyly worded messaging to get citizens to change their voting choices.
Maybe there’s a link someone can post. Or some pictures of these ads…or some Facebook examples of the fake news. Not Fox or Republican fake news…which any thinking person has repudiated for years upon years – but this Russian fake news that directly impacted our recent election. I’d really like to see an example of that. Might convince me that the intelligence community and other such historically reputable agencies and institutions, didn’t have some other agenda in mind.
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Yep. Very scary indeed. President Zuckerberg! Well, I'd much rather go around saying that than President Trump! There's bad stuff and there's really bad stuff!
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It's the monopolistic power that a few tech companies have that is creating the dystopia.
Thank you Maureen Dowd for saying what politicians are barely hinting at in their gentle handling of the rich and powerful Zuk. Us ordinary mortals are at the mercy of the billionaires and dictators with their hands on the levers.
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Nothing is totally evil or totally good: that decision is left to the users. I am sure those millions who have to tell the world how far along the road to the restaurant, supermarket etc they are, or post cryptic messages, or mindlessly promote themselves to the point of ouch, are not aware they are unwittingly part and parcel of a vast machinery that at this point controls the world. I am old, handicapped, and FB is my window to the world. People do not answer phones; my e-mail is 95% commercial advertising. Most people have abandoned letter-writing; soon, even literacy will not be needed. Therefore, FB. On the other hand, if I buy a pair of underpants, two seconds later my FB is inundated with offers [mostly Chinese companies pretending to be American]. Thus, though I agree completely with both articles in the NYT about FB today, I will not stop using it.
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"Fakebook" or "Facadebook" would be more fitting. The hollowing out of the word "friend", now used to describe a person you may not even know or like, to whom you merely give access to your page (often a much edited, self congratulatory version of one's self) - that alone is enough to say no to a Facebook account. I can't abide this company and its product. I'll never understand why so many people have succumbed to it.
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Many seemingly innocent things can also be dangerous -- apparently including Facebook. Learn how to use it and manage it properly -- specific friend lists, etc. -- and you take away the power of the nefarious user to reach you. Just don't use FB blindly.
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There is only one way to use it and manage it properly: don't use it at all.
He'll make it all better by donating lots of money to charities that honor and promote him and his wife and the Facebook clan will vote him into some office, based on his "business acumen."
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People are handing Facebook and others incredible amounts of personal information which slice, dice, aggregate, and sell. Information that will live forever in databases around the world.
Employers are getting psychological profiles of prospective employees built from years of naive people sharing their lives with their friends from childhood forward.
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It's imperative that new young parents today ignore FB entirely. Please do not start a digital presence for your babies and toddlers. If a new generation just says NO, a lot of cyberbullying, targeted advertising, data collection, opinion-mongering and all the rest of this will just go away.
If I want to share pictures of my very cute grandchild with my friends and relatives, I send it by email (which at least is somewhat not as public as FB).
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote." ~Ben Franklin
We are all to blame for the Russian interference in our election. Zuckerberg focused on making money, politicians failed to implement sensible regulations, the media failed to identify the story until after the election, and voters failed to use their critical thinking skills regarding information available on Facebook. All of us were asleep at the wheel and took our democracy for granted.
We can't change the past. But we need to learn everything we can about how this happened so we never let it happen again. The beauty of this country is that eventually we right ourselves when we go to far away from our founding principles.
For far too long politicians have declared that government is the problem. They've been derlect in their duties to implement sensible regulations on silicon valley to ensure that they don't become a threat to our country. The time has come for our political leaders to do what's right even if Zuckerberg doesn't like it and create sensible regulations on the appropriate use of social media. Transparency and rules serve to protect our liberty. Let this be our aha moment.
Calling Zuckerberg a genius is like calling Trump a successful business man. He's a kid who got lucky with an absurd idea cooked up in a dorm. He invented nothing.
He wasn't smart enough to know how easily his little brainstorm could be manipulated and used in harmful ways by the most devious people. It'll be a couple more years before he's old enough to run for President. That may not be enough time for him to grow up.
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I've never understood how FB could be so popular smongst seemingly intelligent people. $100,000 and 3000 ads does not "swing or influence" elections. Contrast that with the $1.2 billion that Hillary supporters spent on her failing campaign trying to curry favor and votes for Clinton. Maybe zuckerburg, instead of visiting 50 states and taking a onemonth's paternity leave (instead of 2months as originally scheduled , and sander burg who spent this past several months writing a book , going on book tours and giving lectures all over the country, should stay home and take care of real business.
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Pay attention to the mention of Robert Mercer in this piece this is separate from zuckerbeid. Take a look at who he is .
With all that Facebook adheres to with Freedom of speech. In the US. It appears that the ultra radicals. "Terrorists" are using that against us .
Will we voluntarily give up that freedom in small doses to start ?
I enjoy facebook. It has connected me with people, places, events, I would never have without facebook. Important meaningful connections creating actions helpful to the communities I am interested in helping and being part of. I would not have been able to make these connections without facebook and google.
I use facebook knowing i am putting certain aspects of my private life into the public arena. Maybe i should be more concerned about that than i am, but I am old enough to remember how marketers targeted us all before facebook and google. In those days they used what magazines you subscribed to, where you lived, ate out, went to school, how you voted and how much money you made to target you for certain products ... via the US mail! Now with FB marketing is possible on a much wider basis.
It is not all bad! For ex: I am a musician who FB knows is interested in sound healing, cello music, meditation. I get more fascinating useful info from people, museums, healers, musicians, meditation groups, etc from all over the world than i ever would if i didn't use FB.
I caution people, don't throw out this tool ...shape it! Create rules, ethics and laws to ensure it is not used for nefarious reasons such as happened with the last election. Don't let the bad guys destroy this amazing invention and others that can be very helpful to the world.
I would caution Mr. Zuckerberg...focus on fixing FB not running for president.
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I think the film "The Social Network" is a must see for all Facebook users. It reveals the small, twisted mindset of its originator, a brilliant, disloyal and insecure little boy. I remember thinking to myself, I would never let this emotionally stunted child determine how I socialized or connected with love ones. I've never used Facebook. Oh how it has metastasized.
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Read Dave Eggers, "The Circle." Great book that was written as fiction, but is turning out to be non-fiction. And, not happy, non-fiction.
Turns documents only when threatened by openness legislation. Takes money from foreign bodies, potentially influencing political campaigns. Makes no effort to discern between fake and real news in the site's threads. Inept company at best, treasonous at worst. Cancelling my FB -not that I have logged on in months anyways.
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Very important stuff, thank you for this article. Just as voting is one of the more important things we as citizens should do, in today's world, understanding the high degree of misinformation and false advertising available to us is another. Best to always take one's point of view with a grain of salt. Even you, Maureen, often have an agenda.
I suppose this column is a warning shot about AI and not an argument that Facebook cost the election for Hillary or even that Marky Zuck has aspirations of becoming the next billionaire emperor. Identifying that there was propaganda involved with the election may soothe some wounds, but it doesn't explain why so many Democrats stayed home, nor refute that the candidate who made overtures to the working class won the working class vote. I'm sure Mr. Mueller and his crew will have answers to the political chicanery, but in the end Hillary lost of her own assumptions. She was mentally writing her Inaugural Address at a time she should have been presenting plans for putting laborers back to work in a post labor age. She, like Trump, should have started thinking about labor a year before the election. But that does not even seem to be an afterthought for her, nor apparently for the Democratic Party. The Great Lakes states were in the bag, she thought; they thought; they were not and at present they are in fact close to becoming a lost cause. But financially more than politically, AI is a clear and present danger, even if the political Mr. Putin is the Professor Moriarty in this regard. If the goal is to rule the world, you must first rule the money. The US proved that at the end of the cold war. Guess who was taking notes. Instead of worrying about the Facebook genius, we should be looking to support the next genius to defend us from this more present danger.
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Facebook's responses are quite a deception considering the level of sophistication that they have and their business model. The deception appears to me as intentional since without the ability to mine and target data on Facebook, the "baby picture collection" site would not be able to exist. Unfortunately, a large part of the population can't tell facts from fiction and combine that with the targeting of information to fit one's model of the world, this type of propaganda can be more powerful than any news media source. Since very few people read anything more than a news snippet, it is easy for biases to be created or supported. This is and should be a big issue to discuss since freedom of speech should come with some accountability.
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What is amazing to me is that Facebook makes its money by selling YOUR information...and people still flock to it. (I opted out in 2006, after a brief test with bogus information.) That there was manipulation of our political process via this Tower of Babel, is unsurprising.
Good luck trying to cancel your account, by the way. It took a long time and significant badgering to get them to remove mine, rather than just 'deactivate' it.
What is needed is regulation.
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This is an overdue look (but should be simply the beginning) at the issue of technology getting ahead of the humans using it.
Facebook is unbelievably overrated by itself, users and shareholders...and when their advertisers wake up...watch out.
There needs to be more public discussion of how technology can be best utilized. We are in the 5th inning of tech potential and the top of the 1st inning in the average humans ability to use it as a tool, not a way of life.
Musk is right.
And Putin' remarks not only make me right, but point out the need to maintain human logic and discipline into the everyday use of tech.
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Sounds like another wave is coming that will sell trickle-down 'voodoo' economics and regulatory roll-backs to the public in the guise of patriotism and common sense.
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Judging from the behavior of friends, family and many million strangers never to be met by me, Facebook has many of the attributes of addiction: little or no impulse control, constant craving and searching, a specious sense of satisfaction or well-being and now, finally, control from master pushers of the high. Crash to come.
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What would Ayn Rand say to the anti technologists, surely listening to
Mozart with the latest technology is fields away from the turntables of old.
Surely having access to lectures on youtube being able to go over the
mathematical proofs or studying the history of Rome,Ayn would nod her head.
Then bobbing in and out of the Saturn rings and sending data to this small
blue spot is achievement beyond the iron age worthy of respect,Ayn nods her head.We could go on tossing wild fears about but the inward paths need repair,journeys to the self are roads not travelled,we need to consider when.
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What seems often to be ignored is that Facebook, Twitter, and other so-called "social media" would not be effective propaganda weapons and tools for manipulation if the majority of the audience - US voters & others - were less ignorant, had even modest critical thinking skills, and evinced an emotional maturity beyond that of a 13 year old. Facebook and Twitter do have to be held to account, but their power to influence would be vastly reduced simply by better education ("education" broadly conceived").
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Education doesn't matter when people on both sides of the political spectrum hold ideology and religion to be more important. Even about 25% of Democrats are creationists, and education hasn't helped their decade long slide to the their position since the Civil War. A rational approach would have demanded that Democrats remain a viable political party, but ideology has resulted in a pushing the same losing agenda again, again, and again.
As noted, John, "education broadly conceived". Merely sending children off to school (or home schooling) does not necessarily result in well-informed voters or improve critical thinking. We are both talking about failures of "education". The point remains - people who are well-informed and capable of at least a moderate level of critical thought and who understand "weight of evidence" are not susceptible to Twitter and Facebook - or anti-science - nonsense.
Something that strikes me- To paraphrase Zuckerberg, "Really? You can do that with Facebook?" It occurs to me that the list of variations of deniability is annoyingly endless. Whether it is someone being questioned by a Senate Committee ("Ya know, I knew I was supposed to appear before you today. However, I didn't know I was supposed to be prepared to answer questions."), or a guy running Wells Fargo ("My employees are using our customers for ATM's? What a great idea."). And on and on.
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FB piling up the rubles? A $150,000ad campaign makes that a bit of a stretch, I'd say. They take in that much globally in a minute or so.150K is a rounding error.
All of this would go away if people would simply deactivate their Facebook accounts. Whatever benefit you receive from sharing your life online is not worth feeding the monster.
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the facebook has always been for losers, stop using it, those 456 people you list, they're not your friends, and neither is the facebook. corporatism has run amok, we've lost touch with what are the basic tenets of a civilization, what it takes to nurture an ethical society, what is reason versus cult (on the right and yes, on the left - look at the nonsense on college campuses, it's a cult), and how individuals live meaningful lives. every individual has a responsibility to sort this stuff out for themselves.
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