Zuckerberg Gives Public an Indication How He Lives In An Alternative Reality

There’s Reality which is often Bitter and Painful between moments of Joy or Pleasure, and there’s the Billionaire “Alternative Reality” Full of Rainbows!

Just Reading What He Wrote Yesterday…

So I’m not coming out of left-field with the title, or walking-back my reaction to my initial feelings after a night’s sleep. If anything, I’ve felt the clarity by affirmation of reflection enables me to dig my heels in. Let’s take a look at the crux of his latest missive on Facebook (2/16/17), posted under the title “Building Global Community”:

For the past decade, Facebook has focused on connecting friends and families. With that foundation, our next focus will be developing the social infrastructure for community — for supporting us, for keeping us safe, for informing us, for civic engagement, and for inclusion of all. — M. Zuckerberg

The basic logic here holds up — Yes, for the past 10 years, Facebook has definitely focused on connecting friends and families because it’s the only way to monetize and make investors a large stack of money. This ain’t some kind of altruistic 50-year Academic study, right? Right. Glad that’s out of the way. Now I can play “You See It That Way, I See It This Way” time with some of the later, equally saccharine claims or musings tossed out.

You See It That Way, I See It This Way

As a new experiment for me to avoid writing long paragraphs, I’m going to play the one-liner / sound byte game. I won’t purposefully take lines out of context, but rather choose ones which seem to embody the point being put forward. Sometimes Cynical, sometimes Sarcastic, I think it’s worth a try.

Online communities are a bright spot, and we can strengthen existing physical communities by helping people come together online as well as offline.

Look, I think there are some good examples and case studies, but on the whole, online communities are plagued with some of the worst behaviors known to human society. There are plenty of examples — one that comes to mind was actually a case where Facebook was the online community that led to an offline suicide — and though I know the source is an advocacy group, their statistics compiled on Cyber Bullying indicate online life ain’t so great.

To prevent harm, we can build social infrastructure to help our community identify problems before they happen…Looking ahead, one of our greatest opportunities to keep people safe is building artificial intelligence to understand more quickly and accurately what is happening across our community.

…so don’t worry about all the back-door access we give to the US Government agencies like the NSA and the FBI, because we’re doing it for your own good. While we make money off of you and what we know about you and your family and your friends. Our Moral Compass is just fine, why do you ask?

Social media already provides more diverse viewpoints than traditional media ever has.

Aww look at the cute little English language acrobatics to call “disgusting” or “outright stupid” or “garbage” viewpoints “diverse.”

But our goal must be to help people see a more complete picture, not just alternate perspectives. We must be careful how we do this. Research shows that some of the most obvious ideas, like showing people an article from the opposite perspective, actually deepen polarization by framing other perspectives as foreign. A more effective approach is to show a range of perspectives, let people see where their views are on a spectrum and come to a conclusion on what they think is right. Over time, our community will identify which sources provide a complete range of perspectives so that content will naturally surface more.

Facebook loves you and will teach you how to think. Mostly by way of training you which things to click on. Join the “community” the way we see it. We can’t possibly acknowledge that ignorant, hateful content often naturally surfaces in our ecosystem that is populated by a large contingent of ignorant, hateful users acting how they feel is right, because that could hurt our bottom line.

There are many steps like this we have taken and will keep taking to reduce sensationalism and help build a more informed community.

…except this letter, which sensationalizes the impact Facebook can have on “Building Global Community” where 2,000+ years have utterly fucking failed.

On a daily basis, people use their voices to share their views in ways that can spread around the world and grow into movements.

That’s not always a good thing and you know it.

The guiding principles are that the Community Standards should reflect the cultural norms of our community, that each person should see as little objectionable content as possible, and each person should be able to share what they want while being told they cannot share something as little as possible. The approach is to combine creating a large-scale democratic process to determine standards with AI to help enforce them.

Translation: We’ve created a Monster that we really don’t have the slightest clue how to control without making Users or Advertisers or Investors or the Media blow a gasket at us, hurting our ability to make money, so we’re going to say this here Black Box will make everything better, umm, eventually!

The Real Kicker

This is an important time in the development of our global community, and it’s a time when many of us around the world are reflecting on how we can have the most positive impact.

If Zuckerberg shut down Facebook for a month, he’d have a more positive impact Building Global Community than any of the high-minded things he wrote out. Occam’s Razor is proven, but not profitable. So, if you wanted to know if Zuckerberg is living in an “Alternate Facebook Reality” that doesn’t align with your experience, well, there’s your answer Fish-Bulb.