[CamperBob2]

There are persistent rumors that Zuckerberg wants to get into national politics. The spin will ramp up to neutron-star velocities when that happens. It's probably safe to stop believing anything they say, starting right about now.

[pharrlax]

He is literally doing a whistlestop tour around America right now, replete with bizarrely folksy essays laced with nakedly political rhetoric. Not so much a rumor as an impression he appears to be intentionally cultivating

[kbenson]

Well, Trump has shown that the populace is accepting of businessmen as leaders. I'm sure if the rumors are true Zuckerberg won't be the last to think they can parlay success and fame into political power, and he wasn't the first (Reagon comes to mind).

[elevenfist]

Reagan was an actor, not a businessman. He did shill though.

Zuckerberg is waking up to how easily manipulable the portion of Americans who voted for Trump are. It's too easy. Just look at the republican response to sb18 in CA. The counseling association was suppossed to be working on an initiative to help but I'm starting to worry.

[Caveman_Coder]

I believe it's fair to say that both sides are easily manipulated...not just those on the right.

[nl]

There's some truth in this (I assume), but there is quite a bit of evidence that those on the right value conformity with a leader's views more than those on the left. The infamous poll results on the Syrian strike[1] show this behavior. I'm not sure this counts as manipulation exactly, but sometimes the effect is the same.

[1] https://cmgajcjaybookman.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/syriapo...

[CamperBob2]

There's some truth in this (I assume), but there is quite a bit of evidence that those on the right value conformity with a leader's views more than those on the left

It's tough to justify this generalization in a world where leftist leaders like Stalin, Castro, Mao, and Chavez are still warm in their graves.

[plorg]

similarly: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/10...

[elevenfist]

I used to believe the same thing until the aftermath of this election. It's not even remotely in the same ballpark. It's like the Dunning-Krueger effect except there's two more peaks in the 0-20% range, and a lot of people with an island of intelligence in their career path outside that range.

[beaconstudios]

it's actually very much in the same ball-park. The sheer fact that many liberals believe that a sizeable portion of Trump's supporters are fascists, or that he himself is a fascist, is proof of this. In fact, in my experience right-leaning people tend to be more skeptical than left-leaning people - too skeptical in some cases, leading to things like conspiracy theory and climate change denial.

[cat199]

So..

You're saying your own personal denial of this election's results led you to double down on accepting your own personal biases as fact and justify your resulting increased conformity in believing 'what should have happened' onto others whose non-conformity bothered you?

Not a Trumper, but the 'boo hoo' media pity-party in the aftermath of this election has been oh-so delicious to watch after seeing through the level of spin in the last couple of years...

"But we told them to vote for Hillary, and they didn't! What went wrong??? Must be 'facism' and 'russian fake news'! Anything but people actually disagreeing with the moral/philosophical/political position I have absorbed without thinking from MSNBC-Universal-Vivendi funded Saturday Night Live skits!"

But yes, absolutely, the 'conformity' is entirely on the 'right'..

[CamperBob2]

It's fairly well-documented that viewers of right-wing news channels like Fox are extremely poorly informed compared to viewers of other channels.

This isn't up for debate. The numbers are both objective and unequivocal.

[kbenson]

What's a successful actor if not a very specific type of businessman? (but yes, I meant to include a caveat there acknowledging that and forgot).

[red_hairing]

HMM...i thought it was against the HN rules to be politically partisan...apparently not, as long as you take the "correct" side...

[stupidhn]

Trump is about American nationalism, and he resonated with the poorer parts of the country by talking about making America great again. He's also "old school". Zuckerberg is in most ways the opposite.

[stupidhn]

There are persistent rumors that Zuckerberg wants to get into national politics.

First,let me say that I respect Zuckerberg and what he's accomplished. But...

Does middle America care what "the Facebook guy" thinks? This seems like more SV delusion. The guy is literally running Big Brother.

[bigbugbag]

> It's probably safe to stop believing anything they say, starting right about now.

It was safe to stop believing anything they say after facebook got caught neck deep in wrongdoings and apologized for the first time. IIRC this was circa early 2004 or late 2003 and it's been downhill from there.

[disgruntledphd2]

Facebook was founded in February 2004, so they probably didn't do much bad stuff in 2003.

[jessaustin]

Haha I started at least five years ago, the fourteenth time I heard someone complaining about automatically-changed FB privacy settings. Fool me thirteen times... Thus I wasn't surprised by #JeSuisCharlie or the recent wall-building kerfuffle.