[_0vzt]

Facebook’s response to this story is revealing:

> "We’re not going to debate the disgruntled litigants and anonymous sources who seek to rewrite Facebook’s early history or embarrass Mark Zuckerberg with dated allegations. The unquestioned fact is that since leaving Harvard for Silicon Valley nearly six years ago, Mark has led Facebook's growth from a college website to a global service playing an important role in the lives of over 400 million people."

You get a similar argument in the recently leaked ‘Boz memo’: please ignore our unethical behavior, instead focus on how many users we have. Growth at any cost is justified.

[loup-vaillant]

They're playing the status game. "Rewrite history" and "dated allegations" serve mostly to slander whoever made those claims. Then they raise Zuckerberg's status by pointing out his achievements.

They're effectively saying the accusation isn't valid because Zuckerberg is nobility and the accusers are not.

[harperlee]

More like stating implicitly that the claim might be seeking money / attention due to Zuckerberg status.

[flippyhead]

This is called the ad populum fallacy. Trump uses it all the time.

[mygo]

Yep.. some people think he’s dumb but I’m not so sure about that. We think that when someone is full of fallacy that they simply don’t know any better, but what about the alternative? You can use fallacies as an effective tool to further your aims. We are so vulnerable to them that we must be educated about them to be able to fend them off. If the audience isn’t educated on how to identify and fend off the fallacy, it will be effective.

[profalseidol]

Yep, it can win you the Presidency. Also prior to Trump's win, he was a very successful salesman with probably the best in sales talk.

[matte_black]

If it weren’t for Zuckerberg’s status these allegations wouldn’t have bothered coming out.

[sosborn]

While that’s probably true, does that justify his actions?

[loup-vaillant]

No, but this consideration is evidence that the allegations may be false.

[sosborn]

It really isn't though. What happened after this incident has no bearing on what happened before the incident.

Does his status provide a motive for a false accusation? Sure, but that is different from evidence.

[loup-vaillant]

No it isn't different, you failed Bayesian. Evidence is not causality, it can flow backwards in time.

For instance, a mammography doesn't give you cancer. But it can detect one, and thus give you evidence that you had cancer in the first place.

[mygo]

your circular logic translates to “the fact that these allegations even bothered to come out is evidence that they may be false”

[loup-vaillant]

Read more charitably, will you?

Fame doesn't affect all accusations the same way. I believe the probability of false accusations raise faster with fame than the probability of true accusation (which is mostly dependent on actual guilt).

There's even the possibility that the probability of true accusations lowers as fame raises, leaving more room for the false ones.

[whataretensors]

It's an allegation from 2004. There's a massive hit campaign going on with Zuck and facebook, likely because he publicly considered running for president.

[peacetreefrog]

Note, again, this was their response when this article was written in 2010. "...since leaving Harvard for Silicon Valley nearly six years ago" is referring to 2004. Just clarifying, because when I first read this I thought, "what was Mark Zuckerburg doing in Harvard still in 2012?"

It'd be interesting to hear what they'd about it today though. Probably nothing.

[rdtsc]

Yeah this nice corporate PR

> We’re not going to debate the disgruntled litigants and anonymous sources

"We're not denying it though. It is true. If they were false and we could debate and win the debate, we would"

> The unquestioned fact is that since leaving Harvard for Silicon Valley nearly six years ago, Mark has led Facebook's growth from a college website to a global service playing an important role in the lives of over 400

> [...] instead focus on how many users we have

Even more, it is interesting what they are implying here. If you can get people to give you their data and build a company on it, it somehow means you all of the sudden acquire a better personality, increased morality and are absolved of all the stupid things you said or did before.

Now sure, people do and say stupid stuff when they are teenagers. I've done it. It depends when and what was done and at what age, what happened before and after. I can see being forgiving some thing up until the early 20s. People are still developing and personality could change I suppose. Though when it comes to his "dumb fucks" comment, I give him less of a pass of being a "teenager" because he was 26 already. Additionally, if these were just isolated incidents and everything before and after pointed to him taken privacy seriously but the whole company is built on the opposite of that.

[amirmc]

> It depends when and what was done and at what age, what happened before and after. I can see being forgiving some thing up until the early 20s. People are still developing and personality could change I suppose.

I don't think Zuckerberg should be given a pass just because of this. His life since college has been nothing like the 20s that anyone else would go through (even others from Harvard). Not even close. Imagine the kind of effect that has on someone, especially with the kind of power he wielded (and still wields) through Facebook.

[arachnids]

Zuckerberg was 19 when he made the dumb fucks comment. [2004] I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with your point, just saying that this incident took place earlier than you think it did.

[marricks]

Have his actions done anything to show it's not relevant? He lead the company as a young man and is still pretty young.

Reckless disregard for privacy has been a hallmark of his tenure.

[danso]

The decade immediately after you’re teens is a time period with a lot of change. Many people find career paths, spouses, and have children. Also worth considering is that FB is a much different company — structure-wise — than when it was just a social media site servicing Harvard students.

[saagarjha]

Sure, it's possible that he's stopped having a callous disregard for other people's privacy in those ten years, but all of his actions seem to demonstrate otherwise.

[ryanlol]

Is it a company with much more integrity? I think not.

[danso]

It is a company with many, many more employees, executives, and shareholders. In that respect, your rhetorical question doesn't make sense to me, because I don't think of companies as large as FB (today, or in 2010) as having traits as easily quantifiable as they are for individual humans. Whether Zuckerber had his own road to Damascus moment is only part of the equation -- his innate desire to commit felony-level hacking may also be curtailed by his realization that his actions receive far more scrutiny than they did back when FB did not answer to nor have the attention of shareholders, regulators, and policymakers.

[arachnids]

> Have his actions done anything to show it's not relevant?

Where did I say it's not relevant?

[TAForObvReasons]

> growth at any cost is justified.

... captured in the infamous phrase "Move Fast and Break Things"

[zeusk]

Big If Things == Law

[TAForObvReasons]

Things can be Laws, Ethics, and even Human Life as we saw with the responses to recent accidents involving self-driving cars