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by mrwh 65 days ago
Meta wants to be an impartial platform only and exactly when it suits them to be.
8 comments

Yeah, glad to see Zuck is sticking with those strong free speech principles he couldn't wait to get back to last year.
Free speech which apparently includes https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42651178

I actually am more at odds with HN than many people might be because I think the lies surrounding covid and the censorship were absolutely wrong and platforms could genuinely after things like that lay claim to being unfairly directed, but you can tell Zuck doesn't actually care because he immediately started doing that

That's exactly what they're saying.
Wow.

Does Zuckerberg have some kind of clinical condition where he just can't imagine how other people might see him?

Sure this will slow down the personal injury lawyers finding clients but it won't stop them, meantime it is more ammunition for Facebook's enemies to use against it.

It is one thing to do shady business, it is another thing to incriminate yourself. If you were involved with weed and somebody sent you an email asking if they could come around and pick up a Q.P. next Saturday I'd expect you to give the person a correction in person that they shouldn't do that again.

Not to say you should be like Epstein but I mean he and the people he corresponded with had some sense so there is is very little evidence of criminal activity in millions of emails.

At Facebook on the other hand all the time people sent emails about things that could just as easily been left as "dark matter" unexplained and minimally documented decisions but no it is like that M.F. Doom song "Rapp Snitch Knishes", like a bunch of children or something with no common sense at all.

> Does Zuckerberg have some kind of clinical condition where he just can't imagine how other people might see him?

Yeah, it's called having-too-much-money-to-careitis.

>Does Zuckerberg have some kind of clinical condition where he just can't imagine how other people might see him?

Not sure he cares. He's literally got hundreds of billions of dollars to his name, and the corporation he founded is worth trillions.

> Does Zuckerberg have some kind of clinical condition where he just can't imagine how other people might see him?

Cory Doctorow describes Mark Zuckerberg's and Elon Musk's attitude toward other people as billionaire solipsism [1].

[1] https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/05/fisher-price-steering-whe...

Good writing. thanks for sharing.
Damn whos buying a Q.P.??
> Does Zuckerberg have some kind of clinical condition where he just can't imagine how other people might see him?

Nah, he just doesn't care. Nothing he does will ever get people (en masse, onesie, twosies don't matter) to stop using Meta products.

People can/will complain about him forever, but shitty people will continue to help him build things, and shitty people will continue to use them.

Well Meta products are decaying like Cobalt 60; people are stopping

https://trends.google.com/explore?q=facebook&date=all&geo=US

and maybe Zuck doesn't think he can do anything about it. There are different theories but i like this one:

-- originally you would put some imagination and elbow grease into using Facebook and get some intention which made it very attractive and interesting to people around 2010

-- then it found a business model which was dependent on your not being able to use imagination and elbow grease to get attention which made it less interesting in general but still somewhat interesting because now you could put cash into the slot machine and get cash out

-- over time they lowered the payout of the slot machine which made the game less interesting and more dependent on 100% profitable scams which could function no matter how bad the payout was; people lose trust in the platform and stop engaging with ads, real advertisers don't want to be seen next to scam ads (lest they be seen as scams) which further lowers the payout and makes the game less interesting over time

-- and now they won't even take your money... so who cares?

Half-ing every 5.2-or-so-years?
Within that order of magnitude. Picked Co60 particularly because it is common in commerce, even I used Co60 sources in my cond-mat theory trainee days.

I think it is more like radioactive decay than say, cheese going bad, but maybe I'm wrong. You can't smell the radioactive decay!

They both captured the early market (inconsistent page style of Myspace, slowness of Friendster, then they acquired Friendfeed) in an early internet - anyone who captures the early market will have THE network effect for decades (plus shadow profiles) as person x joins because person y is there because person z is there - which is still young to this day, and also they apparently used to censor links to their competition

The game is rigged, also Instagram and Whatsapp (yeah, companies get acquired. but WA's Acton was very explicit - "delete Facebook" (also, ever tried deleting FB? almost impossible. more network effects). he was pissed off at what happened)

... the other theory of Facebook's decline is that Eternal September gets you every time. I mean in the 1970s the CBGB and Mudd Club were really cool and they folded up and the scene moved on.

Once I started using the social features on my MQ3 I found it really was Zuck's worst nightmare. I met all these nice retirees who were fun to play Beat Saber with and who would go on cruises and post YouTube links to pano videos they take of the ship.

language failure on my end: what's a "Q.P."?
Quarter-pound
quarter pound
When you have f.u. money, you get to say f.u., otherwise what's the point?
Yes, it's called being a billionaire. I'm sure if clinicians actually studied this group of people, they would find strains of delusions of grandeur, paranoia, extreme risk taking behavior, lack of self control and self awareness, inability to deal with adversity and setbacks without emotional outbursts, inability to contain and dismiss intrusive antisocial thoughts.

I feel probably that the emotional maturity of most billionaires is at the toddler level or below, and I mean that quite seriously and literally.

one tos clause and neutrality disappears. now meta decides which claims get reach
I mean, they spun up a bullshit "Oversight Board" that they can fully 100% choose to ignore and decline to implement their demands when they're made.
Reddit is the same way. Poke a few sacred cows and suddenly you're banned for something you did 6 months ago that we aren't going to tell you about and no we don't want to discuss it.

Kafkaism is natural and organic.

Name one platform that doesn't, and I'm not just talking about lip service.
Signal?
It's not unilateral but if it is a commercial interest, then I'll agree that it usually is
There are degrees.
Hacker Ne.... no wait, not that one either.
4chan?
Not an excuse. We shouldn’t turn a blind eye to bad behaviour because “everyone does it”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

I think there’s a clear difference in restricting advertising vs organic posts.
Meta does both. It has long been said that businesses have little organic reach in Meta’s platforms, as an incentive for them to use ads.
I’m not a big poster at all, but ran into this precise issue.

They analyze the video posts on instagram. If they detect the video has even a small amount of commercial value, they classify it as branded content and you need to pay for it to get promoted.

For all the creepy People You May Know stuff they don't even bother connecting people properly even on people's personal pages https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14147719
What difference is that?