Ask HN: Is Zuckerberg just a „one-hit-wonder"?

[fandorin]

What’s your view? The original idea for Facebook was stolen, then he bought Instagram and Whatsup to stay afloat. Metaverse is/was an absolute disaster. And I’m not even talking about all the scandals from Cambridge Analytica era.

How bad CEO, in your opinion, is Mark?

[ggm]

I find the amorality of the billionaire class strange. He could be as good as somebody running a public enterprise, a research lab, a hospital. A state energy utility.

Instead he's running a giant meme tank feeding racist shit to win clicks and running fake AI ads boosting scam investments.

He's good at that. But is he actually any good at building things which enrich society without making him money?

[tacostakohashi]

From his perspective, though, he's just responding to how society chooses to allocate capital. It's not his fault that society apparently values crappy websites more than hospitals, and if he didn't do it, someone else would have.

[badpun]

Same argument goes for Hitler though. If he didn't do it, there'd be another fascist leader exploiting the masses' love of fascism in early 1930s Germany.

[rl1987]

He does run some strange "capitalist philanthropy" thing with his wife: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chan_Zuckerberg_Initiative

[journal]

He's like Tiger Woods of social media. Can you imagine him doing anything else?

[bdangubic]

> He's good at that. But is he actually any good at building things which enrich society without making him money?

Name one human for whom this answer would be true - just one please? (not defending Zuck, he is probably one of the most evil people in the history of the entire civilization)

[senordevnyc]

he is probably one of the most evil people in the history of the entire civilization

This is legitimately hilarious. If only Hitler or Stalin knew that to really hit the top of the evil pyramid these days, you need to create a social network. Murdering millions just doesn't compare.

[btschaegg]

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

[ggm]

I don't know the name of my local hospital administrator, and nor do you I suspect. And, thats kind of the point.

[bdangubic]

your local hospital administrator is building what exactly? she/he works for free? if you are in America you picked another evil empire, US health system - try and pick something else………

[Dumblydorr]

He’s a sociopath. Why ignore that obvious fact? He buys a Hawaiian island and builds a secret bunker there for when the wasted mouths are eradicated. These robber billionaires aren’t normal people.

[senordevnyc]

I'm sure they're all the same to you, but that's Ellison, not Zuckerberg.

[cutthegrass2]

Not a whole island, but a significant bit of one. https://www.wired.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-inside-hawaii-co...

[senordevnyc]

1400 acres is 0.4% of Kauai.

[chistev]

If it was that easy, other people should do it.

[wmeredith]

Being lucky can't be replicated.

[Dumblydorr]

They did, he stole the ideas or bought them. What did he actually do himself?

[Yatsui]

well i wouldn't call him that but he has played his cards right everytime. He's more of a business focused guy. Btw, i had the legit same thoughts 2 days ago but yeah he's just a great leader.

[ekrapivin]

I truly believe people underestimate sheer luck and a good grasp of an said opportunity.

Mark is a mediocre innovator and a weak and ruthless leader. He has had the chance to claim ownership of Harvard Connection before Fb and purchase trendy platforms being a billionaire.

I sense more luck, opportunity, a huge team of advisors, and less skill, talent or chrisma.

[cyanydeez]

The problem is the American identity is so closely tied to rich capitalists being essentially "god given right" the same way kings used to be god given rulers, that the mythology surrounding their right to horde wealth is basically a necessity.

[muzani]

Most tech giants are one hit wonders. Microsoft is the exception, not the norm.

The playbook now is get product-market fit -> own 99% market share -> build, buy, exterminate everything that could threaten this market share -> when the disruption comes, pivot to it.

Zuck inspired the playbook. He's done it to perfection. He's been in the ring for 20 years. Yahoo dominated for about 5-7 years. By no means is he a bad CEO.

Facebook's decline was always a part of his strategy, and whatever the employees say about there being a bazillion active daily users doesn't reflect that their time is near. But Instagram still runs strong and Threads has half a billion active users.

[notahacker]

Think that's fair. He's generally been excellent at pissing off users in ways which grow his reach without them leaving and he's been willing to spend big on nascent competitors and actually managed not to destroy their platforms, but I do get the feeling (i) real activity on Facebook actually is tailing off now and (ii) he left a money on the table going for low value ads based on click patterns rather than building events and marketplace into genuinely useful services. But that wasn't his thing and the thing he did have made him enough money to give him bragging rights over an entire room of other billionaires.

Managed not to lose it all on his stillborn metaverse or trying to outcompete AI startups too.

[muzani]

i) I'm sure everyone agrees with this, except maybe a few fans. The best thing he did was slowly wean the whole company off FACEBOOK, even if it's with the Meta smokescreen. Instagram is their core now.

ii) I would disagree on this. Meta is king of low value ads. Google is great at targeted ads, but sometimes you want something to reach as many eyes as possible, as cheaply as possible.

They've barely avoided many of the dark patterns like chumboxes and forced repetition of screens, just because they have enough people scrolling through it. Of course, there's other dark patterns here, but I give them a B+ for low value ads.

The marketplaces and events still provide massive value to the world, for free, as long as they lasted. In the end, it's nearly a trillion dollar company, which is a remarkable thing to build on low value ads.

[notahacker]

Oh, they're A+ at low value ads (I don't even think it's the ads that's ultimately consuming the platforms, it's the unpaid content also being overoptimized for clickbait so people end up seeing fewer of the friend updates that brought them to the platform and more of the politics and clickbait videos they can get literally everywhere else). Just feels like they could easily have leveraged their user base into a slice of AirBnB's business and eBay's business and even stuff that's been difficult to scale without Facebook's user base like a much bigger Eventbrite, and that being useful would have given it more sticking power.

Instagram was clearly a great acquisition, much better than it looked at the time. But I'm not sure it's ever been as big or that it's destined to last longer or make more money. WhatApp is where it's at for me and a non-trivial number of others, and they're not making money off those conversations.

[ra0x3]

Yes

[bruce511]

Why do you care?

I mean that seriously. Sometimes when one asks a question the asking may be more insightful to you than the answer.

I mean, you'll get a bunch of answers here, reflecting a bunch of opinions. But why do you care about what they think? And what does it matter to you what Zuck is or not.

It doesn't sound like you're asking about billionaires in general (or the number of them, or the harm they are doing), and you're not asking about Facebook in general, but rather on Zuck himself.

Do you think the success of a person is based on their original ideas? Or is it on execution? Do you think he's a bad CEO because his company (and him) are visible? (Does your local accounting firm with 10 employees get the same scrutiny?)

Do you think a CEO operates in a vacuum? Is he the only one eith ideas? Is the the only one (inside meta) who makes bets, or buys companies?

All of which brings us back to, why do you care? Is your success delineated by his reputation? (Hey, maybe you're C level at meta aiming for his job.)

Honestly, I've found for me, caring about the success, or deservingness, of others (big or small) is meaningless to me. Their success doesn't make me fail. Their moral failings doesn't make me a success. My job is to be the best I can be, not compare myself to others. And my definition of success is what I want it to be, not some measure society offers (like absolute wealth.)

I'm objectively a bad golfer (outside the top 100 000 in my country, as my phone delights in telling me), but my measure for golfing success is how much fun I'm having. I don't hate on Rory for his success.

[bjourne]

If it can be rationally argued that the success of the billionaire class is mostly down to luck, size and "quality" of their lineage's social network, exploiting legal loopholes, and immoral conduct, then it follows that we should demand much more of their wealth for the betterment of society. And I very much think that the argument is correct. The Epstein files and the lesser known but just as important Panama papers is strong evidence.

[bruce511]

I don't think you need to question the moral source of wealth to justify taxing it.

Tax law certainly doesn't require justification. Neither does public sentiment.

Personally I'm in the camp that wealth could be taxed far more aggressivly. But the current party with political power believes the opposite. My only actual power here is to vote and encourage others to do the same.

[bluecheese452]

Why do you care why he cares? Why post this long essay?

[bruce511]

Psychologically it can be more important to understand why you asked a question than in getting an answer.

I wrote the reply so the asker could reflect on the motivation which in turn can lead to a more satisfying outcome than simple agreement.

[bluecheese452]

Maybe you should psychologically analyze why you feel the need to simp for billionaires.

[seattle_spring]

I might be wrong in this case, but anyone I've ever met who refers to Zuckerberg as "Zuck" is a current or former employee of Meta.

Make what you wish of that information.

[rvz]

Not many people understand this but he is a billionaire.

Meta is profitable and he can afford to lose bets and can pay off the fines if it means that Meta gets an extra $10B for the next quarter.