Zuckerberg: I want the WHOLE WORLD in my hands Mark Zuckerberg's altruistic finger is twitching just as usage of his free content ad network appears to have plateaued. In a post on his personal Facebook account, Zuck asked: "Is connectivity a human right?" He thinks the answer to that question is "yes" and the copper-haired, flip-flop-wearing billionaire wants to work …
Zuckerberg is a parasite. It's all about inflating the perceived value of Faecesbook. Businesses like that operate on a considerable amount of imaginary money. In the end, when advertisers are paying out more than they perceive benefiting, and investors are losing money, it all comes to a head.
So it doesn't matter to him, it's just numbers. The more users he can claim to have, real or imaginary, the more imaginary money he'll have. Just like all those people who request account deletion, but it doesn't really happen.
So the stagnating growth in users is down to lack of disposable income which would be required in order to afford internet access?
Why would he want to bring users without money to facebook? The product of a free ad network is a user WITH disposable income that can be spent on the advertised items and services.
If I wanted to place ads to sell my offerings, I'd surely be very interested in the demographics. Billions of people without money is clearly not where I'd be looking for customers.
Advertisers are keen to get in early in emerging markets where big brands are not yet established. Think of washing powder, most westerners think Arial / Persil etc. brands are keen to indoctrinate that into the minds of people in emerging markets too even though people living there may not currently be able to afford your product they may at some point in future and as a brand you want to build that association early before your competitors get a chance to.
I don't agree. Google, yes... but I get the impression Zuck genuinely believes in this guff. He sounds like a typical nerd talking about how great the internet is, etc etc. If a nerd makes something cool and suddenly people are throwing $billions at them, what exactly do you think is going to happen?
You seem to think that Facebook is any different from Google (or Microsoft, despite their bullshit statements to the contrary) as far as mining data for advertisers and the NSA is concerned.
I think the main way Facebook and Google are different, is that Facebook probably has even more information on its "customers" than Google does. Google is a search company, Facebook is a walled garden. Google wants to "organise the world's data", Facebook wants to own it all. Those, I think, are your main differences.
@ M Gale:
Regarding the difference between FB and the Google, I think it is better to look at the flow of 'actionable' data, that is, what can the company do to monetise the data stream regardless the walled garden.
Google sells ads based on what you are looking for actively and your searches and navigation of results help refine the algorithm constantly. If you happen to search logged in, then it tries to use anything it knows about you to sort the info based mostly on relatively direct (emails and searches are far more information containing than one's breakfast or drunk pics) ancillary info.
On the flip side, FB tries to target ads based on random interactions of less purpose. Sure they have more 'connection' data, but it is mostly noise and unlikely to be able to decipher whether the so called social graph is representing a trend shift or simply people acting like a herd of buffalo being chased off a cliff. In the end the problem is that it is far more difficult for FB to separate action from intent and I think this is what the walled garden and other missteps emerge from rather wanting to 'own' data.
Or more simply, FB has no way to organize their data since there is no way to get the user to do the bulk of the heavy lifting like Google does. Google has you do the refining of the data set while FB has you add to it at whim. This pretty much explains why Google pushes ads it thinks are related to what you are looking for, whereas FB tries to use everything it thinks it knows about you to try and predict your next step and does so horribly, notwithstanding the differences in function between the platforms.
@JDX:
I don't take anything Zuck says or does at face value. He is stuck in a pickle as costs are going up faster than revenue is increasing. I also think that this is simply smoke and mirrors so Wall Street can keep up the scam as insiders and VCs get out.
The real problem is that FB is essentially a utility company pretending to be a tech company. It is likely to be profitable in the long run, just at an order of magnitude smaller than the market anticipates. In the meanwhile we get to sit back and watch how long this farce persists.
I agree it's a good thing to get more online - though I can't help struggle to work out what part Zuckerberg says he or his company are going to do. I mean, companies like Nokia have done huge amounts of work in getting communication and online access to over a billion people around the world over the years with low cost devices, usually for very little recognition by the press who'd rather focus on the latest flashy expensive device from a US company. By comparison, this looks like some high-school essay on Why I Think It Would Be Good For More People To Be Online, but doesn't actually say anything other than they'll make the site use less data (good - but nothing notable, and they've got a long way to go to get back to the simplicity that most sites manage).
Here's my high school essay: Stop trying to force everyone into a walled garden, where I have to be on Facebook to be able to do things online.
The same way everyone got bored with mobile phones and email and went back to landlines and fountain pens?
FB may go but social networking is clearly here to stay until something else replaces it - it is a natural idea that once the infrastructure supports it, the way people communicate will change.
Agree 1000%. Have absolutely no use for any of this "social networking" tripe.
If people are so devoid of their own self-worth that they need "followers"...or "likes" (how old are you anyway FFS that you need someone to "like" you...9?) to bolster their pathetic, fragile egos...then civilization is rapidly headed straight down the Loo.
Yes, FAIL indeed
I simply refuse to sign up to Facebook and force my relatives(*) to communicate/"share" with me via various of the multitude of other existing fully functional methods.
I still don't get why so many people now think that you need to be on Facebook to chat and share photos?
(* = Note - I have a fairly good reason for needing to communicate with family electronically rather than in person - I live in the UK and my family live on the opposite side of the planet in NZ...)
How long until it's a serious offense, punishable by thousands of pounds in fines, for registering on Facebook or Google Mail under a fake name?
Google and Disqus do a good job of linking fake accounts to real ones, but many slip through the net, and that makes it harder to target them with ads. Clearly the government need to stop these freeloaders, child porn peddlers, hate speakers and terrorists!
I ever saw Farcebook I thought it was kind of creepy, full of inane pointless and meaningless drivel, then later when I realised it was just a trap where data vampire could suck the lives of the masses into their ad machines, I began to despise it.
So Count Zsuckerberg wants to subjugate the entire planet and have them drowning for eternity in utter drivel while he sucks their souls and data to give life to his planet sized ad space? All I can say is; F**k him and the crappy site he rode in on!
The only real thing aside from his money the Count has achieved is to dumb down that portion of the world's population that is already on Farcebook.
We need some kind of anti farcebook icon!
Is it just me, or does the fanatical, boiling hatred of Facebook often expressed here suggest that the posters are, ironically, marching in lock-step with one another while shouting about how terrible it is when people do things because they want to belong?
Kinda reminds me of the kids who shop at Hot Topic, a mall retail chain that specializes in carefully focus-grouped goth decor and fake leather studded collars, in order to show how they really REALLY disagree with EVERYONE.
Maybe some people prefer their social networks to come without an unhealthy slice of spying?
Maybe some people have had too many people give it the "zomg but you must has a facebonk" incredulous stare at them?
Maybe some people don't want to be one of Zuckerberg's suckers?
Maybe some people have had a bad experience with the Boss demanding to know their account name?
Maybe some people remember when online social networks were fully featured and decentralised? You know, like IRC? USENET? Actually making your own web site, that's owned by you?
Maybe some people have plenty of friends already and see no point in broadcasting the minutae of their life?
Maybe some people are genuinely creeped out by Zuckerberg, and detest the idea of giving that person any more than an emphatically raised middle finger?
Many reasons why some people would rather watch paint dry than sign up for a Facebook account. Does not make them a single homogenous entity, and your attempt to ridicule such people is... probably going to be like water off a duck's back. All been heard before, you know?
I'm promoting retroshare to everyone I know. I've gotten quite a few friends using it now. It's not a social network, though it can manage basic forums and messaging. It's more of an IM program. Decentralised. Encrypted. Authenticated via first exchanging keys with contacts. Probably not NSA-proof, but at least NSA-resistant enough to make cracking it take real effort, and plenty enough to stop intrusive advertising companies trying to intercept your messages and profile you.
"I'm promoting retroshare to everyone I know. I've gotten quite a few friends using it now."
I always tell people the same thing. These people are NOT your friends. Aquaintences, colleagues, asssociates, maybe.
If you have lots of friends on social networks, your credibilty and integrity is called into question, let alone your knowledge of what "friend" means.
Your self esteem must be very low if you feel the need to "friend" anyone online that you do not meeet on a face-to-face basis.
What is wrong with people. Seems our education system is a complete and utter fail!
@M Gale, I didn't say there aren't valid reasons to dislike Facebook. You list quite a few of them. My point is that people dislike it *so violently*. It's a product; maybe it's intended for a different market - OK, fine. Maybe Facebook the business has unsavory practices - that's fine too, but hell, Royal Dutch Shell has done some pretty awful things and I don't see anyone tearing them up in air-bluing rants online.
It seems that the response is disproportionate, and often, it seems that such disproportionate responses to products (whether it's Facebook, iPhones, electric cars, whatever) are due to peoples' not wanting people to want those products in the first place, not with the products themselves. Which is what makes me think it's sometimes more about saying, "I'm better than all the idiots who want things that I don't want!" than about anything real.
Some people comment-whore for upvotes, it's a fact of life. That doesn't mean that the hivemind is always wrong.
As for me personally I tried real hard to get in to facebook, but quickly quit. I really had no interest at all in finding out what passing acquaintances had for dinner or feel any need to tell them about the movie I just saw.
To me, Facebook is good for one thing only: fake Facebook and Google accounts are great for online personas, as Facebook and Google are implicitly trusted all around the net.
And it all starts with letting the telcos do the heavy lifting, then letting the phone companies find a way to make free phones, and letting everybody else work to push costs down so he can make more billions selling ads.
Yup, sounds like exactly the kind of plan he would think of.
Has anyone done a poll to show that only 1% of IT pros like FB?
Anyway, Internet has been free for a while, Ovivio will send you a SIM for phone or tablet at a token start cost, free ongoing so long as Ovivo can push it's ads at you periodically.
So Zuckerberg is very late to the party as far as the UK is concerned.
And in Africa, Google may get there first with its Loon Balloons.
Underneath the alarm and antipathies - what is this about?
The idea/technology/intent of systems that identify personal and social value (Life communicating) as transactions and marketize and weaponize these transactions as means of levering personal control over the system and its outcomes.
The word personal as used above can represent any private interest that has access to the system on the inside; both Corporate, Government or indeed hacker.
But on the outside is no less a control mentality in the construct, presentation and maintenance of a sense of self that 'gets' from its transactions in forms it values.
I'm only sketching here - but the ideas that we accept as to what we are and who life is - are the active determiners of all that comes therefrom. This has always been so.
The scientific split from the non-measurable or non-objectifiable has bequeathed a loveless machine mentality that runs a front end persona-mask as part of its function.
Distraction with persona-realities will delay the appreciation of the wholeness that is essential for meaningful relationships. Of course 'meaningful relationships' can be transacted within the getting system such as to obtain mutual consent - but the true Meaning of all things is not in the parts in themselves nor the relations between the parts minus the whole - but the part-whole relationship. The substitution of a control mentality for the wholeness is one of taking the concept instead of the Living Sharing Knowing Feeling Being.
My sense is that the 'control mentality' is the (Bible's) 'Beast' becoming exposed to plain sight that is also hidden at the foundations of our consciousness. To recognize it in our own mind is to be initially disturbed. But to recognize it as false and NOT use or employ it as a basis for living - OPENS a true Foundation.
It's no good asking about this true foundation - as if to get a 'handle on it' . Do you see what I mean?
It is what you are - or what is being you - when the false foundation is not employed, subscribed to, identified with, energised, reacted from and traded in our world of relations as if it were true currency.
Sure - it feels good to be flowing in the presence of one's true being - but DON'T let that become marketized oir weaponized by deception. To reclaim our life is only necessary to notice and disregard what baited us into a false sense of power and protection.
No one likes to lose what they think they have and power and protection figure LARGE in the mind.
Noticing anything real becomes disallowed if what is uncovered threatens the apparent stability of an upside down mentality. So there is a way of it that comes from a sense of value felt directly and not as provided by 'thinks' whether apparently our own or those 'thinks' by which the system maintain itself in your name.
Well, that's clever, and easy.
I use the social-networking filter in AdBlock Plus to rid me of most of the unwanted sights. The AdBlock Plus Element Hider then gets rid of the rest of the horrible Like/Tweet/Screw-This icons, bars and boxes that clutter up a lot of sites. My internet seldom even reminds me of the existence of these sites.
It leaves me with only one problem. Most of my friends have almost given up e-mail, and I'm reduced to asking my wife (who does facebook) for their news. Perhaps one day I shall have to join up. If I leave it too long, I might not have any friends left. Social networking? Or social blackmail?
Monsanto wants to own eating; Facebook wants to own friendship.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
