by pidge on 1/28/13, 5:01 AM with 83 comments
by beatpanda on 1/28/13, 6:58 AM
This article is about social privilege, and how different the life circumstances of the founder of Facebook are from many of the people using his product.
It's underscoring the fact that Graph Search could only be built by someone who doesn't understand the sometimes life-or-death importance of privacy, who has never had to fear any real consequences from any expression of identity or presenting the same face to all people.
A large segment of the readers of Hacker News have the same blind spots as Mark Zuckerberg, and this comes out whenever any question of social privelege as it relates to technology comes up here. This is a problem. The products we're building have huge, and usually unexamined, social consequences, and I don't think ignoring those consequences will work long term.
This is true in other fields that claim "neutrality" the way technologists do. Most working U.S. journalists, for instance, work for pro-government, pro-Capitalist news outlets. We call this "objective". Any deviation from that norm is "bias".
Keeping identifying information in a centralized location that is subject to subpoena by law enforcement is a norm now, too, one that has serious social consequences. So your decision to roll your own auth system and saying "fuck it, I'll just make them log in through Facebook" is about a lot more than how many keystrokes you have to enter and how much maintenance you're going to have to do down the road.
We should start factoring social consequences in to our technical decisions, like, ten years ago, and I'm afraid it's going to take a lynch mob empowered by Graph Search for people to get this.
by kevinalexbrown on 1/28/13, 6:54 AM
As a child, I considered style choices a silly and inconsequential distraction from the beautiful truths of the universe: e^(ipi) + 1 doesn't care what I'm wearing, so neither should I, therefore it doesn't matter, QED.
While today I still wish fashion would just go away so I could wear this conference t-shirt in peace, I contend it offers a reflection of who we are. Consider that while half the Senior Developers of the world can't program their way out of a FizzBuzz test, and half the world can't even read at all, everyone can look at someone's dress and decide if it's fashionable for their demographic. "No, it offers a reflection of what the establishment wants us to be!" I'll leave it to the reader to reconcile those two views. "But I just care about finishing Project Euler problems in APL so I just decide to wear sandals and this old shirt like all my friends!" Fashion mattering doesn't depend on you caring. Even you, APL-man, know Zuck couldn't wear his hoodie working for Quinn Emanuel unless he owned it (real question: how many people show up in suits at facebook?).
I was shopping for pretty scarves (!) with a product designer and suggested that ads are the clearest reflection of what a given demographic is. He agreed so quickly I wondered if I were late to the party. So when the Scientology ad in the Atlantic showed up, I thought of my favorite TLP quotation: if you're reading it, it's for you. The obvious question was "why is the Atlantic publishing this!?" The more depressing question is "why am I in Scientology's target demo?"
Fashion is an advertisement about yourself. "But the relationship is not always so obvious!" Hence the hoodie the world's richest web geek refuses to remove. "But I don't care what Zuckerberg wears!" If you're reading it, it's for you.
by argonaut on 1/28/13, 6:16 AM
>It is difficult to imagine a more suitable uniform for the notoriously private CEO of a company dedicated to expanding our ideas of what should be public.
>June 2, 2010, Zuckerberg, hoodie removed, begins answering Mossberg’s question.
Honestly, this seriously reminds me of the kinds of essays that most students fall into the trap of writing in English classes in school - fake certitude, speaking in absolutes, a pervasive tone of academic hysteria, and drawing parallels and implications by mere association. In my view, it tries to dissemble a sense of profundity, however hollow.
The final sentence is a particularly egregious example of drawing an association out of thin air. This essay may as well have introduced itself as studying the symbolic motif of the hoodie and its role in the constant conflict between privacy and surveillance in the literary work Facebook, by Reality.
EDIT: I would like to lightheartedly add that these essays were always really fun for me to write in school because I would get top marks for them despite knowing how meaningless they were.
by gfodor on 1/28/13, 8:40 AM
The thesis (I think) has always been there would need to be a huge trial by fire, teaching the public about what information is actually public, and what it means to be "on the Internet" not via privacy settings, or blog posts, or tutorials, but by pure unadulterated necessity through fear. You will have to lock your shit down now or face the consequences of massive dissemination of that information. There will be no more friction. There will be causalities, and I think Facebook thinks it is an inevitability that "privacy through obscurity" becomes a thing of the past, so might as well be them to kill it. If you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, particularly one that is going to be made by someone, so be it.
"Market efficiency" of social data is going to be achieved: just like when a news report comes out about a company its stock price instantly updates to reflect it, so to will the world itself, and the people in it, reflect the publication of personal information thanks to the ability of the world to see it via software like Graph Search. Anyone who wants to know anything about you or what you do will be able to, instantly, unless you understand the scope of the things you publish intimately.
by etfb on 1/28/13, 12:36 PM
That's what the style of this article instantly reminded me of. Like the source I quote, the article was done very well indeed; well enough that I picked up what was happening without the use of Dave Gibbons' art. Good language, even good poetry. Impressive.
And the point he's making? Memorable. Doesn't matter if I agree with his point or the connections he's drawing. This is quality stuff all round.
by neumann_alfred on 1/28/13, 5:34 AM
by corporalagumbo on 1/28/13, 2:39 PM
(I usually edit most of my comments here multiple times: written and posted hastily, then subjected to extended consideration.)
by nkwiatek on 1/28/13, 6:26 AM
by guptaneil on 1/28/13, 5:22 AM
by ck2 on 1/28/13, 6:48 AM
by junto on 1/28/13, 11:16 AM
He can be seen on here on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASPL8hlKJCk&list=PL06987B...
Legend...
by mturmon on 1/28/13, 5:55 AM
by zevyoura on 1/28/13, 7:17 PM
by privasectech on 1/28/13, 5:40 AM
by gench on 1/28/13, 2:23 PM
by chanux on 1/28/13, 11:41 AM
by mieubrisse on 1/28/13, 5:44 PM
by meaty on 1/28/13, 1:54 PM
