I can’t remember a time when I didn’t hate Mark Zuckerberg. Every time I go to Facebook, I regret ever signing up. It’s nothing but another aggravating, unwanted social obligation. Whenever I post something there, I have to deal with people starting flame wars in the comments and expecting me to intervene. Whenever I get a friend request*, I’m expected to do something about it. If I ignore or delete the request, I’m a jerk. If I accept the request, then that’s just one more idiot who’ll probably start a flame war in the comments. The whole dumb site is just a dreadful self-perpetuating hassle, and these days I only use it to promote my writing and/or post jokes. Most of my social-media obsession is now devoted to Twitter (which is a whole other set of miserable dysfunctions in itself).
Plus, Mark Zuckerberg is the creepiest billionaire ever, and that’s including Jeff Bezos, Lex Luthor, and Monty Burns.
So it’s with growing amusement that I watch the House That Zuck Built start to fall in on itself. That unflattering Aaron Sorkin movie didn’t take Zuckerberg down, nor did the scandals about rapes and murders on Facebook Live, nor did the stories about Facebook’s innumerable privacy violations. Time after time, Zuckerberg would just smile his creepy, robotic smile and wave it all away. But that might not work this time, because now he’s being blamed for the greatest sin imaginable in 2018 America: Keeping Hillary Clinton out of the White House.
Seriously. Zuckerberg is now being blamed for America’s decision to reject Grandma for a second time. It’s all his fault she lost, somehow. And now the #Resistance is making him grovel for forgiveness. Associated Press:
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has finally apologized for weaknesses in the social network’s policies that enabled an app to gain access to the personal information of 50 million users without their consent…
During the CNN interview, Zuckerberg also expressed regrets for not doing more after Facebook first discovered that Cambridge Analytica had gained access to a broad swath of Facebook users’ data in 2015.
Which is… the whole point of Facebook. It’s there to collect data on its users, and to then use that data in ways the users may or may not like. That’s the business model.
Hey, it’s all fun and games until somebody loses an election.
Here’s CNN’s Zuckerberg interview, if you feel like subjecting yourself to it. I can’t watch the whole thing because he gives me the “uncanny valley” effect. He goes right up to the line of looking and sounding like an actual human being, but he never quite makes it there. Zuckerbot gives me the willies. Facebook is still working on that algorithm.
It’s not just me, right? The dude is like an android in a Size M gray t-shirt.
Zuck has also posted a mea culpa of sorts. On Facebook, of course. And while he includes a “timeline of events,” he mysteriously skips from 2007 all the way to 2013. He doesn’t mention how much Facebook did to help Obama become a two-term president.
That wasn’t a problem at the time, because the “good guys” won. Everybody was fine with their personal data being exploited, as long as it kept their team in power.
It remains to be seen whether this latest fiasco will hurt Facebook. I hope so, but I doubt it. People like to make a big show of complaining about privacy violations, but then they go back to being lazy. It’s easier to just click buttons all day without worrying about what happens to all the data you’re putting out there. It’s easier to just accept what Facebook shows you, without wondering why you’re seeing it or who benefits.
Next week or the week after that, the media will come up with yet another reason Hillary lost. Everybody will move on from hating Facebook. But for now, I’m enjoying the feeling of being right all along. All the money in the world can’t buy my respect, and Mark Zuckerberg will never have it.
*Future historians will be baffled by that phrase: “friend request.” How sad and pathetic and fraudulent. How perfectly Facebook.
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