Disturbed and awed (in a bad way) by the delusional hubris of Zuckerberg’s recent “manifesto” post on “Building Global Community”.
https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/building-global-community/10103508221158471/
Its starting phrase was enough to put one on the alert:
To our community
Is this really your community Mark? And is it even a Community in any meaningful sense of the word?
It continues in this vein.
A woman named Christina was diagnosed with a rare disorder called Epidermolysis Bullosa – and now she’s a member of a group that connects 2,400 people around the world so none of them have to suffer alone.
The entire post makes a self-serving confusion between the benefits of a communications system that connects people with the particular proprietary version of it called Facebook. Just as a online social network helps people “come together” so did the postal system, the phone network and Internet email. Any social network would do what Facebook is doing – and has done. WeChat in China, the ordinary postal service or any other system could boast such examples of connecting people for good. To claim these benefits for “Facebook” is to appropriate the benefits of a technology to its provider. What’s insidious – and no doubt intentional – is that this linkage serves to associate the obvious benefits of human connection and communciation via a social network to a proprietary, profit-oriented monopoly platform called Facebook.
Mark: if you are serious about benefitting humanity then commit now to opening the entire Facebook platform from the protocols to the software. Make your network open like the Internet was and is – that’s the way to foster innovation, collaboration and a social network that works for everyone.
Other links (adding as I find them):