After #FaceBookDataLeaks, the Media Would Like to Know If We Trust Mark Zuckerberg

After #FaceBookDataLeaks, the Media Would Like to Know If We Trust Mark Zuckerberg

After #FaceBookDataLeaks, the Media Would Like to Know If We Trust Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg is under assault, both by FaceBook users, advertisers, and the stock market, and now by the FTC, who’ve launched an investigation into the powerful social media company’s privacy practices. If you’re unaware, here’s a quick summary of why:

Facebook’s privacy practices came under fire after accusations emerged that Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm affiliated with President Trump’s 2016 campaign, inappropriately obtained data. The firm was alleged to have created psychological profiles to influence how people vote or even think about politics and society.

It’s believed around 50 million people were affected by the breach.

Included is the allegation that FaceBook scraped data from Android phones…for years:

Fact check: true.

So on the heels of the data breach, and Zuckerberg’s recent plea for forgiveness for his company’s “mistake,” the media would like to know if we trust him. Well, let’s take a brief ride in the WayBack Machine:

Zuckerberg’s assault on privacy did not begin amid the rise of fellow Fourth Amendment pummeler, Barack Obama, and his company’s admission that it wanted to do whatever it could to help its preferred candidate get elected:

Yeah, that’s not an anomaly in the FaceBook cog. No, Zuckerberg’s privacy infringements started back in the early 2000’s, even before he met fellow Harvard classmates, the Winkelvoss twins, Cameron and Tyler. It began with the Hot or Not privacy breach:

The way the site worked was that it pulled photos of Harvard students off of Harvard’s Web sites. It rearranged these photos so that when people visited Facemash.com they would see pictures of two Harvard students and be asked to vote on which was more attractive. The site also maintained a list of Harvard students, ranked by attractiveness.

On Harvard’s politically correct campus, this upset people, and Mark was soon hauled in front of Harvard’s disciplinary board for students. According to a November 19, 2003 Harvard Crimson article, he was charged with breaching security, violating copyrights, and violating individual privacy. Happily for Mark, the article reports that he wasn’t expelled.

Zuckerberg bragged to a friend in instant messages about his unbridled access to just about anyone at Harvard:

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuck: Just ask.

Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

[Redacted Friend’s Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?

Zuck: People just submitted it.

Zuck: I don’t know why.

Zuck: They “trust me”

Zuck: Dumb fucks.

And the breaches of trust moved on from there, spawning the 2010 film, The Social Network. Here’s the scene where the character of Zuckerberg has an epiphany that would thieve, or at the very least build on, the Winklevosses’ idea of what we now know as FaceBook:

And here’s a brief textual narrative of how Facebook came to be:

In December, 2003, a week after Mark’s first meeting with the HarvardConnection team, when he was telling the Winklevosses that he was too busy with schoolwork to work on or even think about HarvardConnection.com, Mark was telling Eduardo a different story. On December 7, 2003, we believe Mark sent Eduardo the following IM:

Check this site out: www.harvardconnection.com and then go to harvardconnection.com/datehome.php.

Someone is already trying to make a dating site. But they made a mistake haha. They asked me to make it for them. So I’m like delaying it so it won’t be ready until after the facebook thing comes out.

This IM suggests that, within a week of meeting with the Winklevosses for the first time, Mark had already decided to start his own, similar project—“the facebook thing.” It also suggests that he had developed a strategy for dealing with his would-be competition: Delay developing it.

“I feel like the right thing to do is finish the facebook and wait until the last day before I’m supposed to have their thing ready and then be like look yours isn’t as good”

And there’s this telling instant message:

Mark and this friend also had the following IM exchange about how Mark planned to resolve the competing projects:

Friend: So have you decided what you’re going to do about the websites?

Zuck: Yeah, I’m going to fuck them

And that he did. You can read the rest of FaceBook’s birth here.

Fast forward to 1984…er…2018.

When his company isn’t messing with privacy settings, censoring conservatives, or deleting posts it deems “offensive” or “fake news,” Zuckerberg’s FaceBook has routinely suspended or deleted accounts of political foes, conveniently citing the Left’s made-up phrase, “hate speech.” That noose included Sabo, the street artist who unabashedly critiques the hypocrisies of the Left. The sin that got him booted from FascistB…er…FaceBook? This:

Photo Credit: Hollywood Reporter

Like the thin-skinned messiah his company assisted with re-election, poor Markie couldn’t take a little criticism and booted Sabo off FaceBook. I think, given his current troubles on the privacy front, it’s a safe bet that Zuckerberg’s political aspirations are in the proverbial crapper anyway.

So you see, it should come as no surprise that Zuckerberg would compromise users’ private FaceBook information and breach their trust without a second thought. It wasn’t a mistake. It was willful and intentional. And we know he’s capable of it because he’s engaged in same to further his own agendas for well over a decade. So should we trust a guy with our privacy who thinks we’re all “dumb fucks?” You decide.

And, yes, it’s time he faces the music.

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2 Comments
  • Scott says:

    Nice post Jodi, and spot on.. though to be honest, anyone on face book, who does trust Zuckerberg is, to use his words “a dumb fuck”… he has been scum since Harvard, and anyone who doesn’t know that is just too self absorbed to notice… so the moniker fits..if he was a conservative (well, he wouldn’t have done all this shit, but i digress), the left would be all over his for this, his misogyny, etc, but just as he did, they give him a pass, because he’s “one of them”

    • Jodi Giddings says:

      That’s exactly right, Scott. He’s a user and an exploiter. And he’s doing the same with the Left…except, his preferred candidate lost, and now he may actually have to pay the piper for his abuses.

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