Time's "Person of the Year" doesn't mean they like him, it just means he's had a profound impact on society. And he/his website has, although one could argue the award came a couple of years late.

I wouldn't worry too much about Facebook, though. If my group of friends are anything to go by, the novelty has completely worn off. If it ever existed in the first place.

Meanwhile Zuckerberg is laughing all the way to the bank - That's his world view.

I thought I was alone in not much caring for Zuckerberg or Facebook. I find both pretty vacuous, to be honest.

This comment has been removed by a moderator. Replies may also be deleted.

I agree totally. I can't stand Facebook.

I wouldn't join face book at any price.

There is something of Big Brother and quite sinister, about it

lightacandle

Any WADDYA people out there - how about continuing the thread on the 'Shellaking' piece at it has very few comments and we could take it over.....?

Sounding desparate...

never been on facebook although i know what it is. not sure how its worth so much. didnt anyone learn anything from the dotcom bubble?

Are you listening Mark (I guess not!)? Maybe you should learn to stay out of the limelight a bit.. but I figure you get off on the Power Buzz.. Facebook is obviously electronic-Coke.

Facebook is neither a altruistic social enterprise, nor ideologically neutral. It emerges from a very particular world view

This is very true. By not charging users for use of its services, it's emerging from a world view that can only be described as neo-Soviet-Marxism.

For over 40 years, our fathers and their fathers fought against the communist menace. They finally won that fierce ideological battle 20 years ago.

By embracing facebook and its non-neutral ideology of Zuckerism, we risk all that they so valiantly fought for.

I don't know why anyone scoffs at the claim that Mark Zuckerberg has created "a new system of exchanging information and for changing how we live our lives". Thanks to him 30,000 could join a group called "RIP Raoul Moat You Legend", a criminal who absconded from prison could taunt police whilst on the run and people could start feuds which lead to murder from the comfort of their homes.

It's absolutely terrible that people are forced to use face book against their own free will;.
I just heard a woman on the news who revealed on her FB page, to all and sundry, that she & her family were going away for a few weeks, leaving her house empty. Only to return to find her home had been broken into when she was on holiday. She blames Face Book for this, naturally

Hobbes developed some of the fundamentals of European liberal thought: the right of the individual; the natural equality of all men; the artificial character of the political order (which led to the later distinction between civil society and the state); the view that all legitimate political power must be "representative" and based on the consent of the people; and a liberal interpretation of law which leaves people free to do whatever the law does not explicitly forbid.

Sounds fairly uncontroversial and sensible to me.

How successful do you think a Marxist business would be?

Yup Nevermind;

I would go further. My few interactions with Facebook remind me of The Borg.

You have zero privacy and there is always a new application to install.

I hate the creepy way people are guilt tripped into hooking up into the collective.

I'm not on facebook and don't care for it myself, but I think you go too far in trying to make out the Facebook directors as a sinister lot, using words like 'cabal'.

What, for example, is wrong with Don Graham?

wotever

wotever is going on????

I thought we usually had different views, yet It appears that we agree about this. And even agree on our response to this very important issue!

Do you think Zuckerberg and Facebook have rediscovered how to release that toxic vapour from keyboards that Chris Morris exposed in one of his Brass Eye shows?

Enjoy the holidays,

NMTB

Take the vague sycophancy that accompanied Time's announcement. The magazine enthused that Zuckerberg had won the award, for "connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them, for creating a new system of exchanging information and for changing how we live our lives". I suppose my real objection is that bits of drivel such as the above imply that Facebook is some sort of altruistic social enterprise,

Actually it does not. You imagined it.

I find facebook useful as a once a day stop to see what distant friends and family are doing. Other than that, I don't find it a very big deal.

I'm sorry, but anybody who really sees something diabolical in something as innocuous as facebook needs to get more of a life.

But he's like rich and stuff, and the Internet's just like so way cool, and wotever...

Tinfoil hats at the ready! Was this article seriously written with sincerity?? Is today's paranoid lefty columnist so bereft of evil nemeses that he has to look to facebook to generate fantasies about american capitalism, subersive lifestyle control and shady, ulterior motives?

For christs sake at least complain about facebook gaining unwarranted news/web space, like everyone else does. Oh wait...

It is a C I A front like google.

i do enjoy the way that facebook is used to organise protest and what not. very good to see proper organisation in these matters.

Err, so you have pointed out facebook is business, with businessmen on it's board (American business, Americans on the board, horror of horrors). Any other great revelations? Love him, hate him, indifferent to him, Zuckerberg has had a huge impact in about 6 years, with the cumulative bulk of that impact in the last 2-3 years. Pretty good credentials to be Time Person of the Year.

If you don't want to be on facebook, don't sign up. I know plenty of socially active people who are probably facebook target demographic who have chosen not to join for various reasons and plenty who have joined who hardly ever use it. It's really not that hard to avoid this terrible AMERICAN business.

I was talking to a work colleague today who made the link between their private world and the corporates that are directly able to target adverts as they have access to your prefferences or lifestyle via your conversations.

This may be very useful unless as she says being a caver will push up any life insurance or other financial product were your legitimate lifestyle conflicts with the wishes of the market and its unwillingness to spread risk.

A lot saner way of assessing Zuckerberg and facebook than this paranoid nonsense:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/mark-zuckerberg-gotta-hand-it-to-the-little-fucker,18633/

... And? Liberal establishment in not too bothered by status quo shocker.

As for the more impolite of your comments (e.g. "he is the charmless and badly dressed CEO"), meow.

Woah, I guess you guys all prefer the anonymity of CiF.

It's true that there are some ads as on FB as there are on Radio, TV, Papers, Magazines and Commercial Websites.

The Big advantage is that on FB, you can tell them that an ad is uninteresting or offensive and they'll stop showing it to you straight away. If ONLY TV and the Radio could be like that.

I have bought some stuff from people who advertise on FB. I signed up for Better World Books, who give all there profits to Literacy in the 3rd World, and bought some mp3s from local bands that FB brought to my attention for the First Time.

I'm sure people will respond by posting that this is all part of Zuckerberg's evil plan.

Btw, why is The Social Network considered part of the media's fawning over Zuckerberg? It makes him look like a semi-autistic petty tyrant.

Funy how the civil liberties crowd scream about ID cards.

Yet face book an unaccountable, in your face neo-liberal information hoover and exploiter.
All we get is how super it is.

"just heard a woman on the news who revealed on her FB page, to all and sundry, that she & her family were going away for a few weeks, leaving her house empty.Only to return to find her home had been broken into when she was on holiday"

Is this how Zuckerberg makes his money?

... good article ... facebook is just another product to milk the masses ... its trick is to masquarade as something else ... but as ever, and as this article does, the money trail reveals the truth ... who is behind the face of facebook ... huge private equity, hedge and venture capital funds ...

mashmish

neo-liberal????

But I called him a commie first.

The laws of simplistic sloganeering clearly state that my earlier "commie" name for him overrules your "neo-liberal" name.

Zuckerberg is the antithesis of Mr Lassange who uses the internet for altruist motives.

Exposing the very corporations backing this evil capitalist website.

Facebook has its uses - just exercise frequent quality control over the pictures people "tag" you in, don't "friend" someone you don't actually like or trust*, and delete everything on your wall more than a week old. And keep an eye on the IT news sites for privacy issues etc., they're bound to tell you before Facebook ever does.

*The golden rule: Your boss is not your friend!

mishmash,

FFuny how the civil liberties crowd scream about ID cards.

Yet face book an unaccountable, in your face neo-liberal information hoover and exploiter.
All we get is how super it is.

Let me explain: because I don't have to join Facebook (I'm not a member).

NeverMindTheBollocks

I have a feeling that China are in advanced negotiations to launch Face Book with all the advantages that the state may use to its advantage.

MASMISH -- Plus he's not accused of sex crimes.

FACEBOOK -- Is a place to pass meaningless information to others to ensure the survival of the "look at me" society of America. When I need to find out how my distant friends and family are doing I do this very old-fashioned thing: Call em on the phone. Nice to hear their voiuce, if only for a few minutes.

Mark Zuckerberg is a nerd.
A man with so little personality he cannot have a real conversation. The American money heroes will state how important he is. They always do.

Facebook is proof if we needed it that humanity is obscenely stupid. We always thought that stupid was an American thing. Now we know that we do not have a monopoly on it. Stupid is universal.

This http://www.slate.com/id/2271265/great piece in slate.com does a better job than I did in outlining Peter Thiel's "hyper-libertarian" philosophy (apologies if I did that link wrong). This group I think are generally Ayn Rand fans. And I believe that McLuhan was right to point out that the medium is the message, in other words, the user of Facebook, in a subtle way, is touched by its ethics, if that makes any sense. Everyone on Facebook (and Twitter, for that matter) sounds the same as each other. When we use them, we are imprisoned by the medium. And Facebook is like Coca-Cola: it is an easy way to feel very modern; it's sort of fun; and it gives a hit, but it is ultimately unfulfilling and leaves you feeling a bit depressed. No beauty, no truth, no pain: welcome to eternal youth and the Brave New World.

Facebook may very well be evil, but I would have thought it is quite easy to avoid it. For example, I don't even know what you do with it, and have no desire to find out.

I see Mr Hodgkinson has simply removed the untrue stuff (for which the Guardian had to publish a retraction) from, and otherwise tightened up, his virtually identical Facebook whinge-fest posted on CiF back at the beginning of 2008:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook

I hope you didn't allow the Guardian to pay you twice for the same work Tom, I don't think that's very ethical.

wakeupbomb
For example, I don't even know what you do with it, and have no desire to find out.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

my, admittedly narrow understanding of it, is that you use it to stalk people you fancy or used to be involved with OR after finding as an adult your world has become very small you use it to get back in touch with people you knew when life seemed to offer so much more possibilities.

and playing scrabble

Thanks, good piece.

@Mashmish

Funy how the civil liberties crowd scream about ID cards.

Yet face book an unaccountable, in your face neo-liberal information hoover and exploiter.
All we get is how super it is.

I can sort of see the concerns people have with Facebook and its Big Brother qualities - but ultimately Facebook only has information about you that you choose to give it. You can leave as many of the personal details boxes as blank as you wish and ignore friend requests from people you don't really want to associate yourself with. Alternatively, you can just avoid Facebook altogether.

The problem with ID cards is that they are mandatory, expensive, you cannot choose which information you wish to supply and you have no control over how that information is distributed after you supply it. In those respects, I don't think Facebook really compares.

What a load of old crap. facebook is no more sinister than any other aspect of the web or the mass media in general. If you wanna use it fine - if you don't then give it a miss. I would say Sky is more insidious than facebook and it certainly wins the prize for dumbing down.

antipodean1 asks:

How successful do you think a Marxist business would be?

I don't know what's exactly a Marxist business, but there are many cooperatives which are sucessful and people working with cooperatives who could earn more but prefer to work with cooperatives. There are some highly sucessful business with good social standards and where people decide colectively how much they are going to earn.

The bored and lonely consumers who find comfort in Facebook chit-chat are pawns in the enterprise, mere targets for commodities.

Well, yes. In fact they are the commodities. It's a bit like commercial television. You the viewer are not the customer, not unless you're paying for the service. The advertisers are the customer - the viewer, or their attention, is actually the commodity being sold.

Surely privacy and Face Book is an oxymoron.

It would make no money as a vehicle for truth as it has been used to sack people who may, or may not, have been honest but thought their private thoughts should not be exploited by, or used for neoliberal profitable opportunities.

1. No one forces anyone to open a Facebook account.
2. If you do, you can use it free of charge.
3. You don't have to click on any of the ads if you don't want to.
4. You can control your basic personal information, albeit not as easily as many would like.
5. Most people use it for basic information exchange and updates, the vast majority of which is utterly inane and useless to others.
6. You can close your account whenever you want.

How, then, is Facebook a capitalist conspiracy to ensnare the world?

TomHodgkinson

23 December 2010 7:34PM

"This http://www.slate.com/id/2271265/great piece in slate.com does a better job than I did in outlining Peter Thiel's "hyper-libertarian" philosophy (apologies if I did that link wrong). This group I think are generally Ayn Rand fans. And I believe that McLuhan was right to point out that the medium is the message, in other words, the user of Facebook, in a subtle way, is touched by its ethics, if that makes any sense. Everyone on Facebook (and Twitter, for that matter) sounds the same as each other. When we use them, we are imprisoned by the medium. And Facebook is like Coca-Cola: it is an easy way to feel very modern; it's sort of fun; and it gives a hit, but it is ultimately unfulfilling and leaves you feeling a bit depressed. No beauty, no truth, no pain: welcome to eternal youth and the Brave New World."

But McLuhan's ideas applies to all media. And to him almost everything was a medium. He also didn't see it critically.

jamia9.

Because you say it isn't.