back to article Zuckerberg sweats privacy criticism

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg has again defended his company's privacy policies, this time with added sweat. The perspiring boy-droid took to the stage at the D8 conference yesterday, where observers said he looked ill at ease facing questions about Facebook's latest PR wobble. According to the New York Times, Zuckerberg …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    hopefully

    they were applauding the removal of his hoodie.

    When you become a CEO, it's probably time to stop dressing like a pikey and show your investors some goddamn respect.

    1. Elmer Phud
      WTF?

      Eh?

      WTF has clothes got to do with anything - -

      Oh, I see, he's not a 'proper' person until he's got a suit and tie on

      Maybe you should learn that respect doesn't come from dressing up in a monkey suit.

      His 'pikey' clothes most likely cost a lot more than yours anyway.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        woah, easy on the failsauce there Elmer.

        You ask what clothes have to do with anything immediately before insinuating that cheap clothes are bad.

        Of course you CAN run a business dressed like you've just got back from downing your first beer behind the sports hall. Just like you COULD run a business with your dick hanging out and a big red clown nose on the end of it. Doesn't make it a good idea though, unless you actually want people to think that your idea of a good time probably involves downing cheap cider through a length of garden hose until you lose control of your bowels and start singing the German national anthem. (no disrespect to Germany)

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Read it properly

          He didn't say cheap clothes were bad, he said his "pikey" clothes probably weren't cheap. Also I seem to rememeber many workplaces thinking casual friday is a good idea. I remember significantly less workplaces having "public nudity clown" tuesday as corporate policy.

          1. Dave Gregory

            Dammit!

            Is THAT why my manager suspended me again?

          2. Fred Flintstone Gold badge

            "public nudity clown" tuesday

            "I remember significantly less workplaces having "public nudity clown" tuesday as corporate policy."

            Ah, so there IS something for Zuckerberg to aspire to..

      2. Evil Auditor Silver badge
        Thumb Down

        @Elmer Phud and others

        No, respect doesn't come from dressing up. But you grabbed the wrong end of the stick. Dressing up is a form of _showing_ respect. I don't wear suit, tie and all that jazz to get respect but because I show some respect to the poor basterds I meet.

        Show respect and you will be respected. It's that simple.

        Now Elmer, tell me, what kind of respect do you show to others, e.g. your business partners, if you meet them wearing a lousy hoody?

    2. Doshu

      Losers and crooks...

      ... can also wear suits.

      Books, covers and all that jazz.

      Random thought. Have a good'un.

  2. g e

    Misperceptions?

    So it's incompetence then, which is possibly more of a concern.

    Is "misperceptions" even a real word?

    Is "Zuckerberg" even a real person... ;o)

  3. meteort
    FAIL

    lame

    Lame story, El Reg. Seems you just wanted to fit the word "hoodie" on your site.

  4. Thomasj106

    He should be sweating.

    You can't take everybody for a fool...That just makes you one yourself. Zuckerberg tried too much too soon and got caught doing it and is now back-peddling as hard as he can.

    I enjoyed FB since I joined in the spring of 2009. But with all of the privacy changes without notifications and opt-ins set as the default, I had enough. I bailed about two weeks before the shit hit the fan. I urged several friends to do so as well.

    My info is compromised every day without me knowing by whom. How stupid do you have to be to not bail out when you do know who is doing it???

    1. heyrick Silver badge

      How stupid do you have to be...

      ...to put up more than you'd write on your blog, or say to a stranger on a train? You can't complain about information being compromised if you only post stuff you don't mind people knowing. Oh, look, Rick "liked" Serial Experiments Lain. Whoo. I'm not bothered. The important stuff (an address, an actual phone number, bank details, etc) are not posted. Not to Facebook, not *anywhere* other than a site that requires such by necessity (i.e. Amazon). And even then the bank information provided is a use-once-and-discard virtual credit card.

      It might be best to just assume that if there's no little padlock symbol, there's no attention being paid to privacy o security. Facebook has no padlock, and indeed the entire point seems to be people blathering crap and "farmville" and "bubble island" updates to each other... where does privacy fit into a system that scans your friends friends and persistantly autosuggests people you've never met as new friends? FFS, does anybody any more even understand the concept of friendship? It's a little more involved than clicking a blue button to receive yet more incessant blathering.

      [you might wonder why I'm even on FB to begin with; my cow-orkers are, it is "expected"; but now I've put together a basic profile (and locked it down), I can pretty much ignore it until El Reg reports the latest round of privacy options "tweaks" to go undo...]

      1. Albert
        Paris Hilton

        @heyrick - How stupid do you have to be...

        "How stupid do you have to be......to put up more than you'd write on your blog, or say to a stranger on a train? You can't complain about information being compromised if you only post stuff you don't mind people knowing."

        Facebook gave you the ability to only share your information with friends and not the whole world, so the expectation was set that this was a communications method you controlled.

        Then without warning they flipped all the privacty setting so all your details are public.

        Do this once careless, do this 2,3,4... times and there is a clear pattern of behaviour.

        misperceptions - Facebooks repeated actions created this perception. Nothing mis- about it.

        Paris just because it's Thursday and Asus haven;t sent in any nice press shots in a while.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    Look on the bright side

    Facebook has yet to come up with a viable business model. It's demise is inevitable, it will just take time as it goes on it's AOL-like trajectory. Of course, all it's dumb-f*ck (to quote Zuckerberg) user's information, even that of people who thought they deleted their accounts, will eventually be sold in an Asset Purchase Agreement when the shell that was once Facebook is sold for nano-pennies on the dollar many years from now.

    1. Rob Dobs
      Thumb Down

      I don't think you are correct.

      Ok so I don't have time to really research this fully, but

      A Business week article from Sept 15 2009 stated that Facebook generated over $500 million in revenues this year (2009).

      ClickZ article from Sept 16 2009 also has Fuckerberg stating that Facebook achieved being cash flow positive in the 2Q of 2009

      Unless people start leaving in droves (i.e. millions a day) they will be around for a LONG long time.

      Not that I approve or am happy about it mind you! (still refuse to drink the Kool-aid myself)

      I am afraid companies like Facebook, Google, M$ and Apple they will be a thorn in the side of independent intelligent thinkers the world over for some time to come.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Boffin

        Two words.

        Probably not the two words you were expecting, but two words nevertheless :-

        Ashton.

        Tate.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      The sad thing about AOL..

      ... is that it DID actually have a very viable business model - selling online services by the minute to technophobic grannies.

      The wheels only came off when it got mixed up with the internet, forgot it was a marketing company and started to imagine it was a tech company.

  6. Tom 13

    Here's a free piece of advice Zuckerberg:

    Don't go into politics. It is critically important that politicians either be able to lie with a straight face and not sound like a whimpering cornered rat or be able to spew sufficient bilge so that nobody has a clue about what you meant when you spewed.

    If you weren't trying to open Facebook information to World +Dog, you wouldn't have defaulted rights to the LEAST common denominator when you made changes.

  7. Munchausen's proxy
    Grenade

    Open is the last thing he wants

    Of course he doesn't want the information to be open. If it's open, he won't be able to get as much for selling it.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    TEAM R

    I love it when articles are posted under "Team Register". It makes me imagine all of the staff crowded around a computer and all typing at the same time. Do you all do a couple of paragraphs each or what?

    1. thenim
      FAIL

      no, it's the give a group of monkeys a typewriter

      method of generating news....

      The dictionary these days seem to be limited to facecrap, twatter and iShite plus basic dictionary...

      Who's really trusts a wanker with a name that sounds like the American bastardisation of cucumber with their personal data anyway? And if they do, they deserve everything headed their way...

      ... okay, I'll ease up on the caffeine...

      1. Captain DaFt
        Badgers

        @ thenim

        And here was me thinking that "Zuckerberg" was a carrollism for "There's a sucker born every minute."

    2. Evil Auditor Silver badge

      @Iron Oxide

      this would be called Extreme Typing and is another word for the least effective way to produce a text.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Presumably...

    ... he was thinking of when Bill Gates curled up in a chair and pretended to be a squirming, babbling retard, and how nobody was fooled - everybody knew he was really an evil corporate genius.

    So he thought he'd do the same. Sadly it didn't work for him. Everybody was fooled - we do all think he's a squirming, babbling retard.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And...

    ...if Zuckerberg wants a nice easy interview with no nasty hard questions, there's always Sarah Lacy again...

  11. Orclev
    Joke

    The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

    "There have been misperceptions that we are trying to make all information open. That's completely false,"

    He went on to state "The only way for people to gain access to your information is to pay us top dollar for it. Rest assured, only the largest and best funded of companies will know every last detail of your personal life."

  12. Hemisphere
    Big Brother

    Illuminati

    If you have yet to see both video sequences, it's well worth a watch on the D8 conference website... if only to see the (creepy) symbols mapped on the inside of his hoodie. Kara Swisher's "illuminati" quip is bang on the mark.

    http://video.allthingsd.com

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