Zuckerberg thinks he's cyber-Jesus – and publishes a 6,000-word world-saving manifesto

Wasn't he the man....

... who offered Facebook ads to people hit by an earthquake? And even had some press help him brag about how many $ of ads he graciously offered?

Personally I welcome any attempt by any major world figure (does he not qualify, despite his relative youth?) to improve the world, even if it's only talking and offering ideas. Unfortunately when the world's most powerful people are narcissistic sociopaths it's an uphill struggle, but that's only a reason to welcome any potential ideas, not ridicule them. Ridicule is easy; ideas and actions are hard.

Our greatest challenge is ending capitalism, and putting the US globalist regime to the sword.

So the solution

To Fake News, and people self selecting online into extremist echo chambers (due to a combination of semi-anonymity and a wide audience allowing "like minded" people to reinforce each others minority beliefs), would be for Facebook to buy Twitter and then shut themselves down?

Because they are part of the problem, and no where near the solution.

It's like he's invented a bio-weapon and is now trying to figure out how it can "do good".

The only thing missing from Z's meanderings...

... was suggesting we all gather together and sing "Kumbaya". Followed, of course, by several personally relevant ads and maybe a cat video or two...

>so long as you maintain this level of delusion over the actual role that Facebook has in people's lives and in society, you are actually a big part of the problem.

Indeed. Isolating liberals from reality in the world largest echo-chamber. Enticing them to abandon action in the real-world in favour of self-absorbing involvement with their phones; bombarding them with all the things they "like", distracting them other, more important things; channelling them into commercially safe causes - turning on rainbow filters on their profile pictures, instead of worrying about whether the war on terror might be killing far more people than its saving. Maybe they should stop focussing on which toilets 2.5% of the population want to use and contemplate how to support the 50% of the world's population who live on less than $2.50 per day. Maybe they should question whether prisons should be a commercial venture and if that has an impact on law-making. Maybe they should organise politically to support a candidate who does not have funding ties to big-business.

So many options. Maybe some of them are more important than seeing what the cat of a school-friend from twenty years ago is doing with a ball of wool.

He really is a total ranga cunt who thinks he's created some masterpiece, a work of creative genius rather than just an electronic pied piper for fucking idiots with precious little else to do but share their meaningless existence with all and sundry. His shitty website will solve fuck all so he should just stick to selling everyone else's data.

Pfft globalism

Globalism so far has turned out to be the biggest threat to humanity, with more death in the wars of the last century than probably the whole of humanity before.

I envision the world like a town. Just because I live in the same town. It's about being good neighbours, not room mates. Half of you urinate on the toilet seat, and I therefore don't want you in my home. I have a habit of keeping my shoes on which I'm sure doesn't gel with half of you either. We don't all have to live in the same house, however if I live in your house, I expect to play by your rules, and vice versa. Besides, I hardly like my current room mates anyway...

Our greatest opportunities ... lifting people out of poverty

"lifting people out of poverty", an opportunity? FFS, this is not an opportunity, this is what you referred to in the bit about humanity, not "All those pictures and updates"

I guess he must have meant well

I used to run a BBS back in the 1980s and it devolved into pettiness, plus had hyper-limited market so I got out of it. A lot of effort with zero potential for monetary gain and nothing but grief. I guess the internet has changed a couple parts of that, but you'd have to be pretty slimy to make a BBS into a business.

Whatevs.

Hey! I have a good idea for safety. We had a home invasion here in Canada where the family was kidnapped and later tortured and executed, then burned up as cremation. Terrible, horrible story. Anyway it occurred to me, yeah it'd be great if you had a house alarm, like the school has a fire alarm. Like you could punch your NEST thermostat in the nose and it'd start squawking and calling 911 for you. Anyway, that doesn't exist yet I do believe, but I guess I could keep my car alarm button near to bed. So that way if somebody breaks in I could press that car alarm button, which might scare away the intruder. As an "intruder alert" as like Berzerk.

Oh no, did I just zuckerberg? whups.

Facebook stands for bringing us closer together and building a global community.

Facebook stands for data mining to provide more targeted ads and higher advertising revenue and making me richer.

FTFY

What the ......?!!

El Reg's hack's opening paragraph spot on.

This would be laughable (as well as sick-making) save that it emanates from a guy who wields influence - as much if not more by virtue of the law of unintended consequences than by design.

Worse : completely delusional. This piece could have been written by a hyped-up Robinson Crusoe - the lord and master of his domain - oops - the only one in it - before he saw the footprint in the sand.

I often wonder how the World manages to work at all but it sure as hell is not going to change because of this sophomoric nonsense.

Predictably facile and sophomoric

Zuckerberg neatly demonstrates that skill in one area (he made a website once, I think?), even coupled with fair though unspectacular intelligence, doesn't qualify you to pontificate on matters you do not really understand.

He gets ever closer to the mistake made by most politicians - mistaking his own prominence for inflated expertise and wisdom.

It won't wash. Facebook is doing some good in the world, and a lot of damage as social media creates a culture of superficial infantilisation. We don't need an increasingly egotistical need to spout half baked tosh - we need a return to adulthood.

A nice dream, sure.

You know how every few years your brain unhelpfully reminds you of various stupid things you did or said in front of people (which made you feel stupid) and you cring and wish it never happened? Well, be happy that you usually don't do it on a global scale and that you can hope that none of the people remember it any more.

I think everone wants what Mark is talking about and it sounds good (and makes us feel good) to talk about the problems as it tricks us into thinking we are *doing* when we actually are not. What is lacking here are any real solutions with some backing money, or a down to earth acknowledgement of the human condition or general human nature (selfishness and greed etc) which has and always will keep this Uptia in the realms of fantasy. A perfect example here is that Mark failed to acknowledge that his wealth is built on the fact people don't know or understand about privacy, personal information, and advertising, and dont know how value them properly. At a base level this is not alturism but greed which he has leveraged that into a successful business that we all wish we had thought of. If he was as compassionate as he wants us to believe in this article then to help people he'd have ensured their data isn't sold and their privacy is intact... but then he wouldn't make any money and who wants to start an enterprise to not make money? The reality is at odds with the fantasy.

If he plowed vast sums of money into useful projects or rolled up his sleeves and assisted real people on the ground then I could respect what he was saying. Till then, as the article noted, he is probably high.

"Of course Zuckerberg isn't an ego-maniac"

* - Its just that 'Privacy is dead' because he says so... So Facebook is entitled to slurp whenever they want whoever they want! Meanwhile Zuk is just 'Connecting the world'... 'Connecting the world'...

* - Its like a demonic mantra. Never ever acknowledging selling users out to advertisers or corrupt governments. Zuk basically blames populist plebs for screwing up his vision of globalisation.

* - But... If you sell out your granny to Ad-Men / Govt Agencies, then buy up houses and islands to build a fortress around YOUR OWN privacy... What's that called? ... Is having a dedicated team to manage your homepage every day showing off Zuk's sociopathic / psychopathic tendencies???

* - The mainstream media paints Zuk as a visionary. But imagine if the 'leader' had his own middle eastern kingdom or SE-Asian / Latam country... Do we need yet another North Korea???

* - But hey, most users don't care for any of this. Most have nothing to hide. Privacy is overrated just like virginity. So get rid of it! Well, its happening, welcome to the new cult of surveillance capitalism.

* - But that still leaves whistleblowers, human rights activists and investigative journalists hung out to dry. FB basically exposes anyone who helps root out corruption or keeps 'The Elite' in check. The new UK / US laws confirm this! Plus, in other places its actually a matter of life and death. Not just the middle east, Latam has deadly corruption, Asia does too.

* - So privacy is no longer about individual privacy. When users in the West care, that in-turn helps protect the more vulnerable in less fortunate territories. Why? Because necessary questions get asked. Just like Zuk evicting indigenous people from their own island didn't wash this time.

A thought

Hmmm, it might be worth remembering FB has engineers working on things other than their website:

https://code.facebook.com/posts/561611824036387/inside-facebook-s-hardware-labs-moving-faster-with-more-collaboration/

So, they seem able to prototype / develop solutions for at least some forms of IRL problems too.

Transation of Article

Hey guys, I'm having a hard time at the moment. The stockholders are starting to revolt because we are not making enough profit. In order to continue with our mission to save the world I need your Dosh, lots of it and pronto.

I'm sure that the word save was misspelled and SLAVE used instead but some sleazebag lawyer changed it.

You can rebel and desert the FB ship. You did it before with MySpace and you can do it again.

Not a FB user and never knowingly will be.

How about starting simple - stop draining mobile batteries in the background? Just the amount of batteries replaced due to facebook app drain is doing a lot of damage.

A girl I knew once dated a guy who, quite proudly, pulled his pants down to reveal a tattoo on his arse, which read "100% C**t".

That man, was Mark Zuckerberg.

*starred out C**t because it's not 9am yet, the tattoo wasn't starred out.

Competition

And here I thought you were talking about the Book that could Save the World, about the "Human Condition". When I looked at the site, which is, I guess why I saw their ads, their idea was that we were all happy and peaceful when we were animals, but when we started thinking rationally for ourselves, then we started doing evil things like murder.

Since the conventional wisdom hasn't solved the world's problems - that the biggest cause of crime is impulsive behavior, where people act on their animal instincts instead of using rational thought - I guess trying something different, and turning around 180 degrees from common sense might make sense. But somehow I doubt it.

Still, saying that Adam should just vomit up that apple does have precedent behind it...

I dont think this kind of thinking is limited to zuckerberg or facebook. I work for a large bank where every app, product or 'interaction' is life changing, unique, revolutionary. Zuckerberg just has it worse than most other ceos, in direct proportion to the value of his company presumably.same logic applies to apple.

My employer 'lifted people out of poverty' last year by not paying me a bonus and instead using the bonus pool cash to start paying cleaning/admin staff the 'living wage' instead of the 'minimum wage'. Tart up a change you were going to have to make anyway as altruism.

I pity the poor bastards now at facebook who have targets set around this new mission statement. Not cured aids by lunchtime? Your fired go work for bebo.

Interconnected World

I'm not against an interconnected world, but I am against an interconnected world run by cockwombles like Zuckerberg.

Time to die...

The best thing he could contribute to society right now is to turn the whole thing off and let humanity find something else to occupy its time, like solving world problems.

"[W]e built social infrastructure...to empower us to achieve things we couldn't on our own."

Zuck's actually not wrong about this. Sure, we group together for mutual defence; but that's an example of a thing we cannot achieve on our own. It's also not the only reason we come together and secondary in the long run to achieving economic benefit.

The rest is deluded, self-aggrandising bullshit.

Arse

He's 32, he's too immature to even run a lemonade stand.

Globalisation sounds great doesn't it?

Maybe it is great.

But how about they figure out how to make it into the idyllic perfection they make it out to be on a small scale first. Take some of those areas billed as the most multicultural wonderlands and actually fix them. Fix LA's ghetto's/out of control drug addition/homelessness. Fix Detroit's completely failed economy/industry. Fix Chicago's murder rates and gun crime and general lawlessness.

Fix all that, then you might succeed in having something to sell to the world.

Dear Mark

How about you change the world in a way that you can, directly.

How about securing online privacy rights and transferring ownership of people's personal information back to them. If they wish to open it up and sell it, they can. You could create an entirely new market, a new economy, you would revolutionise advertising. You could empower people to make decisions with their life and spark competition and innovation. Remove the concept of "free" services, show the real monetary value being transferred. All within your hands today. A new vision of a world based on openess and empowerment, not secret slurping and spying.

Oh, and pay your taxes, you don't *need* to offshore and process profits through 13 business entities. You can because global legistlation is lax, but you could also go to a favela and shoot street children without much chance of being prosecuted either. It's about morality, get some, it'd look good with all your wealth.

Fund raising... ?

"A few years ago, after an earthquake in Nepal, the Facebook community raised $15 million to help people recover and rebuild – which was the largest crowdfunded relief effort in history."

In April 2015 - when the earthquake hit - $15M = £10.031710M. In 2015 on one small island nation off the coast of Europe a comedy TV program run by a charity called Comic Relief raised £78m. In one day. When all the money was gathered in the days and months that followed it totaled out at just over £104M.

If all Zuck and FB can manage - Globally - is 10% of that....

Just saying. Not saying its not good that FB raised that amount, but if 70% or whatever it is of the global population use it... ZB probably has that in loose change in his pocket.

I am immensely proud of how generous the British people can be.

In summary

Cunt.

Pay local taxes instead of enriching your "charity"

...that may make things a little better in the countries of your users

WTF?

Putting aside the issue of whether The Zuck should have even written this stuff for a moment...

... but is it just me, or is this the crappiest article El Reg has posted in a fair while? I know it's Friday and I may be having a senior moment or three after a long week and missing the point, but WTF is this shite?

I was so happy and content after reading this week's 'On Call' column then 'smack', I ran into this drivel.

Zuck may well get an "F" but this article definitely gets a "U": un(re)markable.

i guess we are going to see more of this from him, over christmas it was him waxing lyrical over how he'd discovered home automation (50 years late mark?) and now he's obviously finished reading a book and now thinks he can fix the world.

fuck off mark.

obviously a script kiddie who made a wack site that entertains only stupid people

mans was so happy finding out you can uninstall everything todo with facebook on a xperia z3

Bah!

I was with you right up to the point where you started mocking the 15 million.

Remind me: how much did the Register raise for the same relief effort?

With all due disrespect

"The Red Cross, for example, has an annual budget of $3bn. That's 200 times larger and that's just one organization."

Yes, but Nepal was just one earthquake. I suspect that the scale of Red Cross spending on Nepal was a bit closer.

In "Fiddler on the Roof", Tevye sings "When you're rich, the think you really know." He did not identify the more serious problem, which is that when you're rich, you think you really know.

"are we building the world we all want?"

Among other things, the World I want is a World where privacy matters.

I know his real motivation...

All this 'global problems' guff - Zuck wants new legislation to make it easier for Facebook to get cheap foreign hires. Trebles all round!

Fkck FB and all those other social media sites

FB produces nothing - if they disappeared today they would never be missed

>> In the United States election last year, we helped more than 2 million people register to vote and then go vote.

Is it just me or does Facebook "helping" 2 million people to vote actually sound really scary?

I expect the vast majority of the 1.86 billion active FB members will not read the manifesto. Yes, I am stating the obvious.

The danger for Zuckerberg when he produces these statements of grandeur is that there are activist investors who have been eyeing FB for sometime and have lately suggested that he be removed as CEO. To combat these corporate raiders, FB changed their corporate governance rules to give founders and early investors greater voting control. Zuckerberg benefits from 10 votes for each share and currently controls just under 57 percent of the vote. He has even given himself the right to name his successor when he dies. The very definition of 'control freak'.

The content of this manifesto should really not come as a huge surprise. He is a caviar socialist living the capitalist's dream.

"Zuckerberg thinks he's cyber-Jesus"

So you are saying he considers himself a (cyber-)non-Messiah? Me too, in that case. Or has he converted to Christianism or Islam? Or is it just the headline missing the mark?

I'm rather sick and tired of globalists telling me how great they are when all they have done is walk off with the profit without paying the tax small business have to pay. Utter hypocrisy.

did he just ...

spin that Kodos and Kang bit from The Simpsons out to 6,000 words?

but tonight I say, we must move forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!

Nice to see that there's one media outlet that's not taking that pointless stream of (barely) consciousness seriously.

What Jesus didn't do...

Jesus didn't get to where he got through mergers and acquisitions, 57 to date for Zuck.

The answer is Facebook, now what's the question?

Zuck should start changing the world by paying his taxes, according to how much revenue he receives in each country... from his facebook.

Non-facebook user - I am unable to create a profile 'for fun' or to take the piss...

Facebook reminds me of a song I enjoyed, it's something like a prophecy: adam freeland, we want your soul. :)

They are delusional

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39051972