back to article Zuckerberg: 'I am a prophet'

Mark Zuckerberg has revealed that he is a prophet, declaring that he had foreseen that people will soon have no qualms about displaying every minute detail of their private lives on the internet. Zuckerberg revealed his gift during a staged interview with Michael Arrington at the TechCrunch awards this weekend. Critics have …

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  1. Richard Jukes
    FAIL

    And Facebook makes money?

    I'll listen to Mr Fuckerburg when his company actually makes money instead of losing it hand over fist.

    A company is only worth what it makes combined with what it is likely to make. Facebook will fail.

    1. Mark Broadhurst
      Stop

      ... and when it does.

      So lets hope they don't sell everyones details to everyone else when then happens.

      1. Stoneshop

        I think you mean

        *in order to* make that happen.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Paris Hilton

      So who pays the wages?

      I don't know a whole lot about the finances of social networking sites, but I'm under the impression that Facebook has employees right? Who pays them if they're not making money?

      Paris because I'm clueless and AC just because.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Alert

        Re: So who pays the wages?

        You do know what investors are, right?

        1. Dale Richards
          FAIL

          Hmmm

          Call them "dragons" and maybe our AC will understand.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        WTF?

        Arggh!

        Called "utter b*****ds", the very best money-grabbing kind! They will sell their own granny if there is a cut to be made punting money on a load of wet-dreams from people like this piece of scum. You put the money in, inflate the price by bandying it about and then pull out at the last second, just like some over-excited businessman on a trip to a Thai brothel!

        Quote from the film Aliens: "They may be animals, but you don't see them f**king each other over for a Goddamn percentage!"

        Finally we are seeing these dirtbags confirm what we all knew anyway, Google chief and Zuckerburg reckon we're all fair game for privacy rape. Used to be a time when company's thought like this, but at least bothered to give the illusion they they cared about us. I am no longer sure which makes me more angry, knowing it but can't prove it or being told straight to my face and can't argue with the faceless corps?

    3. N2

      Agreed

      Anything that is 'Free' comes at a price, with Ts & Cs along the lines of...

      "we reserve the right to do as we please with your personal details"

      I predict It wont be long before the Internet is heaving with liars who dont submit the whole truth about their personal data for good reason as trust is a thing of the past.

      I would now declare myself a prophet, but Id rather not be associated with the likes of Mr Fuckwit & Co.

  2. Elmer Phud
    WTF?

    Profit for a Doris

    "he had foreseen that people will soon have no qualms about displaying every minute detail of their private lives on the internet."

    Not sure he's forseen the large pair of hairy dangly things that wil be offered up insted of the minute personal details.

    Doris -- every clairvoyant should be know as 'Doris' after Doris Stokes, one of the best con artists ever

  3. Rob Moir

    zuckerberg and arrington on stage together?

    It's not every day you see that much asshattishness on one stage.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    right

    'I am a prophet'

    You are a dildo.

    People are sheep, and facebook and its ilk will either go bankrupt out of vanity or simply because they went out of fashion.

  5. James 5

    I thought ...

    .. prophets normally correctly predicted things before the event.

    Doing it afterwards is know as "hindsight" and is always 100% correct.

    And, yep, he's just so right - we all want to share 100% of our lives with various groups such as Al Quaeda, the FBI, CIA, MI5, the hordes of ID thieves around the world. Why, the list of "friends" just goes on and on!

  6. Anonymous Bastard

    Exhibitionists

    "Least that way no-one would have had to see pictures of him lounging around the pool."

    It is my experience that the sort of men who bathe in skimpy trunks, take their shirt off at football or dress in drag for the xmas panto are compelled to do so regardless of the occasion. Being rich or popular or simply notorious is not the cause but merely their current excuse. In other circumstances they will find some other socially accepted explanation to strip in public and exploit it.

    We all remember the office tragedy that arose from The Full Monty; Fattening middle aged bosses believed they could be sexy.

    For the sake of public decency people like Zuckerburg must be locked up! Won't somebody think of the children??

  7. Mike Cardwell

    Re: Richard Jukes

    Facebook went cash flow positive in September. They no longer lose money, "hand over fist," they now turn a profit.

    1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

      Profit...

      It's a long, long way from "cash-flow positive" to "making a profit".

    2. Doug Glass
      Go

      Nope, 'Fraid Not

      You make a profit ONLY when revenue exceeds expenses. Cash flow is simply money flowing through the enterprise and is NOT the same as profit. A business can generate outrageous cash flow by borrowing a huge amount of money and then spend 100% of the loan. But if you don't eventually get to the point where you can pay all your bills and still have money in your pocket, you FAIL most miserably. Facebook is still failing financially. The only reason it still exists is because it is BELIEVED by investors to be a "good" risk. If the current "Buy" recommendation evaporates and becomes a recommendation to "Sell", Facebook will be gone. Or at least re-organized in hopes of emerging successfully from bankruptcy. That sound familiar to you???

      1. Paul 4
        FAIL

        Profit

        Profitable companys can fail through not having enough cashflow. Cashflow is just as important as profit, as without cashflow a company dose not have enough liquidity to pay its bills.

        Facebook may be about to fail if investors pull out, but the fact is that all PLCs are in the same position. If all of the investors in BP pulled out then they would have no money, so would fail. The same with any company on any stock exchange, or any company with investors. That is the point in investment. Without seeing facebooks accounts you can't say what is happening to them.

        Please don't type in CAPS and use lots of punctuation!!!??!??!?!?!?! unless you know what you are talking about, as it just makes you look stupid.

  8. Andrew Newstead

    Really?

    I think he ought to read the Science Fiction and other writings of David Brin, beat him by about 15 years I'd say.

  9. Chris King
    FAIL

    So, he has no qualms about destroying other people's privacy...

    ...but when he accidentally exposed his own photographs, he was very quick to protect them again.

    If he wants the world to open up, he should eat his own dogfood and go first. Anything else is just hypocrisy.

    This rant was brought to you by pots, kettles and the colour black.

    1. Shannon Jacobs
      Big Brother

      Just so

      That's exactly what I was thinking. If he thinks privacy is so passe, why doesn't he give up his own?

      Answer: Because if ANYONE has sufficient personal information about you, they can use it to your disadvantage. In the most obvious case, almost everyone has made mistakes that could be used to embarrass them, possibly get them arrested, or maybe even worse. However, even if you're Caesar's wife, sufficient information will reveal ways to twist, tempt, or trick you into following the wrong path. Even your strengths can be turned against you if an adversary understands them fully.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Idiot

    I can predict this post will appear on the comments page ... BECAUSE I HAVE ASKED FOR IT TO BE. Zucky has enticed people to hand over their privacy and that of their "friends"... somehow.

    (And if I'm wrong, you'll never be told of the prediction.)

    Who cares if he's making money or not? He's killing the social norm - it wasn't dead when he arrived.

    Anon just to notch up the privacy.

  11. Cynical Observer
    FAIL

    A prophet is despised in his own country.....

    And with every twist of the privacy rules the Zuckerberg grows more and more despised!

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    "Ahhhh..."

    That's the sound of deep satisfaction that comes from never having signed my life away to facefuck.

  13. Nimrod
    FAIL

    What a knob

    The sad thing is that Facethingy is a product for that generation that see getting an X Factor/Britains Got Talent audition as a career move & consider being featured in the gossip columns of the redtops as meaning they have made it .

    For those of us who are a tad more mature we divulge what we wish to divulge in the public domain and nothing more, affter all there are way too many "friends" out there who just want to take advantage.

  14. Peter Kay

    Self interest man pushes things to further his self interest..

    No surprise that he's busy trying to push the lack of privacy when it drives his slowly failing business. Better hope he extracts enough money before it does a Myspace.

  15. mtcoder

    He didn't do anything

    Facebook only survives or is what is has become, due to the 3rd party developers who build applications for it. Take away all the games from facebook, and you have myspace which is um oh yeah dead in the water.

    If there wasn't a billion quizes, and games to play with your friends then facebook would never got off the ground past colleges. So really facebook and Mr. Z hasn't done anything but create a socialized gaming site.

    If you look at the facebook states is something stupid like 80% of all updates are game messages. People log in, post a hello, and then play a game or two, say goodnight and move on. That or its a bored housewife looking for something to chat to.

    Oh and a prego mom that wants to whine for 9 months.

  16. g e

    Cock

    When that twat Zuckerberg changes Farcebook to have DEFAULT permissions at most lenient of 'friends only' for every single thing people might stop thinking of him as someone who can actually be taken at face value. Until then he's a charlatan at best. Not that I've opened a new account on FB

    recently but new joiners still seem open to the whole planet until you tell them to lock their shit away and point out that everyone can see everything.

    My watchword of the year - disingenuous - becomes more poignant with every passing day and it's only the 11th Jan ....

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    gah

    Most people see the future and are desperate to change it, but not Mr "I hate your privacy" Zuckerburg.

    May I suggest that his dad is also a prophet? He knew Mark would grow up to invent something truly horrible and so he set about finding a wife that, when their DNA combined, would create the kind of face that not even a nun could look at with out getting itchy fists.

    He has a face like Gordon Browns ass sewn into the back of some bagpipes.

    I honestly don't know how he still has all his teeth... guy must walk around wearing a batting helmet or something.

    1. John H Woods Silver badge

      INVOICE

      Laptop keyboard replacement 50.00GBP

      Thanks ...

  18. g e

    @mtcoder

    Absolutely. I deliberately set my PS3 to spam game trophies to FB to counter those hateful FB game msgs that you can only block by blocking the entire friend. (OK there might be a control for those msgs but can anyone FIND it?)

    Let the battle of meaningless cruft begin/continue!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Block selected games but not your friend

      Yes, there is a control: when you receive an update from one of your friends for one of those games, just click "Hide" then you are given 2 options: either hide all updates from your friend or all updates from the game in question. Choose to hide the game and you never see one of its updates again, while you see all other updates from your friend. I've got Farmville, Mafia Wars and quite a few others blocked that way.

  19. matt 115

    load of shit...

    Two of the most annoying people in the same place, talking a load of **** and blowing their own trumpets. Bunch of ****s. You'd only get me in that room if eggs were supplied at the door.

  20. Fred 1

    Hypocrite

    I tried posting some pictures of my most intimate and private activities on facebook, and they closed my account and told me never to come back again.

    Guess I'll just have to show them off the old way, down in the park at dusk.

  21. Andrew Moore
    Thumb Down

    I am also a prophet...

    And I predict that in the near future Mr Zuckerberg and Facebook will be as relevant as Geocites, AngelFire, Tripod, Friendster and every other "flavour of the moment".

  22. Mobius
    Grenade

    twat

    that is all.

  23. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    @g e

    Anybody with an IQ larger than their shoe size can. The options to block all messages from a particular application are directly accessible from the link. So if you see something you don't want to see again you just go to the end and block it. Of course as the app says, that doesn't mean you won't see similar messages on your friends wall since they probably aren't blocking them.

    Which isn't to say Facebook isn't re-engineering people's attitudes to make them more prone to being p@wned. Whilst recently unemployed I put up a Facebook page and then created two sock puppets to advance the games. A little while back I decided that one one of them I would start trying to friend people after beating up on them (beat on, judge so they get some minor bennies, then send a friend request). Since the data is close but not real, I wasn't worried about compromising that ID. I expected to get a lot of rejections and while only a few would accept. The result was quite the opposite. And being an ugly American who doesn't speak or text non-English messages, I've been extremely surprised at how many obviously non-English speaking people have accepted the friend requests.

    Anonymous because I like my sock puppets on Facebook.

  24. MinionZero
    Big Brother

    Mark -my words- Fuckerofferberg

    Mark Zuckerberg isn't a prophet, his predictions where taken out of George Orwell's 1984. After all everyone loves Big Brother. Just ask the Ministry of Truth, for proof everyone loves Big Brother. Its what they always say.

    Mark Zuckerberg's comments throughout this news article sound like marketing twisting, trying to convince everyone that no one wants privacy and that everyone must totally give up all their data because its what everyone else is doing. Thats two faced lying taken to the point of a Sociopath. He really doesn't care about other people, he's only interested in furthering his own greed to exploit other peoples privacy.

  25. WinHatter
    Heart

    Ewww

    Him around a pool ... yuk ... no wonder he does not believe in privat'see.

    Twat.

  26. transientcylon
    FAIL

    What an idiot...

    This coming from the guy that removed his photos after the privacy change settings. What Mr. Web 2.0 fails to realize is there will always be at least a portion of the market like myself that stick to their curmudgeonly old ways, don't use facebook and enjoy every bit of their privacy. Epic fail.

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    General Warning to Media Industries

    due to your current excessive behaviour!

    That means your fate is now solely in your own hands!

    ------------

    FIRST READING (Ezekiel 33:7-9) A reading from the prophet Ezekiel

    The word of the Lord was addressed to me as follows. "Son of man, I have appointed you as sentry to the House of Israel. When you hear a word from my mouth, warn them in my name. If I say to a wicked man: Wicked wretch, you are to die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked man to renounce his ways, then he shall die for his sin, but I will hold you responsible for his death. if, however, you do warn a wicked man to renounce his ways and repent. and he does not repent, then he shall die for his sin, but you yourself will have saved your life." This is the word of the Lord.

    1. Paul 4

      I asume that

      the down votes are from the local athist extremests who downvote because it is from the bible.

  28. Tom 7

    They'll prolly make him an internet tzar

    lady just to prove how useless he really is.

    Getting people to look at the car crash on the internet highway that is the stupid gullible and lonely with a pc is not prophesy.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    He is not as smart as he thinks he is...

    if he believes that the masses want all their information splashed all over the Internet. Facebook is a convenient method of staying in contact with a large group of people, but as peoples privacy is continually eroded there will be backlash, even if only a general withdrawal from Internet usage.

  30. DZ-Jay

    He is a prophet!

    Indeed, it's on his business card: "I'm a prophet... Bitch!"

    -dZ.

  31. Michael 82
    FAIL

    What next?

    Next he'll be citing that he is the next Jesus Super f****ing Christ, and we are his children?

    One more reason why I shouldnt be on Farcebook.....

    1. Steven 8
      Paris Hilton

      Let's hope

      Let's hope he does, then we can nail him up.

  32. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Happy

    David Brin was around 20 years late

    Look at John Brunners "The Shockwave Rider.*"

    Especially the ending.

    Change "phone" for laptop. Please ignore all dodgy fashion descriptions.

  33. Cliff

    Silly boy

    Everyone knows that you should big up your internet company then get the fuck out before its true worth comes to light - Great article in the FT last month about Murdoch's MySpace regrets, and everyone with bookface stock will regret it soon enough.

    Cash-flow positive? So it's not losing money as fast as it lost it historically? Whoopee. I wonder when it'll pay back that big pit of lost fortune it's based on. Except I don't, it won't. I was here for the dotcom boom and bust first time around, still stunned that nobody learned a damn thing.

  34. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    idiot

    maybe d***head

  35. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Sucks!

    Zuckerberg is a royal twat and I despise facebook since its inception. The problem is with the sheeple (sheep people) following this so-called 'internet phenomenon' fad, blah. Hopefully it will soon run out of steam, before it actually makes any money, having burnt millions of dollars to no avail. Cheers!

  36. Watashi

    Tw*t

    This is not the dawn of the classless society where everyone shares everything with everyone else. It is, in fact, the dawn of a new type of class system based around how socially aware you are. Socially aware people do NOT share everything with everyone, because they are smart enough to realise that employers or prospective husbands / wives or even insurance companies know how to use the internet and will discriminate against you on the basis of what you do and say. Socially ignorant people do not stop to think before they post sensitive information about themselves on-line and are destined to a more dificult, more lonely, more expensive adult life as their idiotic teenage transgressions and early adulthood arrogance dogs them until their deaths.

    So, when I get the promotion my more highly qualified colleague deserves, and when I get to marry the girl of his dreams even though he is better looking and funnier than I am, it will be because I didn't post some stupid right-wing racist rant on some crappy social website, or because I've never had any members of EmoSlut.com on my networking site's friends list.

    Zuckerberg is clearly about as socially aware as a paving slab and only has any success in his life because he was lucky enough to stumble across a great idea a few minutes before some other dotCom start-up dweeb. There are a million more Zuckerbergs tearfully wanking themselves to sleep in their parents' spare rooms as we speak.

    p.s. The REAL money is going to be earned by those who figure out a way to remove all that freely shared private stuff from the interwebs.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Keep telling yourself that

      and those of us with a life will carry on as we are, keeping stuff on facebook private and not posting anything on the net that we woulden't say in the pub.

      They way its going you will be left behind because you don't have the skills for the modern world, much like the people who end up in "admin" or wondering why the company won't let them stay on after 65 when they may have all the job skills, but still one finger type and can't find anything on the internet.

  37. Dave 129
    Pint

    @AC gah 11/01/2010 13:35

    A fantastic post! Not laughed that loudly for quite a while. Thanks for making my evening :)

  38. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    WTF?

    You've gotta be shitting me.

    Stay away from this bullshit, aka FAILBOOK!

  39. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You misheard

    He said "I dream of PROFITS". Wise, since dreaming is probably as near as he'll get.

  40. James Condron

    Behave

    The guy read a Ben Elton novel, Orwell being a tad too heavy, and decided in favour of the totalitarian caricatures he was supposed to laugh at. Maybe he can do similar to what Todd Davis of LifeLock infamy did and have someone release photos of him covered in vomit from the night before, passed out on the toilet, and try to get them removed.

    Or maybe he can go fuck himself.

  41. Evil Auditor Silver badge

    I wonder...

    Putting fuckwit Zuckerberg and his pathetic FaceTube aside I'm wondering how many of the moaning commentators in here have a FB account themselves (I never could be bothered to join this virtual exhibitionist site). So do you complain that you've given away way too many personal details? This is probably the equivalent of selling one's soul in the Internet era...

    I'm not in favour of Zuckerberg's idea of no privacy - indeed I believe he coulnd't be more wrong. But as long as you can choose whether you want to be a twat collecting imaginary friends among other twats and sharing whatever twats share with the rest of the world I don't care that much. And there is, finally, something positive about Zuckerberg: he with his allegedly stolen idea challenges established social norms which could start a public dispute.

  42. Gulfie
    Coffee/keyboard

    You WHAT?

    No, I'm sorry, I don't post every detail of my life, however interesting it may be, and I never will. Privacy is important to a small but significant percentage of net users; it should be important to all - but then, like Google, Facebook's business model wouldn't work in a world where people kept stuff private.

    Given the reaction to the recent Google statement in this area, I'm surprised Mr Z even went there. Another case of believing your own hype, I guess - either that, or he's full of something, not sure what...

  43. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    That is one easy prophecy

    Let me see how this works :

    1) create (or steal the code to) a website that allows people to share their personal life

    2) make it really popular by recruiting coders to enhance its appeal (add apps) for free

    3) weed out the independent thinkers by imposing arbitrary and annoying restrictions

    4) make sure that most of the users that stay are sheeple that accept everything you do

    5) conclude that, since your own users bend over for you on your command, the entire world will do so as well

    That, obviously, is where MZ is going to fall on his teeth. When 90% of your users accept what you do it just means that you have managed to recruit people who submit to your will. Congrats on that point, obviously, but I'd rather be hanged than participate willingly in a so-called "social website".

    So you won't have MY details to sell, bitch !

  44. Doug Glass
    Go

    And How Many of You ...

    ... that have posted such damning and contemptuous comments here have a Facebook account?

  45. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    So everybody is on facebook now, with privacy settings to "drop my pants"?

    Last I checked this anonymous nobody wasn't, and so aren't quite a few more of the six-odd billion people around. How many "users" does facebook have, and how many of them are even real? Fifty percent sockpuppets and sign up once, forget forever accounts, perhaps? And oh, mistah prophet himself actually removed some photos from his own facebook page. What an impostor.

    The sugar hill is a lie.

  46. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    What a c*ck

    Nuff said

  47. Stone Fox
    FAIL

    it always amazes me

    the self righteous wank that comes out of the mouth of opinionated people who have never tried that which they are criticising.

    I use facebook.

    I know how non-existent data security and privacy is but I find a useful tool for keeping track of and leaving messages for friends who live in different areas or countries and my family in Australia.

    Pull your collective heads out of your collective backsides, stop over-using the word sheeple and accept that it's not just text speaking teenage hoodies that find facebook useful.

    Get over yourselves.

  48. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    hmmm

    wow - a real prophet - nearly everyone on facebook has their profile locked down beyond belief - where's the 'open privacy' in that?!

  49. Anonymous Coward
    IT Angle

    like / don't like

    i wonder if the like/don't like feature on this message board was inspired by Facebook?!

  50. JimC

    >"We thought this would be the social norm and we went for that," he declared.

    Call me a cynic, but I interpret that as "we couldn't figure out how the hell to do the security/privacy bit so we went ahead hoping people wouldn't care". As anyone who's worked in user secuity support will tell you that was a fairly safe bet...

  51. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    When you have no standards

    left to live by then you cannot attach any blame to your neighbours when they stab you in the back!

    P.S

    It was me who quoted that passage from the Bible as any good Christian should be proud to admit!

  52. Joshua Goodall
    Big Brother

    Misquotation

    Zuckerberg may be a deluded egomaniac, but he didn't actually say 'I am a prophet'; that is a paraphrase and should not be in quotation marks.

  53. wv9e

    Woopie...

    Besides the fact that most people understand that it is pretty stupid to put incriminating data on the internet , anywhere., much of facebook contains fictional data. If he was so smart he should be making money.....

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