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Brian Armstrong and Lex Fridman recently discussed why people hate Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. The Bill Gates case is exceptionally strange—to understand why the world hates someone who has dedicated himself completely to charity requires a deep understanding of what is causing our society’s ever-increasing psychosis and paranoia (cough: social media). The Zuckerberg case, on the other hand, is simple: the public hates Zuck because he is dishonest about the harms of social media, and he fails to paint a compelling picture of the future.
But that isn’t the way he sees it. When asked why 54% of the US thinks of him unfavorably, he responded that it was because Meta is uniquely affected by partisan politics:
Misinformation
Zuck claims to want good faith criticism, but he rarely meaningfully responds to it. Jonathan Haidt has discussed social media’s adverse effects in too many places to cite in one sentence, and Tristan Harris has been yelling similar arguments from rooftops for years. Many others discuss this data, but you don’t need to hear it from them: Most of us have struggled with our own addictions to these platforms. Most of us feel an uptick in anxiety after doom-scrolling. Most of us know teenagers who unequivocally state that social media massively amplifies their insecurities.
We stop trusting journalists when they tell the financially illiterate that inflation is good for them; we stop trusting Exxon Mobile executives when they claim that climate change doesn’t exist during sweltering summers; and we stop trusting Big Pharma representatives when they claim that they are doing God’s work while walking over dead bodies and zombie children. Similarly, we stop trusting Zuck when he claims that social media actually improves teens’ mental health while their depression rates are rising massively:
The total number of teenagers who recently experienced depression increased 59% between 2007 and 2017. The rate of growth was faster for teen girls (66%) than for boys (44%).
This lack of trust is the main reason people hate him: Twitter is every bit as toxic as Meta’s products, but people don’t despise Jack Dorsey because we trust him more. He admits that social media can be addictive while Zuck doesn't; he tells us to be skeptical of technology leaders; and he is actively trying to move Twitter towards an open protocol. As I’ve written before, this solution could solve many of social media’s problems:
However, if you owned your data, hundreds of companies could build different user interfaces that you could plug your data into. For example, a company could create a “mindful Twitter” that reminds you to stop scrolling and logs you out after you use the app for ten minutes each day. Another organization could create a version of Instagram that only allows you to post and not consume others’ content. This is how email and podcasts currently work: since both are governed by decentralized protocols, you can use any email application or any podcast application you like.
The Metaverse
Since we distrust Zuck, it’s harder for us to buy into his vision for the future. For example, he states that Meta’s goal with VR is not to have people spend more time on computers, but instead to improve the experience of computing itself. This should be easy to get behind: if we’re already spending most of our days interfacing with technology, we should improve the experience of those hours. But does anyone believe that he doesn’t want us to spend more time online?
Even if we did trust Meta, they fail to paint pictures of a future that we would want to be a part of. Steve Jobs ushered in widespread computer usage in part because he was a master storyteller. Jobs inspired us by telling us that the computer would be a bicycle for the mind whereas Zuck terrifies us when he says he’s going to make virtual reality indistinguishable from physical reality. Apple gave us friendly computers that peacefully sleep while Meta gives us this:
Addiction
Zuck’s general indifference to his unfavorable public opinion is well-reasoned: he says that he’s more focused on building something that he believes in and that if you’re a public figure a lot of people will always dislike you—your experience won’t be that different if it’s 25% or 75% of the population.
Independent-mindedness can be a heroic trait because it’s required for people to do what is right instead of what is popular. However, it’s important to determine how the population is arriving at their opinion: Bill Gates shouldn’t think less of himself because millions of lunatics believe that he is microchipping them whereas Zuck should care that sane people are concerned about his products’ impact on them.
One would think that Meta would benefit from being more open about social media’s failings because it would allow them to regain trust with the public, which could result in better incentive alignment as well as more profits; but if a product is addictive enough, it doesn’t matter what the brand narrative is: many teenagers are aware that the Chinese government has access to their TikTok data, but continue to use it nonetheless. Meta’s brand has been tarnished for years while the entire world continues to use its products each day.
Given that there have already been well-publicized disasters such as hostile interferences in US elections and genocides in Myanmar, it’s unclear what is required to shake up the world’s ambivalence towards social media’s dark side. In this sort of world, perhaps it is rational for Zuck to refuse to concede territory and continue with his current narrative. In the short term, Zuck doesn’t need to care what we think about him.
But there will come a day when people are as aware of social media’s dangers as they are of cigarettes’. There will come a day when digital restraint is seen as high status and digital addiction is looked down upon. Hopefully, that day comes soon; when it does, Zuck will have to start caring about our feelings towards him and his company, and this will be a win for all of humanity.
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