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Fix markdown errors

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Jonah Aragon
2022-10-25 18:02:10 -05:00
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@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ license: BY-SA
Mark Zuckerberg does not look comfortable on stage. Yet, there he was proclaiming that “the future is private”. If someone has to tell you that they care about your privacy, they probably don’t.<!-- more -->
For someone trying not to appear like a cartoon villain, Zuckerberg doesn’t do a great job. He gives the impression of some strange cyborg algorithmically attempting to impersonate human life. His movements are not quite robotic, but he lacks the charisma you might expect from one of the most powerful people on the planet. A _New Yorker_ [profile](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/17/can-mark-zuckerberg-fix-facebook-before-it-breaks-democracy) of him revealed that he had an affinity for Emperor Augustus, an ancient Roman tyrant. ‘Through a really harsh approach, [Augustus] established two hundred years of world peace,’ he said.
For someone trying not to appear like a cartoon villain, Zuckerberg doesn’t do a great job. He gives the impression of some strange cyborg algorithmically attempting to impersonate human life. His movements are not quite robotic, but he lacks the charisma you might expect from one of the most powerful people on the planet. A *New Yorker* [profile](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/17/can-mark-zuckerberg-fix-facebook-before-it-breaks-democracy) of him revealed that he had an affinity for Emperor Augustus, an ancient Roman tyrant. ‘Through a really harsh approach, [Augustus] established two hundred years of world peace,’ he said.
It’s the first part of that sentence that is worrying.
@@ -27,10 +27,10 @@ Like a depraved tabloid journalist fishing through a minor celebrity’s trash,
Véliz argues that privacy is a form of power. It is the power to influence you, show you adverts and predict your behaviour. In this sense, personal data is being used to make us do things we otherwise would not do: to buy a certain product or to vote a certain way. Filmmaker Laura Poitras [described](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/10/23/snowden-filmmaker-laura-poitras-facebook-is-a-gift-to-intelligence-agencies/) Facebook as ‘a gift to intelligence agencies’. It allows governments to arrest people planning to participate in protests before they have even begun.
The social media giant is tip-toeing ever closer into our personal lives. When Facebook encountered competition it just bought it, adding Instagram and WhatsApp to its roster. The company even tried to make its own cryptocurrency so that one day the Facebook would control all our purchases too. Earlier this year, the project was [killed](https://www.ft.com/content/a88fb591-72d5-4b6b-bb5d-223adfb893f3) by regulators. It is worth noting that when Zuckerberg purchased WhatsApp and Instagram, they had no revenue. Author Tim Wu notes in his book _The Attention Merchants_ that Facebook is ‘a business with an exceedingly low ratio of invention to success’. Perhaps that is a part of Zuck’s genius.
The social media giant is tip-toeing ever closer into our personal lives. When Facebook encountered competition it just bought it, adding Instagram and WhatsApp to its roster. The company even tried to make its own cryptocurrency so that one day the Facebook would control all our purchases too. Earlier this year, the project was [killed](https://www.ft.com/content/a88fb591-72d5-4b6b-bb5d-223adfb893f3) by regulators. It is worth noting that when Zuckerberg purchased WhatsApp and Instagram, they had no revenue. Author Tim Wu notes in his book *The Attention Merchants* that Facebook is ‘a business with an exceedingly low ratio of invention to success’. Perhaps that is a part of Zuck’s genius.
‘Move fast and break things’ was the old company motto. When there were a few too many scandals, they moved fast and [rebranded](https://www.privacyguides.org/blog/2021/11/01/virtual-insanity) to Meta. No one expected online privacy to be the ‘thing’ they broke.
Before it became a global behemoth, Facebook started out as a dorm-room project. Zuckerberg sat at his keyboard after a few drinks and built it mainly because he could. It now has nearly three billion users. In the same way, Facebook [conducted](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-apologises-psychological-experiments-on-users) social experiments seemingly just for fun. Why he did it doesn’t really matter. As John Lanchester [put it](https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n16/john-lanchester/you-are-the-product): he simply did it _because_.
Before it became a global behemoth, Facebook started out as a dorm-room project. Zuckerberg sat at his keyboard after a few drinks and built it mainly because he could. It now has nearly three billion users. In the same way, Facebook [conducted](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-apologises-psychological-experiments-on-users) social experiments seemingly just for fun. Why he did it doesn’t really matter. As John Lanchester [put it](https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n16/john-lanchester/you-are-the-product): he simply did it *because*.
It is unfair to say that Zuckerberg does not care about privacy – he does. That’s why he [spared](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/11/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-neighbouring-houses) no expense buying the houses that surrounded his home. Zuckerberg knows the power of privacy, which is painfully ironic given he has built his career on exploiting it. For Zuckerberg, at least, the future is private. It’s the rest of us that should be worried.