Will Mark Zuckerberg ‘Like’ This Column?
Maureen Dowd September 23, 2017
WASHINGTON — "The idea of Mark Zuckerberg running for president was always sort of scary.
But now it’s really scary, given what we’ve discovered about the power of his little invention to warp democracy. . ."
Other than the byline image of Ms. Dowd there's this image of the subject of her writing with this caption:
Mark Zuckerberg may be learning what it’s like to be Dr. Frankenstein.
(Credit Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Why does she write that, pairing Zuck with the monster Frankenstein created as a fictional character by Mary Shelley? If you haven't read the novel you've surely seen the series of movies.So let's see where this goes . . .
"ProPublica broke the news that, until it asked about it recently, Facebook had “enabled advertisers to direct their pitches to the news feeds of almost 2,300 people who expressed interest in the topics of ‘Jew hater,’ ‘How to burn jews,’ or, ‘History of “why jews ruin the world.”’”
Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s C.O.O., apologized for this on Wednesday and promised to fix the ad-buying tools, noting, “We never intended or anticipated this functionality being used this way — and that is on us.”
"I had been the author of unalterable evils, and I lived in daily fear lest the monster whom I had created should perpetrate some new wickedness.”
What's that all about? ...more than meets the eye [read on]
. . . The Sandberg admission was also game, set and match for Elon Musk, who has been sounding the alarm for years about the danger of Silicon Valley’s creations and A.I. mind children getting out of control and hurting humanity. His pleas for safeguards and regulations have been mocked as “hysterical” and “pretty irresponsible” by Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg, whose project last year was building a Jarvis-style A.I. butler for his home, likes to paint himself as an optimist and Musk as a doomsday prophet. But Sandberg’s comment shows that Musk is right: The digerati at Facebook and Google are either being naïve or cynical and greedy in thinking that it’s enough just to have a vague code of conduct that says “Don’t be evil,” as Google does. . .
. . . As Bloomberg Businessweek wrote in a cover story a few days ago, Zuckerberg has hired Plouffe, other senior Obama officials and Hillary’s pollster. He has said he is no longer an atheist and he changed Facebook’s charter to allow him to maintain control in the hypothetical event he runs for office.
Yep. Very scary
Link from Axios > https://www.nytimes.com
_______________________________________________________________________________
American politics, popular culture and international affairs.
I invite you to follow me on Twitter (@MaureenDowd) and join me on Facebook.
