Maybe I've just bought into the image Mark wants to give off, but I believe facebook's naivety in its actions to largely result from Mark's optimism and lack of skepticism. He comes off as a person with hope and belief that things are good and positive. He doesnt come off as a cynical, worst case scenario type person. Time and time again, something happens, he writes that "it isnt so bad" and THEN evidence comes out that it’s a bit worse. Usually the press invents a new level of hyperbolic hysteria, pretending it’s even worse than it is for ratings.

BUT whether its "fake news" or "data misuse" Mark is wrong because he believes all else equal, good is more powerful than malignant, and I think he is wrong.

Mark has a megaphone, he can amplify whatever the fuck he wants. Any story, any fact, any narrative. And he chooses to be passive, inactive, reactive, and let the algorithm decide, because he can maintain a position of faultlessness, forever blameless, as long as he can point a finger at a math problem, a glitch, or an oversight. He speaks in response to controversy, not preemptively.

The answer to election manipulation, fake news, etc, is to find better ways to rate and surface GOOD content. What SHOULD people be reading. Not, "well we only show what your friends posted, so blame your friends." Why is every person with money buying a newspaper? Because they have realized what Mark hasnt. To speak out, without prompt, about what is right and good. That means having an agenda, that means having bias, that means having an opinion. Mark cant have an opinion, because is trying to please 7 billion people at once, and has chosen to favor blandness and inoffensiveness. I believe he has made a mistake; both in his lack of pessimism towards collective human behavior, trusting monkeys with typewriters to come together on their own; and for not having the courage to come out and say more offensive things. He should have torn the senate apart like Howard Hughes in The Aviator. Instead he played nice, hoping they would soon forget about him.

Quick plug to sites that DO surface good content daily: What Mark SHOULD be doing. A facebook front page, a TIGHTLY curated (looking at you msn.com!) of what people SHOULD be paying attention to, things that actually matter to humanity, avoiding stories and serialized controversy the news cycle invents for its own riches.

https://www.aldaily.com/

https://www.techmeme.com/river

https://redef.com/channel/media/feed

https://longform.org/

https://longreads.com/

[I don't think Mark is being insincere, or speaking in bad faith, when he says Facebook takes security seriously. Of all companies to scale quickly, facebook has not been one that appears to allow technical security debt to accumulate, unlike just about any non tech company in the world.]

Sure, let's all sling FUD around based on anecdotes and fake data. Let's shame people earning a salary working at a company and trying to solve real problems. Sure FB does some shitty things but honestly so does every large company out there. It's impossible to get to that massive size without breaking a couple eggs here and there.

People expect saints when saints are imaginary. The baseline to measure cannot be "perfection".