Based on the responses here on Hacker News, it seems like some of you didn't get it.
This article is about social privilege, and how different the life circumstances of the founder of Facebook are from many of the people using his product.
It's underscoring the fact that Graph Search could only be built by someone who doesn't understand the sometimes life-or-death importance of privacy, who has never had to fear any real consequences from any expression of identity or presenting the same face to all people.
A large segment of the readers of Hacker News have the same blind spots as Mark Zuckerberg, and this comes out whenever any question of social privelege as it relates to technology comes up here. This is a problem. The products we're building have huge, and usually unexamined, social consequences, and I don't think ignoring those consequences will work long term.
This is true in other fields that claim "neutrality" the way technologists do. Most working U.S. journalists, for instance, work for pro-government, pro-Capitalist news outlets. We call this "objective". Any deviation from that norm is "bias".
Keeping identifying information in a centralized location that is subject to subpoena by law enforcement is a norm now, too, one that has serious social consequences. So your decision to roll your own auth system and saying "fuck it, I'll just make them log in through Facebook" is about a lot more than how many keystrokes you have to enter and how much maintenance you're going to have to do down the road.
We should start factoring social consequences in to our technical decisions, like, ten years ago, and I'm afraid it's going to take a lynch mob empowered by Graph Search for people to get this.
It's not that the critics of this article didn't get it, it's that there's nothing there to get. If anything it's a Rorschach test that commentators like you and kevinalexbrown can read their own thoughts and biases into.
I prefer people post under their real name if possible, but know that it is not always possible. I do want these problems fixed eventually if possible too.
But is that truly de-anonymizing? I share my legal name with several famous people, and numerous SEO'd professionals. Barring more specific searching knowing specific details I am relatively hard to identify. Same with just about anyone who fits the (common first name, common last name) paradigm. On the other hand (rare first name, rarer last name) is relatively easy to uniquely identify.
For most purposes, it is de-anonymizing. There might be several famous people who share your name, but is there more than one person with your name who is currently an undergrad at Caltech studying CS? In most cases, a name combined with a little bit of context will identify an individual.
There's a vast difference from if people can do a search for your name, and get page up and page down of stuff from every forum you might post on, vs. if people need to track down your nym's.
In my case, my HN id is trivially easy to connect to my full name, but unless you go to the effort, these comments won't show up.
My Reddit comments are still easy to connect to my full name if you try, but it does not reflect my name directly, and it will take more searches for most people. I don't care if people who know me figure it out - I've e.g. often made clear statements that identify me in comments there, by e.g. replying in threads when posts from my blog has been posted there. I don't care if the odd person here and there make the connection, with or without my help.
I don't care if people who care enough to put effort into figuring out the connections figure it out (though I'd find it rather creepy if someone thought that worthwhile) - they'd find other avenues to get information about me anyway.
But I do somewhat care that off-hand comments I make that are more like a casual chat than a serious debate or public statement does not end up ranking at the top of a Google search for my name.
I "curate" my online life that way, by deciding what I post and what usernames I use, depending on how much or little I care about tying a specific service to my public identity.
But you can only do that because HN, Reddit and other sites - unlike Facebook and Google+ - allow you to create that chasm between the two identities.
There's nothing wrong with an individual choosing to use his legal name in his profile, but we should be weary of making that decision for others. Personally, I won't join any service that maintains such policy.
Absolutely. I may join such services, but I will self-censor. I hardly use Facebook, for example, because I don't want all those personal details spread to a lot of people I care less about that many people I only know by handles, but feel social pressure to add. So my profile exist, but is pretty much devoid of content, and it will remain that way.
At some point of course, people are going to start using data analysis of all your posts and even writing style to build up an entire history of you from all these public posts, this will happen, indeed it's already happening precisely because it is so valuable. So your curation of your online life is really the illusion of control, in fact the culture of google, like that of Facebook, leads me to believe these things will appear at the top of a google search as you fear at some point in your lifetime.
What a thoughtful essay. "But it uses a silly writing device to illustrate a point it could have just made plainly!" Whoa there, critical-thinking-by-the-numbers guy, maybe the article is also about fashion.
As a child, I considered style choices a silly and inconsequential distraction from the beautiful truths of the universe: e^(ipi) + 1 doesn't care what I'm wearing, so neither should I, therefore it doesn't matter, QED.
While today I still wish fashion would just go away so I could wear this conference t-shirt in peace, I contend it offers a reflection of who we are. Consider that while half the Senior Developers of the world can't program their way out of a FizzBuzz test, and half the world can't even read at all, everyone can look at someone's dress and decide if it's fashionable for their demographic. "No, it offers a reflection of what the establishment wants us to be!" I'll leave it to the reader to reconcile those two views. "But I just care about finishing Project Euler problems in APL so I just decide to wear sandals and this old shirt like all my friends!" Fashion mattering doesn't depend on you caring. Even you, APL-man, know Zuck couldn't wear his hoodie working for Quinn Emanuel unless he owned it (real question: how many people show up in suits at facebook?).
I was shopping for pretty scarves (!) with a product designer and suggested that ads are the clearest reflection of what a given demographic is. He agreed so quickly I wondered if I were late to the party. So when the Scientology ad in the Atlantic showed up, I thought of my favorite TLP quotation: if you're reading it, it's for you. The obvious question was "why is the Atlantic publishing this!?" The more depressing question is "why am I in Scientology's target demo?"
Fashion is an advertisement about yourself. "But the relationship is not always so obvious!" Hence the hoodie the world's richest web geek refuses to remove. "But I don't care what Zuckerberg wears!" If you're reading it, it's for you.
In general, there are actually quite a few things like this in the world. Just because it is out of the scope of your concern does not mean it isn't of any concern.
The problem is that, in addition to what I've already said, the essay itself does not do a good job at making a point. Sure, it gesticulates at some points. Sure, you could assume the author is trying to say X, but I think that is one's own projection of the essay's vague intent. In fact, we have two comments here which potentially illustrate what I mean. You argue that the article is about fashion. Someone else argues that it's about social privilege. I argue that it's so vague that it's really about nothing.
I'm not sure who you're calling a "critical-thinking-by-the-numbers guy," but since I was one of those criticizing the article, I'll respond that it is wrong of you to assume that our criticism must be due to the fact that we/I don't understand that fashion in some ways represents who we are. Because I certainly recognize that fashion represents not only who we are, but who we want to be. But that does not absolve the article of having made no meaningfully substantiated conclusions apart from interesting points about the anonymizing use of hoodies.
If you asked me, the only reason Zuckerberg wears/wore hoodies is because he is/was a twenty-something. In his case it has nothing to do with anonymity/surveillance, etc. etc. They're just what was in fashion when he was in college. They're still in fashion. I wear them. They're comfortable. For youth, they're not uncool to wear. A suit would be uncool. Imagine all the grief you'd get if you wore a suit to high school.
EDIT (reply to below): While your reply may or may not be accurate, I think the fact that this is yet another interpretation of what the author's point makes my argument even clearer, that the essay has no point at all.
I liked the article but would agree that it may have benefited from being more explicit in its writing. Here's what I got out of it. Maly asks, "Why would you continue to wear a hoodie even though you're hot and would feel better not wearing it?" The answer that @kevinalexbrown implies and I'd agree with is that fashion is an advertisement about yourself. But that's not all.
When the advertisement is more important than the person, even if you would feel better without the hoodie, you keep it on, to feed your image. Whether that's right or wrong in the general case is beyond my scope to say. Maly is using Zuckerberg's choice as a prism on facebook and modern tech in general, saying that those who adopt facebook will have to make similar decisions, that people who always believe they are being watched may elevate the need to project an image over other more human needs.
The key to the article is that Maly believes Zuckerbergmay have kept his hoodie on because it was more uncomfortable to take it off than to experience physical discomfort, and that people who are being watched may do the same. I enjoyed the vignettes but Maly could've benefited from highlighting Zuckerberg's choice as the "strange thing" that his article grew out of and then using the history of the hoodie as a layer on top of the "strange thing" instead of juxtaposing the two threads.
I view an essay like this as a conversation starter. It's asking questions, not answering them. It's stimulating thought, not trying to end it by giving us The Real Truth™.
"everyone can look at someone's dress and decide if it's fashionable for their demographic."
You may have forgotten where you are discussing this topic. I certainly have no clue whether something is fashionable. I'd be hard pressed to tell you if two colors go together. I do no know if I dress more or less formally than my coworkers, or if my normal clothes present any sort of image. My style is not a conscious rejection of fashion, it is simply some clothes that I've concluded aren't too far outside what I'm expected to wear and therefore don't make me stand out.
You may have forgotten where you are discussing this topic.
I couldn't blame anyone for this stereotype but I don't think it's true. I suspect quite a lot of people here are into or have a nose for fashion (though not necessarily in the haute couture/catwalk sense).
If nothing else, anyone who visits e.g. Silicon Valley and hangs out with geeks there, will quickly start picking out the "geek uniform". I find it funny when fellow geeks thinks they're clueless about fashion, and still manage to dress in very specific ways that makes them recognisable as a group. That is fashion, even if they're not following mainstream fashion.
The first time I visited the Bay Area, I stood out like a sore thumb because I didn't fit into "Bay Area geek fashion" (I dressed too "smart" because it was my first business trip abroad). I see that here in London too - e.g. if a developer comes into the office in a shirt, it tends to elicit comments. There are even small but noticeable differences between how the developers and designers dress.
For my own clarification, do you mean that, in London, if a developer comes into the office in a dress shirt they stand out as overly formal? Or do you mean if they come in with only a shirt (ie no tie and jacket) they stand out as under-dressed?
Don't confuse fashion theory and the fashion industry. Geek culture, especially in SV, seems to have a quite specific anti-fashion with trickle-up influences. While many swear they aren't fashion conscience, they actually have quite strong connotations to things like suits.
I've always found the geek attitude to clothing interesting.
For people who in large part claim that clothes really aren't important (a) we can spend a lot of time talking about it if prompted and (b) we seem to establish clothing norms in a way that suggests we're not as anti/immune to fashion as we might like to think.
The suits thing is a little different - that's usually a (somewhat reasonable) reaction to the judgemental side of what you wear = your competence. I have concerns when it goes too far (that people assume anyone wearing a suit is automatically a fool, which seems to me to be the same thing only in reverse).
But that aside it seems that most geeks use clothing in exactly the same way as most people - express personality, as a uniform, as a way of showing interest in other cultural phenomenon and so on.
We're usually not interested in "high fashion" but I'd be very sceptical about anyone saying that as a group we're not interested in fashion.
it is simply some clothes that I've concluded aren't too far outside what I'm expected to wear
This is where you agree with the post you're replying to. The entire decision process of "what I'm expected to wear" is exactly what they're talking about. You're soaking in it, as indifferent as you appear to think you are is just one facet of accounting for fashion's role in your life, which, to be sure, is not absent.
The post I replied to said "everyone can look at someone's dress and decide if it's fashionable for their demographic." I cannot. I think I can mostly decide whether it's appropriate, but I'm not confident in that ability. I am quite certain I can't decide if something is fashionable, something the parent seems to imply is near-universal ability.
Acknowledging that I spend some time trying to meet the bare minimum of something does not support the claim that everyone can decide if something is fashionable, and more than my dad saying he occasionally opens the command prompt in windows supports the claim that everyone can program.
You've just described how fashion works, and how most people experience it. People who don't care so much follow the lead of those who do, so that they don't stand out from the crowd.
“A fashion is merely a form of ugliness so unbearable that we are compelled to alter it every six months.” Oscar Wilde
There is a threshold where good enough is good enough. Once above that threshold, your e^(ipi)+1 still rings true. It is one of many of our versions of the peacock frock.
>People who know they’re being watched change their behaviour. In a world awash in surveillance devices, hoodies are an element of fashion driven by an architectural condition. They are a response to the constant presence of cameras overhead. People who don’t want to be watched wear them. People who want to be the kind of people who don’t want to be watched wear them. People who want to look like the kind of people who don’t want to be watched wear them.
>It is difficult to imagine a more suitable uniform for the notoriously private CEO of a company dedicated to expanding our ideas of what should be public.
Honestly, this seriously reminds me of the kinds of essays that most students fall into the trap of writing in English classes in school - fake certitude, speaking in absolutes, a pervasive tone of academic hysteria, and drawing parallels and implications by mere association. In my view, it tries to dissemble a sense of profundity, however hollow.
The final sentence is a particularly egregious example of drawing an association out of thin air. This essay may as well have introduced itself as studying the symbolic motif of the hoodie and its role in the constant conflict between privacy and surveillance in the literary work Facebook, by Reality.
EDIT: I would like to lightheartedly add that these essays were always really fun for me to write in school because I would get top marks for them despite knowing how meaningless they were.
It also struck me as written by someone on the East Coast, which appears to be the case (the writer lives in Toronto). Here in Seattle nobody would spend so many words writing about the hoodie. People wear them. Business professionals wear them. Sometimes even CEOs. It's not a symbol, it's just clothing.
I have no idea what geographic location has to do with writing quality; I live near Toronto, I thought it was overwrought and pointless too. You're kind of reinforcing my negative stereotypes of West Coast people.
It's not about writing quality but about clothing. On the West Coast there's far less of an expectation that business professionals should "dress up". If someone is wearing a hoodie in Seattle or Portland it's not something to comment on, lots of people wear hoodies, even CEOs sometimes. From a West Coast perspective commenting on wearing a hoodie seems a bit like commenting about wearing jeans to work.
I've been telling my friends this: Graph Search is going to be the biggest privacy shitstorm we've ever seen, by a large margin. The only way it's not going to be is if Zuck et al cave quickly and lock it down to just search in your own network before the media picks it up. Basically Graph Search is the piece de resistance of Zuckerberg's vision for the world: ultimate transparency aided by algorithms to surface "public" information (ie, information the person posting it did not realize it was public.) It's the last big piece of the puzzle and closes the loop. The current product launch is just one "frontend" to these algorithms. Make no mistake the creation of this search engine is a huge inflection point since now things can be built on top of it.
The thesis (I think) has always been there would need to be a huge trial by fire, teaching the public about what information is actually public, and what it means to be "on the Internet" not via privacy settings, or blog posts, or tutorials, but by pure unadulterated necessity through fear. You will have to lock your shit down now or face the consequences of massive dissemination of that information. There will be no more friction. There will be causalities, and I think Facebook thinks it is an inevitability that "privacy through obscurity" becomes a thing of the past, so might as well be them to kill it. If you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, particularly one that is going to be made by someone, so be it.
"Market efficiency" of social data is going to be achieved: just like when a news report comes out about a company its stock price instantly updates to reflect it, so to will the world itself, and the people in it, reflect the publication of personal information thanks to the ability of the world to see it via software like Graph Search. Anyone who wants to know anything about you or what you do will be able to, instantly, unless you understand the scope of the things you publish intimately.
I have an easy solution to that, personally: I don't share my deepest darkest secrets on social networking sites.
I can't imagine anything I've posted to Facebook being a problem if it was all printed in tomorrow's New York Times. Maybe other people should take the same approach.
Let's hope other people don't post them for you. At least when email was the main social network, the effects of indiscreet friends and acquaintances didn't usually appear on Google.
This. You can choose not to have a profile on Facebook, but you can't choose to live in a world where Facebook doesn't exist.
I was an FB refuser for the longest time but would still get friends telling me about photos they saw of me on there. Those photos might be 100% public and I would have no control.
We're all affected, unless we literally have zero friends, friends of friends, colleagues or family members who use Facebook — good luck with that.
It's not exactly your "deepest, darkest secrets" you need to be worried about. Do you really want your boss to know your interests? Do you really want your ex-girlfriend to know if you've moved somewhere nearby? Etc.
"It's 1945. I sit in a Brooklyn kitchen, fascinated by an arrangement of cogs on black velvet. I am sixteen years old. It is 1985. I am on Mars. I am fifty six years old..."
That's what the style of this article instantly reminded me of. Like the source I quote, the article was done very well indeed; well enough that I picked up what was happening without the use of Dave Gibbons' art. Good language, even good poetry. Impressive.
And the point he's making? Memorable. Doesn't matter if I agree with his point or the connections he's drawing. This is quality stuff all round.
"Making the world open"? Facebook doesn't even offer RSS feeds, so thanks for the chuckle. "Making the world connected"? The world is connected anyway, introducing middlemen into it makes it arguably less connected, that is, it introduces more connectedness that sucks, instead of the kind that doesn't. Thanks for honing my doublethink radar or something.
Open and Connected doesn't mean what you think it does. That's not a statement about technology.
RSS feeds? They're building a product for the masses. They just want to log in and connect with friends, share with them, and gawk at pictures of their friends. "Open" doesn't mean in the neckbeard sense. "Connected" isn't about how many protocols they support. Building RSS support would be a distraction. They have support for applications that could probably give you that -- I'm not sure because I've never wanted it.
As Zuck said in Time Magazine, "Open means having access to more information, right? More transparency, being able to share things and have a voice in the world. And connected is helping people stay in touch and maintain empathy for each other, and bandwidth."[1]
Complaining about Facebook being a walled garden is a valid point. But complaining that it's doublethink is not.
Complaining about Facebook being a walled garden is a valid point. But complaining that it's doublethink is not.
Okay, so there's more openness and transparency within that walled garden, and that's why it's not doublethink, gotcha.
"Open" just "doesn't mean what I think it means", which is a perfectly valid thing to say, while it would of course invalid to claim "open means something else than you or Zuckerberg seem to think".
If people didn't think FB was making things more open and connected, then why are they even on the site (and returning frequently)? It may not be YOUR narrow definition of open and connected but clearly they are deriving value from connecting and sharing with their friends and family.
clearly they are deriving value from connecting and sharing with their friends and family.
Which they would be doing anyway if FB didn't exist. FB to them is convenience, nothing more. Many of them probably think that FB is "the Internet", just as many AOL users thought that in the 90's. They are only "connected" inside the walled garden; they have no idea of all the things that are outside it.
Yes, it is a convenience... Much like email is a convenience over snail mail and Face Time is a convenience over meeting in person. Arguably the car is a "convenience" over the horse.
Discounting the breakthrough in technology that spawned the term "social networking" doesn't really help your position.
AOL may be a defunct company but in their hey day they brought millions of people online. They deserve more than your mockery.
I didn't say there was no value in convenience. Of course there is. I use email. I'm posting here instead of xeroxing and snail mailing what I write. But HN isn't trying to monetize my personal information, and it isn't trying to be my only portal to the Internet.
Yes, AOL in its heyday brought lots of people online--and made them think that going through AOL was the only way to get online. Facebook has brought a lot of people social networking--and has made them think that allowing Facebook to monetize their private information is the only way to do social networking. They are encouraging people to choose short-term convenience at the expense of long-term control over their own data and their own online lives.
My point is that saying "lots of people use Facebook" is not the same thing as saying "Facebook is doing things that are good for its users, or the Internet, or society, all things considered". Same for s/Facebook/AOL/.
It may not be YOUR narrow definition of open and connected but clearly they are deriving value from connecting and sharing with their friends and family.
And that is relevant how, exactly? Even if it was: 6B people are NOT using it.
A good majority of that is in China where the govt has banned it.
Show me a service that's connected more people that hasn't been around for more than 20 years and not named "the Internet."
The greatest value FB brings is making it easier to connect and share (ie. be open) with others and 1B people derive enough value in that to come back on a regular basis. That's the point.
Ah, "If many believe so, it is so", the Argumentum Ad Populum [1]. In Roman times, 1 million people believed that you could foretell the future by 'reading' the entrails of animals. That so many people believed this, doesn't make it necessary a reliable way to predict the future ;-)
Not having much of a thought either way doesn't exactly count as disagreeing in my books. And even if that wasn't true: the arguments matter, not the amount of people that hold a certain opinion.
This isn't wholly bad writing, but what he's published is really just an early draft: ~version 0.3 in the writing process, the point where you've meandered your way through your early thoughts, lost direction and momentum, then squished all the loose ends and odd thoughts into a limp pseudo-conclusion, because you generally don't have anything clear to say in your mind the first time round. At this point I would be stepping back, taking some time to think about and deconstruct what and why I was exactly interested in in the first place, looking for the seeds of what really interests me. Then I'd strip it down to its fundamentals, generate a potential argument, do some more research, and start a new draft cycle. Usually I'm only getting to something I would consider publishing around 3.0 or 4.0. Or I've realised that the ideas didn't pan out and I've shelved the project - another very important skill for writers! Anyway putting in this extra effort is hard work but worth it, because otherwise your thoughts always come out like this: pretty, suggestive, but directionless. Basically people need to learn to be patient and not rush their ideas - a hard but necessary lesson in our times.
(I usually edit most of my comments here multiple times: written and posted hastily, then subjected to extended consideration.)
Poetic and engaging writing, but ultimately dishonest. It relies on the symbol of the hoodie to carry the speech through pathos, and that does take it quite far, but no argument is given. Are we expected to fear Zuckerberg, or the consumer website Facebook? The author stirs drama but does not direct it, and the resulting flatness feels disingenuous -- yet another Facebook piece that feels important with no insight. The author has identified that there is something significant to culture in Facebook's work that is also frightening, but can't quite articulate it, because that is actually difficult to do given how bleeding edge these issues are; instead, lazily, the author appears to give up. Disappointing. I'd love something with more teeth.
Well, that's the thing: I don't find that interesting, I find it lazy. It's already lazy to write about Facebook, especially in a negative or fearful tone. (How much of that mongering do you see in a day? One article on the frontpage a day on average, yes?) When a writer chooses Facebook's ethos as a topic I'm looking very critically for true insight, but most end up punting on this -- this author included.
I don't think it was really about Facebook's ethos at all, and I think people are going to continue writing about Facebook negatively until we all find some way to solve the problems they're causing.
It's not just going to go away because it's a dead horse. That's like saying that anti-war protesters should just stop showing up, "because, duh, we all know war is bad, so just put your little placard down, already."
That's not a fair comparison. A protester's purpose is simply to make it known that they are for/against a certain cause – to increment the number of visible proponents/opponents.
A blog post needs to do a lot more than that if it is to be deemed a success. Especially if it is quite long. It should bring some insight. @nkwiatek thinks this particular blog post didn't bring much insight. If this is true, then it's valid to use this as a criticism. A long blog post with a reflective tone implicitly promises to bring something more to the table than "I think X is wrong".
Based on the title, I thought this article would be about Zuck's fashion choices, but it surprised me by diving into much deeper topics about individual identity, privacy, and revolutions. Great writing.
Jobs had black turtlenecks as a signature style. I think Zuckerberg sees Jobs as a role model and imitates his practice with hoodies. What else could he choose to look "cool"?
Off topic but I've heard that Zuck has a cupboard full of same hoodie (or t-shirt) so he doesn't have to worry about what he is going to wear in the morning.
Probably true; lots of people do this, myself included. I don't want to think about what I wear every day. I find a set of clothes I like, a shirt, shorts, or pants, and buy a bunch of them so I wear essentially the same outfit every day with the only variation being the color as I buy that thing in many colors if possible.
I recently bought ~30 pairs of the same underwear which I prefer. I definitely see locking down a set of favourite items for the basics of your daily wardrobe, and then buying those items in bulk, as a big efficiency boost if you have more important things to do with your mind than worry about the what you're going to wear each day. Makes sense to focus on basic items: socks, undies, t-shirts, pants, jerseys. Then you don't have to worry about needing to do laundry all the time, running out of items you prefer, choosing between different models, choosing when you go shopping again. Ultimately you would want to extend this beyond clothes: food, household items etc. and automate it as much as possible, so you don't even have to worry about re-buying - your system is set up to order replacements on schedule as required.
Edit: just realised I'm in the process of doing basically the same thing with discovering and standardising my favourite haircut.
This article is about social privilege, and how different the life circumstances of the founder of Facebook are from many of the people using his product.
It's underscoring the fact that Graph Search could only be built by someone who doesn't understand the sometimes life-or-death importance of privacy, who has never had to fear any real consequences from any expression of identity or presenting the same face to all people.
A large segment of the readers of Hacker News have the same blind spots as Mark Zuckerberg, and this comes out whenever any question of social privelege as it relates to technology comes up here. This is a problem. The products we're building have huge, and usually unexamined, social consequences, and I don't think ignoring those consequences will work long term.
This is true in other fields that claim "neutrality" the way technologists do. Most working U.S. journalists, for instance, work for pro-government, pro-Capitalist news outlets. We call this "objective". Any deviation from that norm is "bias".
Keeping identifying information in a centralized location that is subject to subpoena by law enforcement is a norm now, too, one that has serious social consequences. So your decision to roll your own auth system and saying "fuck it, I'll just make them log in through Facebook" is about a lot more than how many keystrokes you have to enter and how much maintenance you're going to have to do down the road.
We should start factoring social consequences in to our technical decisions, like, ten years ago, and I'm afraid it's going to take a lynch mob empowered by Graph Search for people to get this.