the rich are building the world they all want. everyone else is struggling to survive that world. so, no. we aren't building the world "we all want" because many of us want different things, and have different means to gain them. i'll note that facebook isn't intentionally blocking or supporting this dynamic... and i'll also note that they could have answered their own question by looking at their data set. but this is public relations, where facts are slim and the opinion of the actual public doesn't much matter.

>How do we help people build supportive communities that strengthen traditional institutions in a world where membership in these institutions is declining?

non-starter; facebook is anathema to traditional institutions because it localizes power within itself instead of relying on them... and this has been the goal of facebook all along. put differently: honest answers to this question cannot include facebook as part of the solution without actively subverting the "traditional institutions". furthermore, in the US at least, the institutions are hollowed out anyway.

>How do we help people build a safe community that prevents harm, helps during crises and rebuilds afterwards in a world where anyone across the world can affect us?

also a non-starter; facebook is a social network and software platform, not an army of robotic guards. "preventing harm" will be conflated with "enforcing stability" when they are prompted by groups with more power (governments).

>How do we help people build an informed community that exposes us to new ideas and builds common understanding in a world where every person has a voice?

don't let people use facebook unless they have a college degree or higher. you'll see university classes fill suddenly. more seriously: facebook is a filter bubble by design, and cares absolutely nothing about the reach of people's voices... and it's tiring to hear otherwise.

>How do we help people build a civically-engaged community in a world where participation in voting sometimes includes less than half our population?

by doing something that facebook won't do: taking a stand and promoting groups pushing social change forward. they already know that this is a line they won't ever cross. we all know that they won't cross that line. facebook is a large institution, which by default sides with other large established powers rather than the public. i will also note that "civic engagement" is a dogwhistle for the disempowered members of the public doing something to improve their own standing, typically in opposition to (and rarely, in cooperation with) the established powers. they don't even genuinely want to improve civic engagement, because civic engagement leads to them being obsolete.

>How do we help people build an inclusive community that reflects our collective values and common humanity from local to global levels, spanning cultures, nations and regions in a world with few examples of global communities?

what if we don't have common values, and what if we don't want inclusive communities? what if those of us who follow the western liberal tradition want nothing to do with those who live in contradiction to it and despise it? some cultural chasms can't be rectified... and i can definitively say that facebook won't change that.

in summary: leaving the construction of a global community to facebook is a surefire way to make sure that the "global community" is neutered and ripe for profit extraction. i guess this comes off as a very negative post, but come on-- think about who benefits if people worldwide jump on the zuck train and think about things in the way he's encouraging here. does anyone really think that facebook is actually interested in doing anything other than making money?

I'm really against facebooks spying, hiding and deleting people's account culture.

Also forcing people in these small ghettos gives to me strong claustrophobia feelings.

Also calling users "Dumb f.." is really low..

Nope Mark, cannot see this happening.

I find this letter to be deeply cynical. There's a baked in assumption that a global community is a good thing and that the only possible reason to resist it is because you're being left behind by its benefits. I don't think that's true and I certainly don't think it should be assumed a priori. There are people in this country, and every where in the world, who don't want globalization. And it's not because they haven't received enough of the benefits or need to be educated better, they don't want it for real reasons and, in a Democracy, that should be an acceptable stance. If we're not willing to accept that stance than we're forcing people into a global community that matches our vision for the future, not theirs. In other words it's a plot for world domination of one world view over another. I find it deeply cynical that instead it masquerades as a virtuous plan to help all man kind.

The reason globalization is coming to a screeching halt is that human cultures vary so much. It's slowly going away, but in general for a belief to truly die off; everyone that believes in it needs to be dead. This gives us around 70 years before the walls really start coming down. That's assuming hate and prejudice are globally snuffed from the ears of the young and impressionable yesterday.

Sounds like he thinks a globally ideal society is possible and not that far away. Sounds like he needs to visit a country locked in civil war for the last 50 years for a week or two.

The "developed" world is quickly approaching utopia, but the other 4 billion people are rapidly being left behind. It's a tragedy that a double digit percentage of the human population is starving to death while I sit here in my heated and air conditioned house with ten foot ceilings, more rooms than people in it, nearly free electricity, running water of any temperature, instant access to any information I want through the internet, and more vehicles than people living here.

He needs to take a look at Bill Gates who's a lot older and wiser than Zuck appears to be. Bill has gained immense respect from me in recent years even though I'm still not a fan of Microsoft. He's doing things that will truly make a difference that nobody else wants to pay for. We make such a hero out of somebody that runs into a burning building to save one person. Bill Gates is bank rolling malaria vaccines that might save 400,000 lives a year. What does that make him? A saint at the least.

Zuck should go back to building his internet satellites, that's a lot better use of his billions than some kind of fairy land curated "safe space" for SJW's to hang out in.

I think the HN community have discussed at great lengths and even Veritasium's video have talked about some of the things they like to do when Wall Street is watching.

So my question is, why? Why show one side to the world and the other a very different treatment one that must appease Wall Street?

I get that public companies are on the line when it comes to Wall Street but if a company that is supposedly almost as valuable as Google but unable to print cash like Google, does it not make sense that Facebook will be overly aggressive and downright questionable when it comes to strategies to maximize it's user base which it heavily relies on for it's current valuation?

This is the vibe I'm getting whenever I read something Mark writes. No credibility that matches my standards which other tech giant easily passes.

Just take a look at TWTR. Investors are signaling they are increasingly anxious to see more cash and sooner. TWTR looks like the first to go and as global risk premium increases so do the continued viability of FB against cash rich giants like Google & Microsoft.

I'm going to do some research on FB and see if there's any shorting opportunities. If TWTR can crash and burn, there's nothing stopping FB which operates on the same business model of building an audience first before seriously monetizing it.

I'd love it if somebody could offer more insights or even correct me, but I can't shake the feeling, Facebook is in serious trouble as reflected in their strange policies recently, especially around Fake News and trying to enter an attricious battle in China.

Why would FB keep doing what they were doing 10 years ago if they have money printing machine like Google Adwords? I don't think they'll figure it out in time.

"On our journey to connect the world"

+ By which he means 'take over the world'

"Our greatest challenges also need global responses -- like ending terrorism, fighting climate change, and preventing pandemics. "

+ Virtue signalling and false altruism, associating his brand with highly moral causes with which Facebook has no material connection.

"Progress now requires humanity coming together not just as cities or nations, but also as a global community"

+ By 'coming together' he means turning the world into a globalized, culturally secularized and homogenized suburb as like the faux-facades and fake architecture of the building he is standing right in front of. Rhetorical question: Why does the Silicon Valley not have 'it's own' kind of identifiable architecture? Because the answer to that question is telling.

On this point, we can forgive him a little. Ironically, the soft message of 'diversity' from these folks - often hails from a positive motivation (i.e. 'equality and inclusion') - but it ultimately implies 'diversity of skin tone and of last names', but otherwise a total homogenization of cultural norms, values and ideas. Even language, local customs, laws, food and architecture.

When the entire world live across the street from a Starbucks, drives a Honda, and communicates in a manner sanctified by the thought-monitors at Facebook - I'd argue the world will be less diverse, less resilient, less interesting - and less human - place to live.

"Yet now, across the world there are people left behind by globalization"

+ Wonders the man who has personal wealth equivalent to entire African nations.

"withdrawing from global connection."

+ I'd argue some are withdrawing from your imposed social order of homogenized 'Utopia', for what they see as regaining some degree of self identity, self expression, and dignity.

" In times like these, the most important thing we at Facebook can do is develop the social infrastructure to give people the power to build a global community that works for all of us. "

+ A serious degree of assumption: most of the people in the world have a very different view of what 'works' than the global elite - who's values he shares. What happens when people are 'given a voice' and they want something completely different than your specific vision of cohesion?

Without getting into 'pro' or 'anti' European Union arguments - if it were put to a popular referendum - the EU would fail immediately because people in just a few key nations would vote against it. In France, anti-EU sentiment runs at 60% - a full 10% points higher than in the UK before Brexit (though this doesn't necessarily imply they would vote to leave - its's a pretty negative sign). It's almost 50% in Germany. And it's growing.

The people of France voted against the treaty of Rome - and yet it was enacted by their government. Ditto in Netherlands and Ireland.

Ironically - it's through Facebook and social media that people are voicing their antagonism towards many globalist causes, that seem to be 'out of touch' with the will of citizens.

I'm not making an argument for or against anything - I'm pointing out that many of these 'let's come together' globalist voices have personal views which are totally inconsistent with most others - and they seem to be keen on projecting those views in an authoritative manner.

"How do we help people build supportive communities that strengthen traditional institutions"

+ By turning off Facebook, and turning on to life?

I like Mark Zuckerberg, and having nothing against Facebook, but I wish they would stop with this rubbish and let people be - and accept that 'the true will of the people' in many ways will be inconsistent with that of the leaders of such globalist institutions.

Globalization-in-current-practice has a lot of specific problems: wealth inequality, environmental and labor laws race to the bottom, etc. But those are things to work on without throwing globalization away (the same way that propaganda on social networks can be tackled without either: "ban social media" or "internet sovereignty: internet propaganda for the national government where you live and no one else"). There are big issues with specific models of globalization. But nationalism flaws are inherent, a nationalist utopia is strictly worse than a globalist utopia, and historically nationalist reality has been worse than globalist reality (e.g. for all its problems, the E.U. beats what came before it).

Yes, in real life there are compromises to take. You have to accept that in order to thrive in the world you have to comply to some of its rules. I'm very much a cultural imperialist in that I think that an open-minded, tolerant mindset is superior to isolationist, absolutist ideas.

I am not a centralist when it comes to the official international institutions precisely because the no opt-out you describe (which is true for official institutions, not so much for Facebook). But at the same time, without international cooperation and with "every nation for itself" we end up much worse off at a personal and species level.

Don't get me wrong, we are failing many of those communities. But is not a failure to stop globalization, it is a failure to share the gains of globalization more broadly with those most affected by its negatives. We can do both. Is not either let them starve or stop global trade, both can be prevented. Besides, a lot of those industries that keep being brought up as examples of victims of globalization only ever got to be as significant as they were due to globalization: consider the American manufacturing industry, which greatly increased in significance after WW2 mostly due to the demand for its production in war-ravaged Europe. Or the American agricultural industry, where people complain about Mexican workers "stealing" jobs, while ignoring that Mexico consumes $17.7 billion of that agricultural production from U.S. exports.

The left has historically always been about social justice, egalitarianism and opposition to social inequality, while Neoliberalism as far right as it gets.

Where does Zuckerberg oppose democracy in this post? Show me the specific line where he makes a concrete and definitive statement that he opposes democracy.

If Zuckerberg were arguing against democracy, or if the parent gave a concrete argument that this is an effect of his advocacy, then I would have all the sympathy in the world for the argument you're making. But parent doesn't make that argument, and I'm pretty damn sure Zuckerberg didn't explicitly condone anti-democratic viewpoints in this post.

> Democracy is about allowing differing views, so forcing this is not democratic"

Democracies are a form of government.

The whole point of government is applying force.

The point of democracy is that we come to a consensus about when and how to apply that force via voting.

But the application of force itself is extremely democratic. Without it, government -- and by extension, democracy -- does not exist.

Now, if Zuckerberg were arguing that we should apply that force to prevent you from expressing your opinion or obtaining democratic consensus about something, that's one thing. But again, I don't think he's saying any of that...

> Just thought I'd point this out this little oxymoron to you since it seems like you tripped a bit in your logic and confused arguments

I interpreted Zuckerberg's words on face value. You seem to be reading a hell of a lot between the lines. And maybe that's fair. But you have to actually make that argument. Otherwise you're preaching to the choir and anyone who doesn't already agree with you is left confused and incredulous.

Because, at face value, Zuckerberg is NOT arguing against either democracy OR against free speech rights. If you want to argue that he is sympathetic to authoritarianism or opposed to free speech, then make that argument. But don't condescend as if these things are obvious when the actual text were discussing emphatically doesn't argue against either democracy or free speech.

If you can point to the specific line in this post where he explicitly advocates either of those things, I'll extend my sincerest apologies. Otherwise, you're drawing extremely wild inferences out of thin air, and taking a condescending tone when people call into question your rather conspiratorial priors.

> Happens to everyone

Indeed...

As if it's impossible to have "social intercourse" in a bowling alley without paying a league $20 and blocking out your Tuesday nights.

You can see the same fallacy at work when greek organizations bemoan the "death of socialization" on campuses where frat/sorority membership goes into decline. But of course, people somehow (got knows how! /s) manage to have social lives, volunteer and give back, etc. without paying Alpha Omega Inc. a few grand a year.

The same thing has happened writ large is society -- to the extent that you can find "decline" in the data, it's more than explained by a growth of new forms of involvement that 20 year old metrics don't properly capture (e.g., if you ignore hacker spaces, maker communities, online mentoring communities, and open source development, HN looks pretty desolate as far as "social intercourse" and volunteering go. But of course anyone who knows WTF they're talking about will roll their eyes if you use the lack of posts about Boy Scouts as an indicator of the social decline of HN's front page).

> and these studies were done by leftist to prove that value. They found exactly the opposite, and they've been replicated many times, again by leftists, hoping to find a different result but to no avail.

1. The studies discussed by Putnam doesn't demonstrate any of this, and these aren't even Putnam's core claims.

He demonizes VIDEO GAMES and women working more than multi-culturalism.

2. To the extent that Putnam does present evidence for his claims (which isn't nearly often enough), there's been no shortage of evidence-based refutation. The wikipedia article even has a "criticism" section, which outlines the main arguments.

Basically, if Putnam's data is to be believed, open source developers (and thousands of other people who are doing something other than volunteering with out-dated orgs) are politically disengaged and insular loners who give nothing back to society.

The problem with jumping to the conclusion that "multiculturalism is bad" is that it seeds the idea that people who don't lookalike can't peacefully co-exist. Personally, I feel a far greater sense of community here in Silicon Valley than I did in the homogenous suburb I grew up in.

People go to war over that kind of thing.

It might still hold for a large group of people, though, and be valid in a statistical sense? Which is what they're really after.

Zuck is working against that.

'Sovereign nations, interacting and trading with one another with mutual respect and fraternity' is practically the motto of for example the UKIP party in the UK - but it's denigrated by most globalist types.

Most globalists want more power to the UN, more power to the EU, more power even to at the Federal level of the US, more power to globally governing entities.

They are usually good people, who think that they know better than the common person.

Here is a good example of a voice for staunch globalism: Jean Claude Junker, President of the EU Commission:

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean-Claude_Juncker

You can read quite a lot from his quotes - they are quite authoritarian and in many ways totally anti-democratic.

   a modular decentralized network of local and non local 
  communities across the globe working together in symbiosis?

What about the other 3 billion people left behind in poverty? That's more than what the total global population was when these "globalist institutions" were set up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_3r49XXRw4

Do you see the same thing or something else?

Because we have eyes and brains and we use language to describe what's going on. There might be some instances of people who called themselves leftists who opposed something which we're now referring to as a leftist agenda. It's not a perfect black and white classification scheme but the deep link between leftism and globalization is painfully obvious to anyone with a brain. We're polarized because we disagree, deeply, trying to mix up the language used to describe that disagreement isn't going to make us less polarized.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population-in-extre...

Due to this, you end up with conflicting viewpoints between upper classes in different countries being resolved on the back of the market. What the working class see's is a system that, on the outside, looks fair, but once you delve any deeper than the surface, you realize it's a system of men not rules; the IRS tax code, for example, cannot be understood by one person, it can only be understood and executed upon by an organization. That's the point of many laws, and how arbitrage is executed against individuals.

As one example of this; I once interviewed at a company named Catamaran, who's entire existence was based upon taking complex contract terms for prescription drugs and lining them up with insurance plans. We've got a medical industry, insulated completely from anti-trust law, producing a massive economic distortion from being able to do things that in any other industry would be criminal. In the middle of this industry, there's a multi-billion dollar company that does prescription management largely for drugs that are developed to treat symptoms instead of resolve diseases. Thousands of people doing a largely useless paper shuffling job.

By contrast, I work for a tiny forging company, not even 100 people, and one of the products that company manufactures allowed an international automotive company to undercut the competition by enabling their autos to reduce fuel mileage by a substantial percentage and they are currently cleaning the floor with every other manufacturer out there. Similarly, we have other products for the energy industry that have were similarly innovative.

Ultimately, this system generates wage arbitrage as a waste product and wage arbitrage generates the erosion of culture as a byproduct; the upper classes increasingly chase values so abstract and divided from reality that have absolutely nothing to do with delivering real value to society or getting anything done. I make peanuts compared to what I could make working at a place like Catamaran, but on the same token, working at Catamaran, frankly like working at most silicon valley companies, wouldn't be honest or meaningful work. The company I work at right now has an authentic culture; Catamaran was, like most companies, a faceless mass with no culture (except for political correctness and other Marxist\leftist ideals which isn't a culture unto itself) to speak of.

Ultimately, globalism as it is right now is self-destructive; we waste our time running around in circles to provide a few elites job security. Technology, as the atom bomb taught us, is sometimes terrifying, and it's going to happen whether we are ready for it or not. Our best and brightest need to be leading, and society needs to have the freedom to choose its own culture and values. Without that, much like face-book today, you're a train headed on a predefined set of track for a cliff.

If I want to read about what's going on with the world, I'll read a news site. If I want to know what's going on with my friends' lives, I'll read facebook.