Mark Zuckerberg Is No James Madison

[Kilgore]

Compare today’s platforms to the American Constitution: a large aggregation of citizens organized on the principle of self-government. As a work of design, the Constitution is a brilliant piece of architecture, an intellectual foundation that has stood the test of time. If James Madison were a software developer in a Harvard dorm room and not a Virginia planter, we might say he was a better coder than Mark Zuckerberg. The Constitution understands human nature. Facebook, dangerously at times, does not.

Compare today’s platforms to the American Constitution: a large aggregation of citizens organized on the principle of self-government. As a work of design, the Constitution is a brilliant piece of architecture, an intellectual foundation that has stood the test of time. If James Madison were a software developer in a Harvard dorm room and not a Virginia planter, we might say he was a better coder than Mark Zuckerberg. The Constitution understands human nature. Facebook, dangerously at times, does not.

In designing the Constitution, Madison managed to appeal to people’s better angels while at the same time calculating man’s capacity to harm and behave badly. Facebook’s designers, on the other hand, appear to have assumed the best about people. They apparently expected users to connect with friends only in benign ways. While the site features plenty of baby and puppy photos, it has also become a place where ISIS brags about beheadings and Russians peddling misinformation seek to undermine the institutions of a free society.

“If men were angels,” wrote Madison in Federalist 51, “no government would be necessary.” The father of the Constitution knew better. A government of men required a delicate set of checks and balances, and limits on executive authority. Minority rights needed protection. Even the concept of rule by the people was tempered to mean not direct plebiscite but representative democracy. With these limits in place, the Constitution has acted as a restraint on humanity’s darker impulses for nearly 230 years.

Facebook’s design is the opposite. It proceeds from the same utopian assumptions that the pioneers of the internet largely espoused. Not only should information be free, but sharing it is by nature a good thing. This design philosophy has produced many unintended consequences. Bad actors have learned to manipulate the platform and sow uncertainty and chaos.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/mark-zuckerberg-is-no-james-madison-1521585114

[erpowers]

1. Look At Their Different Backgrounds

In graduate school one of my teachers told the class that the contents of the Constitution can be traced back to King George and other things that happened in Europe. The founding fathers were trying to prevent the events that had occurred in Europe from happening in the United States. James Madison and the other founding fathers knew presidents needed to have their power limited because they had the abuses that had come as a result of unlimited power. They knew there was a chance a President might have to be impeached. They knew there needed to be rights guaranteed to the people of the United States so that a rogue President could not abuse people.

It could be argued that Mark Zuckerberg and the other young people who created Facebook were very different from the founding fathers and had lived very different lives. Zuckerberg and his Harvard friends likely lived sheltered lives were bad things did not happen to them and most of the kids, even if they behaved badly, never really wanted to hurt anyone. They likely did see a world where people just wanted an easy way to connect with their friends. They could not anticipate someone trying to use their platform to rig an election, or to promote harming innocent people because those were not the lives they had lived.

[Johnny2X2X]

2. They helped them!!!

Not only did Zuckerberg and Facebook anticipate their platform being used to steal an election, they were active participants in the theft. Facebook was working with CA the whole time and that's why they were at CA head quarters yesterday trying to destroy evidence.

Zuckerberg is a Trump supporter and he worked with CA!

[poboy2]

3. That may have been true at first, but there has been no excuse for some time.

People have been trying to point the abuses for years. He dismisses all objections and issues.
He's a typical salesman doing his sales/con thing. Now is the pursuit of money, all integrity is lost.
Willful ignorance or cashing checks. Facebook worked ON SITE with CA. Poisoning our democracy.