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ChristianKl comments on Mark Zuckerberg plans to give away 99% of his facebook wealth over his lifetime - Less Wrong
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The idea that Mark Zuckerberg has to engage in an action "for the publicity" is funny. Especially when it comes from journalists. Facebook is effectively the biggest media organ out there at the moment.
Hadn't considered that, but you're correct. It's not like he needs publicity.
At any rate, even if he was simply tired of not seeing his name in the media enough, and thought this would be a sufficiently grand gesture...I don't mind at all, as long as he's being even moderately effective with his money.
Being famous doesn't necessarily mean that you have a good reputation, people tend to be wary of tech billionaires, so even them can use some publicity to improve their public image.
It seems that it worked in this case.
The point wasn't that Zuckerberg was already famous, it was that Zuckerberg already has the world's most powerful publicity machine without needing any help from journalists.
(I'm not convinced by the argument, though. 1. Even if Zuckerberg has a better way of getting his chosen message out to people, he still needs a message to get out, and "I'm giving away a ton of money" is a pretty effective message whatever channels it's broadcast on. 2. Many people's reaction to seeing positive coverage of Mark Zuckerberg might be a little more suspicious if the place where they see it is Facebook.)
Has he? If he just programmed Facebook to spam on everybody's feed "Mark Zuckerberg is awesome!!!" I doubt he would have obtained the intended effect.
That looks entirely like straw.
Have you heard of tsu.co? I hadn't either.
Point being that you don't need to write the content, if you can control which content gets shown.
Sure, but that's a negative action, he can't overtly use Facebook for positive self-promotion.
Negative action is one of those slippery words that I'm not convinced means anything outside of individual views (ie, if I change the frame of reference, suddenly a negative action looks like a positive one.)
In this instance, let's take the following scenario. Zuckerberg goes to his team and asks them to tweak their newsfeed sentiment algorithm so that it only applies to articles about him, and to set it so that 60% of the articles about him that get through are positive.
From the perspective of him going through and telling his team to do something to the facebook algorithm, that seems like a positive action. From the perspective of him preventing other people's articles from being shown (or causing them to be shown more) that seems like a positive action.
By "negative action" I mean that he can suppress content he doesn't want people to see.
He can also plaster Facebook with his face, in a more or less subtle way by tweaking the newsfeed algorithm, but ultimately if he wants to gain positive reputation, he needs some really newsworthy and moving thing about himself to happen, not just "7 awesome facts about Mark Zuckerberg" clickbait trash.
Reputation isn't just a zero sum game.
It's a bit surprising that anyone is arguing over this issue. Clearly if Zuckerberg can convince people that he is giving 99% of his fortune to (worthy) charity, it will enhance his reputation and status. This is obvious to anyone, and therefore it opens up the reasonable possibility that his primary motivation is in fact to enhance his reputation and status.
Maybe the problem is that people are getting hung up on the word "publicity." When people say "He's doing it for the publicity," the charitable interpretation is "he is doing it to enhance his reputation and status."
If a debate is obvious with the charitable interpretation it makes sense to have the debate about the actual reasons why people take the positions they take.
The underlying battle is about what Zizek calls liberal communism. The steelman is: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n07/slavoj-zizek/nobody-has-to-be-vile It's about whether a person should be applauded for doing earning-to-give or whether earning-to-give should simply be seen as a way to "enhance his reputation and status". Those cultural norms matter. Having the wrong cultural norms make people die who would otherwise be saved.
If it's in your morality to pratice charitable reading at the cost of human lives, feel free to live with that moral decision.
That was pretty much point 2 in my second paragraph.
Facebook doesn't have to control the exact words. It can control whether a specific meme goes viral by controlling how many of your friends get shown an article when you share it on facebook.
The charge is that he seeks publicity not that he seeks to build a good reputation.