Their public pledge to donate 45 billion dollars to charity within their lifetimes with an eye towards long term solutions deserves criticism? Seriously, WTF?
That number is based on current valuation of Fb and cannot be equated to someone writing a check for $45B. If Fb goes the MySpace way, how much is that donation worth?
Secondly there appears to be a duality between how the company operates and what this post tries to rally for.
Finally, using the pretense of writing a letter to their newly born daughter rubs some the wrong way.
> If Fb goes the MySpace way, how much is that donation worth?
If Fb goes the Google way and its value continues to go up, the donation will be worth more. It's true that the donation is of unclear value. But calling it $45 billion is a way to communicate the scope of the pledge that they've committed to.
> Secondly there appears to be a duality between how the company operates and what this post tries to rally for.
It's important to distinguish between the behavior of a person and the behavior of Facebook, Inc. Every time the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation does something, we don't get dozens of people rising out of the woodwork harping on Microsoft's unethical business practices - but Bill Gates' mid-90s Microsoft was definitely on par with Facebook at its worst. It's okay to celebrate good things done, as long as we don't fully forget how we got there. We should continue to criticize Facebook as a company even as we recognize that the individual here is attempting something great.
> Finally, using the pretense of writing a letter to their newly born daughter rubs some the wrong way.
It's a pretty easy and effective rhetorical device. The letter is obviously targeted at the world, or he wouldn't have published it. But it's a good way to present some emotional framing - this is why he cares so much, why he's invested in a better world. Not all attempts to inspire pathos in the reader are rooted in evil, it's just a tool for effective writing.
The post you're responding to never said this essay deserved criticism. It said it's good people aren't taking it at face value and are being critical of it. They are not the same thing.
Being critical of the claim to donate 45 billion dollars is pretty natural. First, they didn't say 45 billion, they said a percentage of their worth which right now is 45 billion dollars. You would have a very strong point if they had just delivered the check for 45 billion dollars and people were criticizing it.
But they didn't do that. They wrote a post on the internet saying they're going to give away their money sometime in their lifetime.
The scope of this pledge in combination with the dollar amount would stretch so thin that it would have the net effect of giving every child in the world $20 and saying, here, go improve the quality of your life.
So, yeah, if he wants to open himself up to public scrutiny with a tastless "letter to my daughter that i'm actually making for the public because my daughter can't understand this for another 10 years", people are going to criticize.
But he has 45 billion freaking dollars, so I doubt he cares.
