This really annoys me. That was well over a decade ago. There is so much to criticize FB for right now. Do we really need to be so petty and oversensitive to always bring up an offhand remark he made as a college student?
Given that we don't know what his private conversations look like now, and that his actions still seem to support that position -- it's at least relevant. Deleting all Facebook executive messages by exception alone makes me think this wasn't the worst thing that could have been found.
He also spent 43 million dollars buying all his neighbor's houses, in order to tear them down, and tapes his webcam. For a guy who supposedly believes privacy is dead, he sure does value it.
When people like Zuckerberg preach about radical transparency and privacy being an outdated concept, they're referring to the type of radical transparency where they themselves remain opaque, while the rest of the world becomes transparent to them.
I feel exactly the opposite. Yes, the recent scandals are much worse, both in severity as magnitude.
However, pointing to this "offhand" bragging remark he made long ago is actually very useful, because it clearly shows that his attitude to privacy and lack of respect for his users is a persistent problem with his moral compass.
That tune of "your privacy is very important to us" they've been singing for over a decade as well, it wasn't very believable then, when they kept changing privacy options that you basically had check your profile settings every few days to see if there was a new opt-out option you had to disable. I had a FB profile for a few months back then, before it creeped me out too much and I deleted it.
Today we find that Mark has a special superpower feature that allows him to delete private messages from other people's mailboxes. They try to cover this up by saying it's an upcoming feature to be rolled out to the public. Just to make sure, are there any people here that actually believed that excuse?
Normally I'd be in complete agreement with your point. I don't think it's right to judge people for stuff they did when they were young and stupid and arrogant. I said some cringe worthy stuff when I was young and arrogant too (though my moral compass was quite solid, I just lacked the experience to apply it well).
Mark Zuckerberg probably grew and learned too. But it seems he mainly learned that he shouldn't brag about these things in offhand remarks. Not much else.
Pointing to this remark therefore actually serves a very important purpose: The attitude displayed by Zuckerberg's actions is still the same as 10 years ago, he just sharpened his skills on getting away with it (until now), and it's foolish to assume he'll be better, it's foolish to assume they're really sorry (except for being found out).
Given the subsequent actions of the company, there is no evidence to suggest his views have changed. Or if they have changed, he has certainly taken no steps to right the ship.
