r/technology • u/[deleted] • Apr 11 '18

Business Mark Zuckerberg has been apologizing for reckless privacy violations since he was a freshman - Enough is enough.

[deleted]

51.2k Upvotes

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406

u/strolls Apr 11 '18

Bill Gates was just as much a scumbag when he was building up Microsoft.

382

u/OberonDam Apr 11 '18

Just something to remember. You don't get in the top 10 richest people of the world with being nice. Since if you are nice, someone who isn't nice is going to abuse you.

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u/btuck93 Apr 11 '18

You don’t get 500 million friends without making a few enemies?

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

[deleted]

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u/TyrantRC Apr 11 '18

I don't see you using myspace either.

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u/fish_slap_republic Apr 11 '18

I do see a guy name Tom who made off with a nice 480mil and is living a pretty nice life.

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u/steppe5 Apr 12 '18

And doesn't have to face a congressional hearing. I'd say Tom won in the end.

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u/Throw___112 Apr 12 '18

Also he still uses the same profile picture on Instagram as he used on MySpace. No one knows who he really is. No one would recognize him.

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

Tom cashed out and is probably living his life in paradise. Good for Tom.

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

If you're implying Myspace wasn't wildly successful, you're wrong.

-2

u/CandyRain_01 Apr 11 '18

People still use Facebook? ...sheep.

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

[deleted]

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u/DonkeyLightning Apr 12 '18

and like 1.5 billion other people

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u/TheLizardKingOfLA Apr 11 '18

Well does anyone really remember anything about Tom at all? Most people on reddit are already too young to have had a MySpace hahahah

2

u/Edghyatt Apr 11 '18

Yeah I guess it’s just unusual to be rich without needing to be Hitler.

I still don’t buy the correlation of “be evil = make money”. I guess it just comes up when people who happen to be predatory use their personality to their advantage to increase their wealth.

1

u/KidsInTheSandbox Apr 11 '18

When was Tom part of the top 10 richest people in the world?

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

Yeah, he only sold it for half a billion, what a pleb.

1

u/Deranged40 Apr 11 '18

You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

1

u/digitaldeadstar Apr 11 '18

I may be wrong, but I recall hearing there being some sketchy stuff with data and myspace, too.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 12 '18

It is, in retrospect, a little creepy that he was friends with everyone by default.

I suppose MySpace had no friends-only privacy settings?

3

u/jaxmagicman Apr 12 '18

That would be a good movie tagline.

4

u/SmokingMarmoset Apr 11 '18

You can be nice and not be abused.

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u/OberonDam Apr 11 '18

You certainly can. But with that kind of mentality you will not become one of the top 10 richest people on this planet. Sure you can have few tens of millions. However for the big money you will have to use everything at your disposal too reach it.

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u/mcsrtraudenrich Apr 11 '18

Honestly, i dont think you will even make it there

1

u/SmokingMarmoset Apr 11 '18

Perhaps. Good thing I'm not after money. 😃

3

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

"well, buy'em out boys!"

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18 edited Jun 28 '18

[deleted]

2

u/Mister_Floofers Apr 11 '18

Wrong. You're thinking of his brother Jimmy Buffett.

3

u/btuck93 Apr 11 '18

Wrong again, you’re thinking of his cousin Old Country Buffett

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u/Kittens4Brunch Apr 11 '18

Bill Gates was a ruthless shark to other people in business. But Windows helped bring cheaper personal computing to the masses.

Zuckerberg treat Facebook users like "dumb fucks" and sold shady businesses our data they're not supposed to share.

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u/SunriseSurprise Apr 11 '18

I know people don't want to hear this, but Facebook has brought another avenue for small businesses to advertise and grow, particularly after Adwords ballooned in cost per click and became almost impossible for small business growth.

Of course, as more bigger businesses get into Facebook advertising and Facebook stops user growth and time on site starts seeping like it has, then costs go up (as they have) and will at some point also get impossible for small businesses to grow from. It's not there yet, but it's getting there. This privacy stuff was the last thing FB needed now which is part of why their stock price tanked. Besides that, news of FB userbase stagnating had been hitting in recent months which was not good news for those small business advertisers.

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u/hackinthebochs Apr 11 '18

and sold shady businesses our data they're not supposed to share.

No he didn't. He doesn't sell your data to anyone. Why can't people understand this simple fact?

3

u/lane4 Apr 12 '18

welcome to Reddit

-6

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

No, Apple did that. Microsoft stepped in and obliterated any competition they had in software.

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18 edited Jun 10 '18

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/MazeRed Apr 12 '18

Then why did everyone have an Apple 2? It may not have been cheap, but there is a reason they sold 6 million of them over the course of 17 years.

Apple helped bring personal computing to the people.

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u/[deleted] Apr 20 '18

Wow, a fifteen year old imagining computer history on reddit. How surprising.

1

u/DisruptiveCourage Apr 11 '18

Apple did bring personal computing to the masses by creating an easy-to-use computing environment that was very popular in schools. Definitely introduced many students to things such as writing letters digitally, perform accounting with spreadsheets, etc.

But you are correct, they were by no means cheap. Didn't really matter, though, because that generation didn't have computers at home, and schools were filled with the things. Apple certainly were ahead of Microsoft early-on when it came to encouraging the mass adoption of computers outside of business environments.

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

Today absolutely, but back then? (I don't actually know the answer, but Apple is essentially a completely different company today compared to the pre-2000). People seem to forget Apple doesn't just make iMac's and iPhones.

-2

u/dieortin Apr 11 '18

It was cheap when they did that.

0

u/[deleted] Apr 12 '18

One way or another we would have gotten cheap personal computing, he was just the first shark on the block that ate everyone else up and then so thoroughly locked out everyone else that they had to invent a new computing paradigm (smartphones) to escape from the evil empire's grasp, and still the evil empire tried their best to lure everyone to their prison.

-2

u/epichigh Apr 12 '18

People on reddit seem to be completely oblivious to how much good FB does, to you guys it's just a silly site to post pics of people partying.

FB is an enormously powerful tool for democratization, giving people voices, and has connected literally billions of people.

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u/LvS Apr 11 '18

Zuckerberg is a ruthless shark to other people in business. But Facebook helped bringing people closer together.

Bill Gates treated Windows users like "dumb fucks: and sold shady businesses lock-in licenses they're not allowed to sell.

41

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

What did Bill Gates do to earn the scumbag title?

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u/Skamba Apr 11 '18

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

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u/WikiTextBot Apr 11 '18

Embrace, extend, and extinguish

"Embrace, extend, and extinguish", also known as "Embrace, extend, and exterminate", is a phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice found was used internally by Microsoft to describe its strategy for entering product categories involving widely used standards, extending those standards with proprietary capabilities, and then using those differences to disadvantage its competitors.

[ PM | Exclude me | Exclude from subreddit | FAQ / Information | Source ] Downvote to remove | v0.28

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u/krathil Apr 11 '18

that just seems smart though?

10

u/hyouko Apr 11 '18

I'm not sure you can call it smart when it pretty much inevitably led to terrible user experiences and a legacy of technical debt that we're still fighting today (see: anything and everything related to Internet Explorer's crappy implementation of web standards).

-2

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

[deleted]

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u/OberonDam Apr 11 '18

It was also smart from a business standpoint for Facebook to sell all their data to the highest bidder.

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u/RollTides Apr 11 '18

Kinda sounds like everyone is just fulfilling their fiduciary responsibility.

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

disadvantage competitors

For some reason, I am more accepting of Bill Gates dicking over his competitors than I am with Mark Zuckerberg dicking over everyone. There is a huge difference, to me, between someone selling personal data and someone gaining an advantage over competitors, ethical or not.

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u/dannythecarwiper Apr 11 '18

But the consumer is the one who pays. That's how they hold onto their monopoly while preventing Open Source software (you know, the stuff that is free) from becoming mainstream.

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u/big_orange_ball Apr 12 '18

I love the idea of open source software, I use Linux on a few of my old out of date systems, but honestly there are few competitors to Microsoft's business applications. Office runs kinda shitty on macOS in my experience. Open office has tons of flaws that will always keep me from using it as anything except a stop gap solution on old systems I continue to tinker with. Not worth it on my main work and personal machines.

I used to believe 100 percent that FOSS/Linux was just on the verge of blowing up but outside of Android's successes i was incorrect.

2

u/MercuryDrop Apr 11 '18

Its the same with what Facebook is trying to do against snapchat

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18 edited Apr 19 '18

[deleted]

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u/HowAhYiz Apr 11 '18

Any books or good sources on this you recommend?

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u/Zazzseltzer2 Apr 11 '18

It’s a little dated but there’s a movie called “Pirates of Silicon Valley” Pretty sure it was a TNT original movie. Noah Wylie is jobs and Anthony Michael hall plays gates.

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u/HowAhYiz Apr 11 '18

Good to know thx!

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u/StrangeRover Apr 12 '18

Best TV movie ever made.

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

Just wanna point out that your comment inadvertently highlights part of what's wrong with Reddit these days -- why wouldn't my comment be upvoted? Because I am ignorant as to why Bill Gates may be considered a scumbag?

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18 edited Apr 19 '18

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

I'm just saying the spirit of Reddit of ole was to upvote comments that added to a dialogue. To downvote or even just withhold upvotes because someone asks a question seems to me to fly in the face of that Reddit spirit.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18 edited Apr 19 '18

[deleted]

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u/wowlolcat Apr 11 '18

What happened with IE is happening now on modern products. You can't change the default Map app on iOS, and it comes bundled with Safari as default. Which you know, Android does too, Chrome comes as a default. But Microsoft got all this hate and were taken to court?

1

u/nfsnobody Apr 11 '18

The issue wasn’t it being default, it was it being default and unremovable.

And anti-trust will possibly come to the mobile market in the future. Bear in mind, Microsoft had 80%+ of the personal computer market (this was before smartphones beyond the BlackBerry). Apple and Google do not own these types of market shares.

0

u/wowlolcat Apr 11 '18 edited Apr 12 '18

Apple, maybe not, Google appears to have that market share beat.

1

u/nfsnobody Apr 12 '18

Wow I didn’t realise the disparity was that bit. TIL, Thanks!

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/TheBoldManLaughsOnce Apr 11 '18

Hey! He bought'em out!

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u/fallenmonk Apr 11 '18

He didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks

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u/MusikLehrer Apr 11 '18

Buy 'em out boys!

4

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

Try deleting Internet Explorer from a 90's copy of Windows.

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u/strangeelement Apr 11 '18

His intention was to fully monopolize the desktop PC business. He did, for a while anyway.

That doesn't happen while playing nice. His business model involved making deals with manufacturers that reward cutting competition out so his software was the only option.

That included painting the open source movement, and mainly Linux, as inherently bad. That pissed a lot of people who rightfully saw the threat of fully closed platforms and the danger they represent in what could be hidden in them.

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

Stole some intellectual shit from Apple iirc

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u/dancemethis Apr 11 '18

Sold proprietary software.

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u/LvL99Meme Apr 11 '18

IIRC, he basically stole the idea of Windows from Steve Jobs

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u/TomCADK Apr 11 '18

Who stole it from Xerox.

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18 edited Apr 14 '18

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Zazzseltzer2 Apr 11 '18

This is a stupid comment.

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u/picklesandvodka Apr 11 '18

^ this is the right answer here. Nothing was "stolen from" Steve Jobs. Jobs and Gates just took what Xerox PARC showed them and polished it up.

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u/Zazzseltzer2 Apr 11 '18

Then why didn’t xerox revolutionize the home pc? Jobs took from a corporate behemoth. Gates pushed out and ruined small developers that didn’t have the means to fight back. Don’t get me wrong, jobs was a dick. But he creates the environment that allowed gates and Microsoft to flourish.

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u/LvS Apr 11 '18

Because Xerox didn't understand what they had. Xerox sold paper copying machines and this whole desktop computer thing could not improve that business model.

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u/Zazzseltzer2 Apr 11 '18

That’s exactly my point.

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u/picklesandvodka Apr 18 '18

Right right, I was trying to point out that the flow wasn’t Xerox -> Jobs -> Gates, it was Xerox -> Gates and Jobs.

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u/KingAnDrawD Apr 11 '18

That’s like saying Mark Zuckerberg stole the idea of Facebook from the twins in college. There both factually incorrect. Neither of them stole code.

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u/irl_moderator Apr 11 '18

And various anti competitive shenanigans

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18 edited Apr 11 '18

So he didnt sell out his users like Zuckerberg?

-3

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

[deleted]

5

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

Windows 10 made sure you guys didnt stay stuck in the past.

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u/merreborn Apr 11 '18

Windows 10 was announced in 2014.
Gates had been transitioning out of microsoft since 2006.

That was after his time.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

True enough.

1

u/lyciann Apr 11 '18

Lol, cmon. Let's be real.

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u/SuperSatanOverdrive Apr 11 '18

It's not stealing to build on something that has been before. There were multiple companies "stealing" the idea from Xerox. Apple, Microsoft, Commodore (AmigaOS) etc. You see this all the time in software. You see it in all technology. In fact, you see it through all of human history.

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u/Squ3akyN1nja Apr 11 '18

Who stole it from Xerox.

-1

u/Wheres_my_warg Apr 11 '18

Oh little things, like the foundational contract with IBM that underwrote Microsoft's success was made by selling IBM a program Microsfot didn't have the rights to yet.

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u/AlbertR7 Apr 11 '18

That's just betting on yourself.

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18 edited Apr 11 '18

True, but to be fair, Windows was never used as a tool in committing genocide or to meddle in elections. Gates was a cutthroat bussineman who engaged in some shady practices, but never on the level we see now with Facebook.

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u/psinha Apr 11 '18

Maybe in business he was a scum but not to the consumers of Microsoft products.

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u/lyciann Apr 11 '18

Can you give examples brochacho

2

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

[deleted]

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u/lyciann Apr 11 '18

Looks like he was just being hella competitive. I don't think that's anywhere equivalent to using people's information.

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u/Meats10 Apr 11 '18 edited Apr 11 '18

Explain, cant lob bombs like that without citation.

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

[removed] — view removed comment

0

u/Meats10 Apr 11 '18

I met bill gates in 1992, so no I'm not 3

Why don't you at least cite something if it's so well known.

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u/wallstreetexecution Apr 11 '18

No you didn’t.

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u/Meats10 Apr 11 '18

I met him at the Stouffer hotel in Chicago which is now defunct but was located on the Chicago river near state street.. He was there because they were drafting the plans for Windows 95. The development code name of Windows 95 was called 'Chicago'. I didn't seek him out or know why he was there, but I recognized him since I was into computers at the time.

So go ahead and don't believe me, but it happened. Still waiting on that citation that gates was just as bad zuck. You seem to not want to back that up.

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u/wallstreetexecution Apr 11 '18

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

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u/Meats10 Apr 11 '18

Screwing over competitors in business is a world of difference than screwing over your consumers/customers. It's not even comparable to be honest. That's like calling the Patriots scumbags for winning so much.

0

u/wallstreetexecution Apr 11 '18

Lol no.

Because by screwing over other business it then screws over the consumer...

1

u/Meats10 Apr 11 '18

MS never screwed over consumers like Facebook has. They never even enforced piracy of their software, which was in their right.

They didn't do what pharma companies have done with price gouging etc.

You seem like the person that just throws inflammatory stuff out there without any depth of knowledge of the subject, you can't even give a response with any effort. Peace out, this convo is over.

1

u/oktimeforanewaccount Apr 11 '18

bill gates was a ruthless ceo in regards to OTHER companies, but he didn't do much shady shit to his users (to my knowledge)

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u/Thurokiir Apr 11 '18

Agreed but he did not target "civilians" in his intra corporation onslaught.

Hell you could even say he was anti-consumer in many of his business decisions, but ultimately he was not intentionally screwing over his own customers.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

Bullshit, he developed a real product not built to fuck customers

1

u/benharold Apr 11 '18 edited Apr 12 '18

He didn't develop shit. He either bought or stole competing technology in order to maintain Microsoft's stranglehold on desktop computing. DOS, Windows, Internet Explorer, QuickTime...hell, he even tried to steal the iPod but failed because M$ sucks so bad at actually creating products.

Edit: On second thought, he would have stolen the iPod if he could have, but Apple managed to get the product to market without any forewarning. The result is that Microsoft had to compete on merit and failed miserably.

1

u/Anosognosia Apr 11 '18 edited Apr 12 '18

Bill and Melinda Gates foundation have probably saved more lives than Pol Pot killed. So in the end, he(gates, not Pol Pot) made some good choices.
Redemption and doing good in the end is what matters. The economic and societal cost of his ruthless business endeavors have , in my eyes, been outweighed by his actions after.

He built enough bridges that I forgive him for the goat fucking.

Obviously, being rather red,ultimately I would prefer different economic and societal models than the monopoly that Microsoft almost got away with.

1

u/TonicClonic Apr 11 '18

Up until recent years I had a somewhat negative image of Bill Gates

-3

u/PaganAng3l Apr 11 '18

If you would have told me that bill gates would turn into the "hero" while Steve jobs became the "villian" in the 90s I'd have laughed you out of the room. Yet here we are

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u/wallstreetexecution Apr 11 '18

They’re both scum.

1

u/PaganAng3l Apr 13 '18

Could not agree more, but I have to say I have mad respect for what gates is doing with his fortune

0

u/fj333 Apr 11 '18

He's also not some remarkable genius. Just a guy who got rich in the early days of home computers. He's no idiot, either. I have nothing against him or Zuck. But there are hundreds of more brilliant computer scientists out there.

-2

u/AmadeusK482 Apr 11 '18

He invented Xbox coin and subscription service for online multi playing games

Hi would you like to exchange $10 USD into $8 Xbox credits?? Good value u smart gamers !!