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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg began 2017 with a bold personal challenge: "to have visited and met people in every state in the US by the end of the year."
So far, his whistlestop tour of the states certainly bears all the hallmarks of early political canvassing.
As part of the challenge, Zuckerberg reportedly wanted to meet longtime Democrats who voted for Trump in the last election and asked his team to reach out and find such people.
[...]
Such a tour becomes even more conspicuous in light of unsealed court filings from a class-action lawsuit in 2016 in which Zuckerberg attempted to dilute shareholder power and afford himself permanent control of the $440 billion company.
Of particular note in the proceedings was a message sent to Zuckerberg by Marc Andreessen, one of Facebook's most prominent investors, in which he raised the issue of "how to define the government service thing without freaking out shareholders that you are losing commitment."
"It's the thing people will point to on announcement and say 'what the f**k are you guys doing agreeing to this', particularly since... government service would require you to give up control of Facebook anyway and it's a moot point," said Andreessen, adding credence to speculation that Zuckerberg will make a run for political office at some point in the future.
One of the richest men in the world will be looking out for the little guy, right?
Source: https://www.rt.com/usa/386718-zuckerberg-political-campaign-rumors/
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday May 02 2017, @01:37PM (10 children)
That's all we need. Some kid from nowhere gets really lucky with a fricking company, suckers trust him, he sells out to every corporation willing to pay him, and now he thinks he's presidential material.
Oh - wait. Don't we already have something like that?
Business as usual I guess.
(Score: 4, Informative) by ilsa on Tuesday May 02 2017, @03:26PM (7 children)
The irony is that at least Zuckerberg *was* successful. Trump, by all accounts, was a sheister from day one. If it wasn't for his name, he would be a nobody. The majority of his fortune came from his daddy. He's had so many bad business deals and so many bankruptcies that if he had simply taken all the money he inherited and dumped it into gov't bonds, he would be far wealthier now than he is.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday May 02 2017, @03:47PM (6 children)
As I've heard the story, Trump got a nice bundle from Daddy, added some to it, lost it, made another bundle, lost most of that, then made another bundle. Easy come, easy go, I guess. He's not a yuge success, but he has done pretty damned well, overall.
Now, Zuckerberg? He won a lottery that keeps on paying. Sorry, but I just don't see that he's a "success" in the business world. I suppose that if not blowing everything on stupid shit counts as "success", then Zuck can claim success. Trump actually has a better claim to being a "success" than Zuckerberg does.
Give Zuckerberg another ten years, and see what he does with his money. If he continues to grow it, then he can make a claim to "success". If he builds another company or ten that are successful, then I'll have to give him credit for "success".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 02 2017, @04:22PM
So he could, for instance, put it all in one of those retirement 2040 accounts that rebalances automatically - make about 5% a year and that would count as successful businessman in your eyes? Because that's basically the same level of success Trump has had.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 02 2017, @06:17PM (4 children)
> Now, Zuckerberg? He won a lottery that keeps on paying.
Being born to wealth isn't just a money lottery, its also a connections lottery.
Its those family ties to the old boys club that enabled trump to go bankrupt so many times and still recover.
When he went broke he still knew people who would bail him out.
Zuckerberg had some connections, his family was wealthy enough to send him to Stanford but they weren't wealthy enough to bribe the school to accept him like trump's daddy (and kushner's daddy [propublica.org]).
Zuckerberg did get lucky with facebook. But he was not the only person to 'invent' social networking. Remember friendster? The difference between zuck and trump is that despite starting with a lot less, zuck has out-competed everyone else in a business where there are nearly zero barriers to entry. He even kicked google's ass and sent them packing (G+ lol). It was luck that put him in the right place at the right time, it was skill and hard work that turned the luck into success. Trump, despite vastly greater connections, has crashed and burned in every business venture except licensing his name. He's got at least 6 bankruptcies [washingtonpost.com] losing billions of other people's money.
So no, trump does not have a better claim to success. He won a much larger jackpot in the birth lottery, and he's consequently been able to survive yuge fuckups. Zuck's taken his smaller jackpot and hasn't screwed the pooch once. Not that I wouldn't enjoy seeing facebook go down in flames.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Tuesday May 02 2017, @07:08PM (1 child)
For some reason, I see the ability to survive yuge fuckups as a necessary trait for today's president. I also see that as a requirement for the next president too. The first candidate that has a track records of fixing yuge fuckups gets my vote.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 02 2017, @07:30PM
As long as he didn't save himself by sacrificing billions of dollars of other people's money!
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Wednesday May 03 2017, @12:42AM
> Stanford
Harvard, actually.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @05:11AM
it was skill and hard work that turned the luck into success.
Someone else's skill and hard work. His only skills are manipulating gullible idiots into using his service and helping him build it, but gullible idiots are not hard to fool. Most people with such skills do not so succeed to wildly, so it's essentially luck.
Facebook and similar services have done irreparable harm to society by destroying privacy even further and building massive surveillance engines (which also affects people who do not even use the service). We should not praise people who build such monstrosities.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 02 2017, @06:36PM (1 child)
Trump proved that anyone can be elected president.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 02 2017, @07:48PM
> Trump proved that anyone can be elected president.
Obama proved that anyone be elected president.
Born to a middle-class family. Absent father. Black. Middle name Hussein.
Trump proved that any old white guy with tons of celebrity name recognition and billions of dollars can be elected president.
Which wasn't very much of a stretch.