On Mr. Zuckerberg’s triumphant ‘Listening Tour’ ? Featuring Sheryl Sandberg.
Jun 26, 2026
Posted on October 23, 2019 by stephenkmacksd
Recall Mr. Zuckerberg’s triumphant ‘Listening Tour’ ?
Headline: Mark Zuckerberg says extent of opioid crisis was biggest surprise of US tour
Sub-headline: Speaking about his 30-state tour that sparked rumors of a presidential run, the Facebook CEO added: ‘We have a responsibility to remain optimistic’
During which the line of ass-kissers was long, when he lectured that the ‘Opioid Crisis’and ‘a responsibility to remain optimistic’ were his primary concerns. This in the wake of the election of Trump, in 2016, clearly demonstrates that Zuckerberg was politically out of touch and out of his league. Not to speak of his subsequent appointment of ‘Lean In’ corporate hack Sheryl Sandberg to CEO of Facebook. Here is Sandberg celebrated in the pages of Forbes in 2013:
Headline: 10 Things Sheryl Sandberg Gets Exactly Right In ‘Lean In’
The headline writers/editors have gotten carried away and misrepresent Mr. Rachman’s essay, by the way of the headline and sub-headline
Headline:Facebook is the world’s most powerful adolescent
Sub-headline: And like many teenagers, it needs to be set some rules
Mr. Rachman’s accusation:
Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg was once reluctant to acknowledge the company’s political power — initially rejecting the idea that fake news on Facebook influenced the 2016 election as “crazy”. This attitude may have been naive or disingenuous, but it was certainly not sustainable.
The Guardian published this in November 2016:
Headline: Facebook’s failure: did fake news and polarized politics get Trump elected?
Sub-headline: The company is being accused of abdicating its responsibility to clamp down on fake news stories and counter the echo chamber that defined this election
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/10/facebook-fake-news-election-conspiracy-theories
All The Free Marketer’s suddenly lose their cherished faith in that ‘Market’ as the ultimate test of viability? Should the reader take the object lesson from the New York Times’ publication of the pro-war propaganda, confected by Judy Miller and Scooter Libby, as an object lesson in reliance of the standards of journalism as practiced by Corporate Media?
Or this proclamation of Zuckerberg’s ‘brilliance’ or just call him a undergrad looking for and ‘rating’ ‘hot women’!:
At 35 years old, Mr Zuckerberg has proved himself to be a brilliant engineer and businessman.
The self-proclaimed ‘Internet Geniuses‘ need to be reminded, in the starkest terms, that they owe their very existence to the U.S. Government. And its invention of the internet! That they used and use to conduct their ‘Revolution in Communication’ . And that they must compelled to follow one of the foundational freedoms of Free Speech guaranteed in the US Constitution. The corporate control of the internet has zero legitimacy, it is a Public Utility, not the playground of the aforementioned Geniuses, and their Corporatist ambitions. An Internet Bill of Rights is radical idea whose time is long overdue!
American Writer
https://www.ft.com/content/2a1adec2-f3e0-11e9-b018-3ef8794b17c6
Zuckerberg’s fall from grace, as reported in The Financial Times. Political Observer comments
Posted on March 20, 2018 by stephenkmacksd
Oh my! Recall Mr. Zuckerberg’s triumphal tour of America, in which he proclaimed the ‘Opioid Crisis‘ as one of his most pressing political concerns, the other topic I can’t recall. A Politics of Non-Politics? As those Honorary Degrees were presented with great solemnity to The Internet Wunderkind. Or should we just call him an ugly duckling looking for dates?
The anguish of the defenders of respectable bourgeois ‘values’, especially coming from propaganda headquarters of the Free Market Mythology , The Financial Times, reeks of the self-exculpatory, if not utter hypocrisy: nothing new!
‘Shares fall’ is the central concern of this news story’s headline! Profit and Loss the central Capitalist dialectic. How to define that elusive Market Exceptionalism? Its permissible, until its practice offends what remains of the accepted bourgeois norms, that in a perverse way betrays that closely held Neo-Liberal Faith, of its stalwart advocates/apologists: then ‘let the heavens fall’ ! Consider the time lapse between the Zuckerberg triumphalism, to his fall from grace! 21 inch screen black and white TV melodrama.
As the internet is a public utility, overseen by profiteers of all stripes, like television, where was the FCC’s political/civic responsibility in holding public hearings, and writing laws , for Facebook and other internet companies that placed the public’s interest before all else? The FTC is exactly the wrong place for some pseudo-regulation, the pervasive and pernicious Neo-Liberalism rules our politics infected with Market Nihilism! The Free Market Mythology is a prima facie attack on the political responsibility of government, indeed the entirety of the republican tradition, to protect its citizens from the unscrupulous opportunist, in this case, under the cover of an idolatry for an ‘Internet Pioneer’
Political Observer
https://www.ft.com/content/047dd20e-2bba-11e8-9b4b-bc4b9f08f381
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