Today on the 5: Mark Zuckerberg recently did a fireside chat with the CEO of NVIDIA, and during that conversation he made some irate comments about closed ecosystems. If you pay attention to his word choices, you'll quickly figure out what he's really upset about.
Ozone Nightmare
Don't Tell Mark No!
Welcome to daily five for Thursday, August 1st, 2024. You may have seen some coverage over recent comments made by Facebook CEO. I think he's still CEO, Mark Zuckerberg at a recent fireside chat with Nvidia, which is a strange thing to say out loud. But then again, because Nvidia seems to be the superpower within the the AI chip technology sector, I guess it makes sense that everybody's crawling up to them and sucking up to them. So Zuckerberg went because, of course, Facebook, just like most big tech companies at this point, is trying to jump on AI as hard as possible because that's where the market wants them to be. Zuckerberg had a fireside chat with the Nvidia CEO, I believe, where, and this is one thing, most of these articles get very hung up, including the one I'm going to link to, unfortunately, on Mark Zuckerberg having a midlife crisis apparently. I really couldn't care less that he's wearing a chain and a black leather jacket and is doing something different with his hair. That's not my concern, whatever. That is the most minor of my concerns with Mark Zuckerberg and his influence on the world. But during this fireside chat, which was mostly about AI and things like that, there apparently was a point, and I've seen some quotes from it where he got very upset about the idea of closed ecosystems. And Facebook and Apple are two companies that famously do not really enjoy each other's company very much, but they're certainly not the only ones. And in this, and I'm not going to get the exact quote right, it's in the article, but Zuckerberg said something along the lines of, yeah, I've had times where I've wanted to build things and I've had platforms that said, no, you can't do that, and I don't like it. And that was where I realized what this was really about because some people were interpreting this as a tech heavyweight trying to throw his support behind open standards and open source and having more input and perspectives and things. And of course, that's not what it is at all. Come on, do you not know who Mark Zuckerberg is? This is an individual who's been around for a long time, and his priorities and his desires tend to wrap around a mirror where he's staring at himself. So I, before I even saw the quotes, I was highly dubious of the idea that suddenly Zuckerberg, even if his midlife crisis thing had suddenly decided that maybe having closed ecosystems was bad. Instead, what this is, and it's very clear from his comments where he says, I've tried to build things interesting that a person who employs thousands of people is himself building things. It does reveal in the end what these people think when they think they've created something that they did it all on their own and nobody's ever helped them, especially when they get really successful and rich, then they definitely want to share credit or anything else with anybody who's around them. But it does reveal that what his problem is, is not closed ecosystems. He's not pushing for open standards or open source to become more prevalent. What he wants is to do what he wants to do. That's his problem, is that there is an ecosystem somewhere anywhere that is close to him, an unacceptable situation for somebody of his power, prestige, and wealth. No, we cannot have it where there is an ecosystem that Mark Zuckerberg does not have access to. And like I said, you read these comments and his childish reaction in the way that he says these things, and to some degree, some of his recent antics, and it does reveal the mindset of somebody who is acting out of petulance, not some kind of benevolence to mankind, which is not a surprise. Because if you look into the origins of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg and what his intentions were that were and his basic refusal to engage in any type of actual accountability for what his company has done, then it becomes clear. Yeah, this is not somebody who cares about anybody that is not himself and the small cadre of people that he has chosen to care about. So yeah, I read these things and they don't mean anything to me. These comments do not suddenly seem to indicate a change in direction or the possibility that Zuckerberg is is maybe altering his stance on the way he's done things before and the way that things should be done. No, this is a reaction to apparently some other people, which is probably an incredible idea to him that have the ability to say no to him. He's probably not hearing that word very much in his life and has it for a while. And we've seen many cases where when there are people who don't have anybody around who will say no to them, or let's just say not enough of them, this is how they become. They start to see the world only in the way that it affects them. And so their anger at it might line up with things that actually could benefit more than just themselves. But that's coincidence, not intention. So when I see this thing about Oh, Mark Zuckerberg doesn't like closed ecosystems. Let's be very clear what this actually means. It's not that Mark Zuckerberg has a problem with a ecosystem that closes the door on people. What he has a problem with is ecosystems that close the door on him. It's that simple. Don't think it's anything else for even a second later.