Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s sprawling $427 million real estate portfolio: COME E CHI GLIELO FINANZIA?

Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s sprawling $427 million real estate portfolio

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s $427 million real estate portfolio is more than able to accommodate his new plans to work from home until 2022.

Sarah Paynter, NY Post

June 19, 202110:33am

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Remote work? No problem for Mark Zuckerberg.

The 37-year-old Facebook founder plans to work remotely for up to half of 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported last week — and his $427 million real estate portfolio is more than able to accommodate his work-from-home lifestyle.

The centibillionaire owns about 1400 acres and 10 houses in Palo Alto, San Francisco, Lake Tahoe and Hawaii. He has a history of not getting along with his neighbours, from construction noise complaints in San Francisco to a petition against “colonisation” due to his growing Hawaii real estate portfolio.

The homes are hardly a dent in his estimated $120 billion net worth, which places him as the fifth richest person in the world, according to Forbes.

He has two children with his wife Priscilla Chan, five-year-old Maxima and three-year-old August. They said having children inspired them to pledge to give 99 per cent of their Facebook shares away, though many have criticised billionaires for exacerbating inequality.

A family spokesperson confirmed the residences to The Post, and pointed out “Mark and Priscilla’s work with the community in Kauai”.

Founder and CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg has a sprawling real estate portfolio. Picture: Kenzo Tribouillard/AFPSource:AFP

A noisy townhouse overhaul

Dolores Heights, San Francisco: $15.82 million

Mr Zuckerberg spent $13 million on this now-7368-square-foot house in November 2012, plus an additional $2.4 million in renovations, according to San Francisco property and permit records.

Photos of the stucco and brick home with a slate roof are scarce, but property records paint a portrait of the home: on the first floor, an office, media room, half-bathroom, a laundry room and mudroom, a wine room and a wet bar.

It is unknown how many bedrooms and bathrooms the house has, but it has 23 total rooms on four floors on a 0.22-acre lot, according to San Francisco property records.

The $2.4 million renovation of the 1928 property included remodelling the kitchen and bathrooms, replacing and repairing the stucco and brick exterior, making it fire and earthquake safe, installing airconditioning, moving and renovating windows and replacing the slate roof, according to permit records.

He added to the first, second and third floors, and added the fourth floor as a habitable level with a bathroom and a glass roof deck, according to property records.

The renovations solicited six complaints from neighbours, including noise, dust, parking, littering, construction debris and alleged permit violation complaints, which were dismissed or mediated by inspectors and city staff, according to records.

Half a block of suburban Silicon Valley

Palo Alto, California: $66 million

The primary home is a 5617-square-foot five-bedroom, five-bathroom wood-floored home on 0.41 acres. Picture: Realtor.comSource:Supplied

Today, the mansion has a saltwater pool, a sunroom, an entertainment pavilion, a fireplace, a barbecue area, a spa and front and back porches. Picture: Realtor.comSource:Supplied

Mr Zuckerberg owns at least 1.83 acres, or about half a block, in Palo Alto, California.

He paid $67.9 million for the lots lined with redwood, magnolia and Ginkgo trees on large front yards. Combined, the homes span almost 20,000 square feet with 15 bedrooms and more than 16 bathrooms, according to property records.

The primary home is a 5,617-square-foot five-bedroom, five-bathroom wood-floored home on 0.41 acres, which he purchased for $9 million in 2011, a year before he married Ms Chan, according to Architectural Digest.

The lots are lined with redwood, magnolia and Ginkgo trees on large front yards. Picture: Realtor.comSource:Supplied

The main house has some unusual amenities — like a ‘Facebook Cannon’ which launches grey T-shirts. Picture: Realtor.comSource:Supplied

The colonial revival, clapboard-sided house is the oldest home in Palo Alto, with parts of the wood frame structure dating to the 1860s, according to a City of Palo Alto Historic Resources Board report.

Today, the mansion has a saltwater pool, a sunroom, an entertainment pavilion, a fireplace, a barbecue area, a spa, front and back porches and some unusual amenities — like a “Facebook Cannon” which launches grey T-shirts and an AI assistant with the voice of Morgan Freeman, according to Architectural Digest, which Mr Zuckerberg built himself, according to FastCompany.

He used the other four homes as guesthouses and recreational facilities, according to an Architectural Review Board meeting.

In 2016, Mr Zuckerberg proposed to demolish the four residences and replace them with 20 per cent smaller houses. Picture: Realtor.comSource:Supplied

‘The idea is just to expand our clients’ capacity to enjoy the property,’ a representative told the Review Board of their demolition plans. Picture: Realtor.comSource:Supplied

In 2016, he proposed to demolish to demolish the four residences and replace them with 20 per cent smaller houses to expand outdoor space for their primary property. But the Palo Alto Architectural Review Board denied his request in part because the houses were not “credible” single-family homes.

“What I’m finding here when I look through these plans is that none of these are really residential in my book. A residence is something where a family lives. A person resides in that residence. And these are not residences. These are part of a larger compound,” said Architectural Review Board member Peter Baltay at the meeting.

News of neighbours’ complaints in San Francisco also made his new neighbours wary, emails show, though builders said they minimised neighbourhood impact in their plans, they outlined in the review board meeting.

Thousands of Hawaii acres

Kauai, Hawaii: Over $267 million

Kahu’aina was part of Zuckerberg’s original 707-acre purchase in 2014. Picture: Realtor.comSource:Supplied

Mr Zuckerberg seems to love Hawaii. In fact, he can’t stop buying up land — 1400 acres of it.

In 2014, he spent $155 million on 707 acres including most of Pila’a beach and Kahu’aina Plantation, which, according to local newspaper, The Garden Island, including a 6100-square-foot house with a 16-car garage and offices and security headquarters, part of Zuckerberg’s $30.7 million security team.

Mr Zuckerberg first underwent local scrutiny for putting up walls and blocking beach access after this purchase, The Garden Island reported.

In 2017, Mr Zuckerberg underwent national scrutiny when he filed quiet-title lawsuits to buy pockets of land within his estate. Called kuleana parcels, these landlocked patches of land were granted to native Hawaiian tenant farmers in 1850 and handed down through generations, local reports explained.

Mr Zuckerberg withdrew the lawsuits after public backlash, but he will spent $60.5 million on 89 acres spanning at least 12 kuleana parcels, according to local reports, including 79.8 acres from Gary Stewart for $44.5 million, according to Pacific Business News.

In March, the couple spent $70 million to add 600 more acres to their portfolio.

Mr Zuckerberg has recently been spotted hitting the waves, hurling spears and donning copious amounts of sunscreen on the islands, in addition to their contributions to the Chan Zuckerberg Kaua’i Community Fund of Hawaii Community Foundation.

Dual desert vacation homes

Lake Tahoe, California: $78.8 million

The Brushwood estate has a 5322-square-foot, six-bedroom, five-bathroom home on six acres of land. Picture: Realtor.comSource:Supplied

In a former life, the home hosted the Oscar de la Renta fashion show and the Lake Tahoe summer music festival, according to Realtor.com. Picture: Realtor.comSource:Supplied

In 2018, Mr Zuckerberg spent $78.8 million on two Lake Tahoe homes — the Brushwood and Carousel estates. Together, the estates span almost 10 acres.

The Brushwood estate has a 5322-square-foot, six-bedroom, five-bathroom home on six acres of land. It has approximately 400 feet of lakefront, a private pier, patios, a guesthouse and a garage, according to permit records. The main house has peaked roofs with light-wood beamed ceilings, photos show.

In a former life, the home hosted the Oscar de la Renta fashion show and the Lake Tahoe summer music festival, according to Realtor.com.

The Carousel estate has 200 feet of lakefront, a marina-style pier, a breezeway and a two-car garage, plus a guesthouse and a caretaker’s apartment. Picture: Realtor.comSource:Supplied

Lake Tahoe, which straddles the California and Nevada border, has been a celebrity favourite for decades. Picture: Realtor.comSource:Supplied

The Carousel estate has an eight-bedroom, nine-bathroom home on 3.5 acres. It has 200 feet of lakefront, a marina-style pier, a breezeway and a two-car garage, plus a guesthouse and a caretaker’s apartment, according to Realtor.com and permit records.

It originally had three separate cabins in the ‘30s that were connected and expanded in the ‘50s. The caretaker’s house was built in 1967, and the house had further modifications in the ‘70s and in 1998, according to historical status inspection, which determined the property not historic.

Lake Tahoe, which straddles the California and Nevada border, has been a celebrity favourite for decades, with residents and vacationers including Frank Sinatra, Kim Kardashian and Gene Simmons.

Early homes

Harvard, LA rentals and New York Suburbs

His old landlord gave The Post an exclusive interview about what it was like to rent to the young Zuckerberg. Picture: Realtor.comSource:Supplied

Mr Zuckerberg was born and raised in Dobbs Ferry, New York, by a dentist and a psychiatrist. He has three sisters, according to New York Magazine.

After leaving his Harvard dorm room to start Facebook, the man who inspired the 2010 film The Social Network rented a few places in Silicon Valley — and even tried to pay in Facebook stock, a former landlord (who opted to accept cash from the young entrepreneur) told The Post.

This article originally appeared on NY Post and was reproduced with permission

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Zuckerberg scivola sempre piu' in basso nelle classifiche dei CEO di Glassdoor

Mark Zuckerberg Falls Down the Glassdoor Ranking List of the Most Likable CEOs Based on Employees Survey for the First Time Since 2013

Employee approvals mean a lot to every CEO despite the fact that whether it is a small business or a large tech firm. This shows the impact and hold the CEO has on the company’s decision and how well he collaborates all those decisions with its worker, which eventually makes the work space a happy, positive place.

A recruiting firm called Glassdoor releases a list of rankings every year based on employees’ survey from different companies to see which workers are the happiest with their CEOs and list their names rank wise based on their remarks from their employees.

Though last year Glassdoor, was unable to publish their rank list considering the ongoing pandemic and the lockdowns which took over the world, but this year they are back in business. However, though the results show the past year may not have been very employee-boss liking for Mark Zuckerberg considering how he fell down from the top 100 CEOs for the first time since Glassdoor began issuing this list.

When the list was issued for the first time in 2013, Zuckerberg had managed to secure the first position with a 99 percent approval score from his employees, and in 2019, when the survey was done last time pre pandemic, the CEO of Facebook had a 94 percent approval score.

However, things took turns and due to some factors the CEO could not achieve enough votes in his favor compared to before. This year 700 employees from Facebook were asked to fill the survey form, which contained three options to rate their CEOs which are: approve, no opinion or disapprove. Mark Zuckerberg came out with an average of 88 percent in rankings and though this is lower than before, this is still without any doubt above the normal average score of the Glassdoor rank list which is 76 percent. Also, the 700 employees are considerably only a small proportion of the workers in the company considering the tech giant houses thousands of employees and a small part cannot decide the like and dislike ratio of their CEO alone.

Things did not work well in Mark’s favor because of the incidents that took place along with the pandemic last year like Covid-19 misinformation circulation on the application which could not be controlled to the presidential election issues in the US.

People who did managed to reach the top names in the list were Rich Lesser, the CEO of a consulting Group called Boston, who stood at number one with 99 percent approvals, Satya Nadella from Microsoft had 97 percent approvals and was at number 6 with Tim Cook being at the 32nd ranking with 95 percent approvals.

Though the following year wasn’t the best for Mark Zuckerberg in terms of employee approvals, we sincere hope that the coming one is a great and successful one for him and the company.

Arooj Ahmed Friday, June 18, 2021

Zuckerberg ha accumulato ca. mezzo miliardi di dollari di proprieta' immobiliari

Low-Key Facts About Mark Zuckerberg's Multi-Million Dollar Private Properties

Unknown to many, behind Mark Zuckerberg's "simple lifestyle" is a love for pricey and super private properties.

By Daniella Olowokandi Published Jun 14, 2021

As the owner of the biggest social networking platform Facebook and other technology products, Mark Zuckerberg is one of the richest people in the world. We all know that the tech guru who dropped out of Harvard is worth hundreds of billions of dollars and can have anything he wants at his disposal.

However, he is often seen wearing the most basic of clothes and driving relatively affordable cars. Unknown to many, behind Mark's simple lifestyle is a love for pricey and super private properties. The centibillionaire has an ultra-expensive real estate portfolio worth millions of dollars, and here is all you need to know about it.

10 Mark Has 10 Lavish Properties

The media and technology mogul loves to splurge on properties and has an enviable real estate portfolio estimated at more than $300 million. Mark is a proud owner of 10 properties scattered across San Francisco, Palo Alto, Lake Tahoe, and the Island of Kauai in Hawaii. The Palo Alto location boasts five houses ― a five-bedroom apartment alongside four other neighboring homes ― while he has two adjacent private estates in Tahoe that sit on more than 9 acres of land. He has only one house in San Francisco and 700-acre beachside property in Kauai.

9 A Custom-Made Artificial Assistant

As the CEO of one of the biggest technology conglomerates and a computer science dropout who has been hailed as a programming prodigy, it comes as no surprise that his 5,000-square-foot home is completely wired to be a smart home. In 2016, Mark created an artificial intelligence app named Jarvis that behaves similarly to Amazon's Alexa. Per reports, Jarvis helps to wake his oldest daughter Maxima with a Mandarin lesson. The app also helps with giving him a clean new shirt and recognizing people's faces at the door.

8 He Buys The Properties Surrounding His Homes

It is common practice for celebrities and influential personalities to buy the homes next to theirs for the sake of privacy, especially when it is on the market. However, Mark takes his love for privacy to the next level, snagging up his neighbors' homes even when it seems they are not on the market. After purchasing his $7.7 million home in Palo Alto, Mark spent an additional $30 million to buy the surrounding homes to ensure he has the utmost privacy.

7 He Leases The Surrounding Homes To The Former Neighbors

Although Mark purchased all the homes surround his Palo Alto home, he has no intention of taking over the properties yet. The centibillionaire reportedly leases the homes back to the former homeowners. The 37-year-old began buying the surrounding homes when he learned of a developer's plan to buy the building next to his and capitalize on his residence next door as a selling point. He wanted to control how the properties around his home are marketed and who it is they are sold to.

6 Plagued By Real-Estate Conflicts

Philanthropy is a huge part of Mark's identity as one of the wealthiest people in the world. However, the Facebook CEO never fails to find himself embroiled in controversies that portray him as oppressive. In 2014, he and his wife Priscilla Chan bought two adjacent properties on Kauai Island for a whopping $100 million. However, the couple's purchase has only brought about trouble after trouble for the native residents. In 2016, Mark constructed a 6-foot-wall around his home that obstructed and angered his neighbors.

The tech mogul also made news after a lawsuit he filed in 2017 showed that he was forcing native Hawaiians who had legal ownership over some parcels within his property to give up their homes. Although he dropped the suit, Mark was accused of neocolonialism. The plots of land were later auctioned off to a bidder who Mark reportedly supported.

5 A Private Shoreline

For his Lake Tahoe properties, Mark spent $60 million to buy two adjacent lakefront mansions that consist of 10 acres and 15 bedrooms in total. One of the homes is the famous Brushwood Estate that belonged to the late renowned novelist Stewart Edward White in the 1920s, while the other, Carousel Estate, is a smaller mansion built in the 1930s. Between the two adjacent estates lies a 600-feet private waterfront on Lake Tahoe's West Shore that solely belongs to Mark.

4 A Secret Deal

For someone whose social media platform has been accused of being indifferent and careless when it comes to handling user's personal information and privacy, Mark is willing to go to any length to protect his own. According to reports, the tech billionaire purchased his Lake Tahoe homes via a super-secret deal. It involved a discreet wealth manager, a limited liability company, and a series of lengthy non-disclosure agreements that instructed that all the home's photo listings be removed from the internet.

3 He Lives Among Tech CEOs And Socialites

For someone of Mark's caliber and financial status, it only makes sense that his homes are located in areas that are exclusive to silicon valley CEOs and other socialites. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Google's Larry Page have properties in the San Francisco Bay Area. The late Steve Jobs and the family of Hewlett-Packard live there.

2 A Panic Room

Although Mark buys the properties around his home for privacy, he has other intentions for the four houses he purchased in Palo Alto. It was revealed that the Harvard dropout plans to bulldoze the former homes and completely rebuild them. However, one of the four homes will serve as a bunker or panic room. Fortune reports that the house will have "white brick walls, dark steel doors and windows, dark grey siding and louvers where they occur above the roofline, and a dark gray standing seam metal roof." Mark is quite big on protection and security for his family, as Facebook reportedly spent $23 million on his security in 2020. Hence, having a bunker seems like the next step of the tech wiz.

1 He Overpays For His Houses

With a net worth of more than $120 billion, having a real estate portfolio of more than 300 million seems like a drop in the ocean. However, Mark's ultra-pricey properties aren't a result of always buying homes in expensive areas. Instead, the tech mogul loves to shell out excess money to buy out the former homeowners. For example, his 5,542-square foot home in San Francisco, which he bought at $10 million, was valued at only $3 million. Also, one of the additional properties in Palo Alto $3.171 million, but Mark purchased it for $14 million.

CHE FARE SE FACEBOOK E GLI ALTRI "SOCIAL" MEDIA NON POSSONO ESSERE REGOLAMENTATI? CHIUDERLI E SMEMBRARLI.

Siva Vaidhyanathan

Ideas

07.02.2021 08:00 AM

What If Regulating Facebook Fails?

It seems increasingly likely that antitrust and content moderation tools aren’t up to the task. Here’s what we do next.

Illustration: WIRED; Getty Images

What if nothing works? What if, after years of scholarship and journalism exposing the dominance, abrogations, duplicity, arrogance, and incompetence of Facebook, none of the policy tools we have come to rely on to rein in corporations make any difference at all?

We have to be prepared for just such an outcome.

On Tuesday a federal court tossed out federal and state cases against Facebook for violating US antitrust laws. The judge ruled that, because antitrust has precise definitions of concepts like “monopoly” and high burdens of proof for actions in restraint of fair competition, the governments had not come close to justifying why these cases should proceed now. After all, the judge pointed out, the US government had raised no objections in 2012 when Facebook bought Instagram, or in 2014 when it bought WhatsApp. Why should the government swoop in to raise objections now? The judge was not wrong to rule that way. But we have been very wrong to allow our defenses against corporate power to shrink over the past 40 years.

Within hours of that court decision, the total value of Facebook stock rose above 1 trillion dollars. It joined only Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and Alphabet (the company that owns Google) in reaching that valuation, making 17-year-old Facebook the youngest company to do so. And as it fast approaches 3 billion users worldwide, Facebook seems as unstoppable as it does unmanageable, at least in the short term.

Nothing before in human history—with the possible exception of Google—has reached into the lives of 3 billion humans who speak more than 100 languages. Facebook derives its power from that scale and the degree to which we depend on the Blue App, Instagram, and WhatsApp for our social interactions and virtual identities. While its products have proven to be bad for democracy and other living things, they’re remarkably useful and justifiably popular. Facebook may be terrible for us in the aggregate, but it serves each of its nearly 3 billion users well enough individually that the vast majority are unlikely to walk away from it. At the same time, the US government, often charged with the task of protecting us from our own bad habits, doesn't actually have a good set of tools to address the damage that Facebook (or Google, for that matter) does.

So what can we, as citizens, do? What should we demand from our governments?

There are currently three major areas of regulatory intervention in play: antitrust, content regulation, and data rights. For the most part, Facebook’s critics and those pushing for change have focused their attention on the first two. But while those avenues should be studied, considered, and pursued, neither is likely to solve our Facebook problem.

Antitrust is the angle that's received the most attention recently, but we shouldn't pin our hopes on it. This is not only because Republicans have spent 40 years gutting antitrust regulation to benefit their corporate patrons, and not only because an Obama-appointed federal judge tossed those cases out of court. Believing that competition could limit Facebook’s behavior, alter its design, or even stunt its growth demands a naive faith in markets and competition. Even in highly competitive markets like retail and groceries, big firms remain big. And big and small firms alike pollute, dodge taxes, exploit and mistreat labor, and distract people from civic and family commitments. That’s why we need other forms of regulation to impose costs or restrictions that can enrich our lives in ways that for-profit ventures cannot. Antitrust is at best a minor annoyance to companies and a minor boon to human beings.

Content regulation, meanwhile, is an even clumsier and less effective method of regulation. Many countries around the world explicitly ban Facebook, Google, and other publishers from distributing content that governments consider noxious. Despite all the flowery words about free speech that flow from Mark Zuckerberg, he and his company have never really championed—or even understood—what it means.

Of course, such direct state censorship is not on the table in the US, Canada, or other countries with long-standing liberal traditions. Another approach to content regulation in the US would be to limit the protection from liability that Facebook and other digital service providers currently enjoy for malicious content posted by users. That legal immunity is provided by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and a number of critics have advocated changing it so that the platforms would be more concerned about the nasty things we post to and about one another.

But despite the flurry of recent commentary on Section 230, removing or reforming it is not likely to make Facebook significantly better for us. The provision gets too much credit for enabling the vibrant creativity that fueled the digital revolution, and it gets too much blame for the damage the digital revolution has caused. Although some countries offer different forms of a liability shield, most of the world does not offer as broad a shield as Section 230—and yet platforms continue to grow and thrive globally anyway. India, for instance, just abandoned its limited protection from liability, yet there is no sign—nor possibility—of Facebook abandoning its largest market and greatest source of growth.

In the US, the idea for providing this protection was actually that it would create a market incentive for platforms to keep themselves clean. That hasn’t exactly worked out as planned. Companies like Facebook and Google do lightly and inconsistently try to police the content on their platforms. But the scale and scope of those platforms undermine any effort to do so in ways subtle and effective enough to protect users.

Perhaps, then, you might assume that making these companies smaller would help. And that’s a reasonable assumption. Significantly smaller services like Reddit, with only about 430 million users, do a much better job these days (at least since 2020, when Reddit abandoned its naive commitment to radical free speech and encouraged strong community content-moderation techniques, banning some major subreddits that encouraged hatred). But it’s too late to reverse Facebook’s global reach. There is no way for one country’s policy to slow its growth.

Unlike most other companies, growth and user engagement—not revenue, profit, or even market capitalization—have been the driving metrics for Mark Zuckerberg since the beginning. Any attempt to limit Facebook’s reach would have to contend with those core values. But we currently lack any methods to do so.

If all the external forces of regulation have failed, some say, maybe we can count on a “greenwashing” operation intended to assure regulators that the company can police itself: the Facebook Oversight Board. But this collection of civic leaders, all of whom seem sincere in their commitment to improving Facebook, are unable to actually do anything about the core problems of Facebook. The board only considers decisions to remove or retain content and accounts, as if those decisions were the reason Facebook threatens democracy and human rights around the world. The board pays no attention to algorithmic amplification of content. It does not concern itself with linguistic bias or limitations within the company. It does not question the commitment to growth and engagement. It does not examine the problems with Facebook’s commitment to artificial intelligence or virtual reality. The more seriously we take the impotent Oversight Board, the less likely we are to take Facebook as a whole seriously. The Oversight Board is mostly useless, and “self regulation” is an oxymoron. Yet for some reason, many smart people continue to take it seriously, allowing Facebook itself to structure the public debate and avoid real accountability.

What about us? We are the 3 billion, after all. What if every Facebook user decided to be a better person, to think harder, to know more, to be kinder, more patient, and more tolerant? Well, we’ve been working on improving humanity for at least 2,000 years, and it’s not going that well. There is no reason to believe, even with “media education” or “media literacy” efforts aimed at young people in a few wealthy countries, that we can count on human improvement—especially when Facebook is designed to exploit our tendency to favor the shallow, emotional, and extreme expressions that our better angels eschew.

Facebook was designed for better animals than humans. It was designed for beings that don’t hate, exploit, harass, or terrorize each other—like golden retrievers. But we humans are nasty beasts. So we have to regulate and design our technologies to correct for our weaknesses. The challenge is figuring out how.

First, we must recognize that the threat of Facebook is not in some marginal aspect of its products or even in the nature of the content it distributes. It’s in those core values that Zuckerberg has embedded in every aspect of his company: a commitment to unrelenting growth and engagement. It’s enabled by the pervasive surveillance that Facebook exploits to target advertisements and content.

Mostly, it’s in the overall, deleterious effect of Facebook on our ability to think collectively.

That means we can’t organize a political movement around the mere fact that Donald Trump exploited Facebook to his benefit in 2016 or that Donald Trump got tossed off of Facebook in 2021 or even that Facebook contributed directly to the mass expulsion and murder of the Rohingya people in Myanmar. We can’t rally people around the idea that Facebook is dominant and coercive in the online advertising market around the world. We can’t explain the nuances of Section 230 and expect any sort of consensus on what to do about it (or even if reforming the law would make a difference to Facebook). None of that is sufficient.

Facebook is dangerous because of the collective impact of 3 billion people being surveilled constantly, then having their social connections, cultural stimuli, and political awareness managed by predictive algorithms that are biased toward constant, increasing, immersive engagement. The problem is not that some crank or president is popular on Facebook in one corner of the world. The problem with Facebook is Facebook.

Facebook is likely to be this powerful, perhaps even more powerful, for many decades. So while we strive to live better with it (and with each other), we must all spend the next few years imagining a more radical reform program. We must strike at the root of Facebook—and, while we are at it, Google. More specifically, there is one recent regulatory intervention, modest though it is, that could serve as a good first step.

In 2018 the European Union began insisting that all companies that collect data respect certain basic rights of citizens. The resulting General Data Protection Regulation grants users some autonomy over the data that we generate, and it insists on minimal transparency when that data is used. While enforcement has been spotty, and the most visible sign of the GDPR has been extra warnings that demand we click through to accept terms, the law offers some potential to limit the power of big data vacuums like Facebook and Google. It should be studied closely, strengthened, and spread around the world. If the US Congress—and the parliaments of Canada, Australia, and India—would take citizens’ data rights more seriously than they do content regulation, there might be some hope.

Beyond the GDPR, an even more radical and useful approach would be to throttle Facebook’s (or any company’s) ability to track everything we do and say, and limit the ways it can use our data to influence our social connections and political activities. We could limit the reach and power of Facebook without infringing speech rights. We could make Facebook matter less.

Imagine if we kept our focus on how Facebook actually works and why it’s as rich and powerful as it is. If we did that, instead of fluttering our attention to the latest example of bad content flowing across the platform and reaching some small fraction of users, we might have a chance. As Marshall McLuhan taught us 56 years ago, it’s the medium, not the message, that ultimately matters.

The Truth About Priscilla Chan, Mark Zuckerberg's Wife

The Truth About Priscilla Chan, Mark Zuckerberg's Wife
Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg attending an event
Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images
By Stephanie Kaloi/May 17, 2021 12:31 pm EDT

Many people know Priscilla Chan as the wife of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, but Chan has always stood apart in her own life. As a doctor, philanthropist, and mother of two, she's made her stance in a multitude of ways. She's been described as a hero and also as someone who is steady and warm, despite her tendency to cry when she's sad, scared, or even wildly happy. Here's a refresher on her relationship timeline with Zuckerberg, if you need it.

Chan's friend and fellow doctor, Meg McNamara, told Quartz that she's definitely known for her tendency to shed tears. "When she's feeling exhausted or overwhelmed, and sometimes when she's really ecstatic, it's just one of her ways of expressing," McNamara said. Despite that, Chan strong and resilient — she doesn't back down from a challenge, and she has the ability to stay calm under pressure.

Chan is also passionate about everything she oversees. She currently is responsible for a budget of $700 million to $800 million for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Her goals and projects are focused on reforming public education, immigration, and criminal justice — she is also passionate about affordable housing and curing the world's diseases.

"She's really the hands-on person," Robert Tjian, a member of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative science advisory board, told Vox. "This is really her day job now."

Priscilla Chan comes from humble roots
Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg attending an event
Kelly Sullivan/Getty Images

Priscilla Chan hails from a low-income immigrant family; her parents are Chinese-Vietnamese immigrants, and she grew up watching her mom work two jobs in order to provide for her family (via Slate). Chan is also a first-generation college graduate, and spent much of her childhood translating English for her grandparents. It's an unlikely beginning for a woman who would eventually grow up to become a successful doctor and to marry one of the world's wealthiest men. Chan and Mark Zuckerberg — who has a stunning net worth — met when they were both attending Harvard, and many associated with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative believe she brings a unique perspective to everything the organization does.

Jim Shelton, the former education advisor at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, told Quartz, "Priscilla grew up low-income, part of an immigrant family. She brings a very direct perspective on what it means to struggle, what it looks like to have inequity in an environment. Mark did not have that exposure."

Chan, unsurprisingly, has also applied her medical philosophy to her philanthropy. She attended the UCSF School of Medicine, is a licensed pediatrician, and is the founder of her own school — a homogenous combination that allows her to run one of the biggest philanthropic foundations in the world.

"We are all more capable than we could ever imagine or admit to," Chan told Facebook's COO Sheryl Sandberg, as noted by Vox. "We need to make sure that we are using that power now, and not waiting for a different time or when we're more ready. We're ready now. We need to do."

Read More: https://www.thelist.com/400197/the-truth-about-facebooks-oversight-board/?utm_campaign=clip

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GOP asking if Fauci played role in platform censoring claims COVID-19 was "Man-made"

GOP grills Facebook over COVID origin censorship

Top House Republicans penned a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg demanding to see emails between him and government officials over COVID censorship on its platform.

Top Republicans on the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees penned a letter to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Wednesday asking for the company to hand over communication between Zuckerberg, Facebook employees, Dr. Anthony Fauci and other health officials.

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The request comes after emails between Fauci and Zuckerberg, obtained by Buzzfeed News, show Zuckerberg soliciting help from the nation’s top infectious disease expert to promote access to reliable health information for its users.

Lawmakers want to know if Fauci influenced Facebook's decision to ban posts from users questioning the origins of COVID-19 claiming the virus was engineered.

The letter to Facebook, obtained exclusively by FOX Business, read, "These communications with Dr. Fauci raise the prospect that the federal government induced Facebook to censor certain speech in violation of the First Amendment."

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told FBN exclusively that these exchanges between Zuckerberg and Fauci raise questions and Congress deserves answers.

"There's probably two explanations. Either Zuckerberg and Facebook was duped like so many Americans were and thought Dr. Fauci is the smartest man on the planet…or they were working with the government. And it seems to be more of the latter."

BLACKBURN, RUBIO, COTTON DEMAND FAUCI RESIGN OR BE FIRED BY BIDEN

Jordan says it’s possible that Facebook’s decision to initially shut down debate over the nature of COVID-19 could have obstructed pressure on government officials to take the theory more seriously.

"Why is this big tech platform working in cahoots with the government to suppress certain type of information that we now know was pretty darn credible?" he asked.

A Facebook spokesperson, Andy Stone, in a series of tweets explained the communication between Facebook and Fauci tweeting, "In the early days of this pandemic, Facebook reached out to the nation’s foremost infectious disease expert, in addition to connecting with others on the Trump administration's Coronavirus Task Force, to offer our assistance…Mark Zuckerberg shared with Dr. Fauci Facebook’s plans to launch a COVID-19 Information Center, a hub to make reliable resources and information about COVID-19 from government and health experts easily accessible on the platform."

Ticker	Security	Last	Change	Change %
FB	FACEBOOK, INC.	354.70	+0.31	+0.09%

Jordan says it is telling that when Fauci was downplaying the lab-leak theory – that COVID-19 was engineered and escaped from a Wuhan lab – Facebook’s policies aligned to suppress that content on their platform. But when the Biden Administration announced it was seriously looking into the theory – Facebook’s policies changed course.

"Dr. Fauci, once again has changed his position. So he's saying, ‘Oh, well, there may be some credibility to looking at the lab, the origins of the virus from the lab,’", Jordan said. "Whatever the government says, Facebook goes along with."

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Portions of communications between Fauci and Zuckerberg were redacted before being released as part of a FOIA request raising questions from some Republicans who wonder what extent Facebook and Fauci were collaborating.

Stone addressed those redacted portions of the emails between Fauci and Zuckerberg explaining in a tweet, "In the redacted part of the email, Zuckerberg told Dr. Fauci of our plan – which we’d described in our company blog weeks earlier – to share Facebook ad credits with government agencies to help them run coronavirus PSAs."

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But Jordan says he wants Facebook to release the original email unredacted if it doesn't contain sensitive trade secrets that Facebook is trying to protect telling FBN, "Why did the government say, ‘Oh no-no, you can't see what is in communication with the highest-paid official in our government, Dr. Fauci, and the head of one of the biggest companies on the planet. You're not allowed to see what they're talking about. And we know what they were talking about in the lead to the fact that certain information was kept from the American people."

La morte di Luca Ventre e' stato un errore non autorizzato come quella di Khashoggi? EVVIVA IL MINISTRO PER L'IPERIPOCRISIA!!!

Saudi minister says Khashoggi murder was unauthorised error

Di Maio met with Al Jubeir, calls for removing causes of conflic

06 December, 17:52

(ANSAmed) - ROME, DECEMBER 6 - The killing of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey in October 2018 "was a mistake, an unauthorised operation", said Saudi Foreign Affairs Minister Adel al-Jubeir, speaking at the Med Dialogues conference on Friday.

"The Saudi state never kills its citizens; there are people in court and we have adopted mechanisms to avoid this from happening in the future," he said.

In a bilateral meeting with al-Jubeir on the sidelines of Med Dialogues, Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio highlighted the importance of how "necessary it is to work together to remove the causes of the current conflicts in the Gulf for lasting stability in the region".

During the meeting, focus was also placed on the "opportunities offered to Italy by the programme Vision2030", the socio-economic development plan launched in Saudi Arabia.

(ANSAmed).

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