Once again, something online is driving me nuts. Today it’s an oligarch is making billions off a service, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it. In this case it's Meta. It's always one of the top few. Their product Facebook Messenger is something I can't stand but can't turn off either. It’s literally the only way I can talk to half my family.
Zuckerberg, Thiel, et al. are raking in the cash off of us as users, even though from origin story to current money machine status, the whole enterprise runs on the same model: we're not the customers, we're the product. They sell access to our eyeballs, harvest our data, and package our attention for advertisers. We pay with our time and our privacy. They pay for yachts. Lots and lots of really big, nice yachts.
A century ago, Tesla and Edison fought over how to electrify the country, and what emerged were regulated public utilities—because society recognized that essential infrastructure shouldn't just be a profit engine for whoever got there first. We put obligations on power companies. Service standards. Price controls. Accountability. Now we've got digital social infrastructure that functions the same way electricity does—you basically can't opt out—except there's no regulation, no obligation, and no recourse. Just shareholders.
Which brings me to this: we need to stop calling Mark Zuckerberg a genius. The guy took a "hot or not" rating app for Harvard coeds, got his wrist slapped by the administration, and parlayed it into a communications utility for a few billion people. All he did was scrape some student directory pics, get guys to rate girls, publish contact details, and blow the concept up. That's not genius. That's timing, privilege, and a certain moral flexibility.
Social networking was already happening. Friendster and MySpace were out there. Zuckerberg just happened to be at Harvard, which meant his early adopters were aspirational. Peter Thiel didn't write a check to Zuck by accident—the kid had access to capital networks most founders never sniff. And when competitors wouldn't sell, he just copied their features or bought them outright. Instagram, WhatsApp, anything Snapchat ever did.
Today Facebook has the most robust face recognition engine on the planet, because hundreds of millions of users tag their friends in photos. They own messaging tools we can’t live without. They are many people’s sole repository of their life’s story. People cannot leave the platform — the social cost is prohibitive. Meanwhile, the oligarch early investors make billions annually by Meta monetizing all this “data”.
Remember the "dumb fucks" quote? He knew exactly what he was doing and no compunctions over ripping anything off anyone he wanted to. He literally marveled that people just handed over their data because they trusted him, and ridiculed them for doing it. That's not genius, that's contempt and greed, with access. And contempt for users is not the worst thing about Meta by a long stretch. Ever hear of the Myanmar genocide? It was years in the making, but Facebook was the gasoline on the fire in 2017.
During the first month of Myanmar's military crackdown on the Muslim minority Rohingya, at least 6,700 people were slaughtered—that's the conservative estimate from Doctors Without Borders, and it only covers 31 days. Rohingya groups put the total closer to 30,000 dead. Eighteen thousand women and girls raped. A hundred fifteen thousand homes torched. Nearly 400 villages burned to the ground. Over 740,000 people fled across the border to Bangladesh, creating the largest refugee camp on Earth. The UN called it a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing."
And Facebook was the accelerant. In Myanmar, Facebook isn't just a social network—it basically is the internet. The military used it to spread hate speech, dehumanize Muslims, and coordinate violence. The UN's own investigators said Facebook played a "determining role" in inciting the genocide. Not a contributing factor. A determining role. Facebook knew. They'd been warned for years by human rights groups on the ground. They had almost no Burmese-speaking moderators. They did nothing meaningful until the killing was done and the world was watching.
Zuckerberg eventually apologized. Human rights groups called it "grossly insufficient." The company that made $27 billion that year couldn't be bothered to hire people who spoke the language. That's not negligence. That's a business decision. Dead Rohingya weren't a bug—they were an acceptable cost of growth.
But wait, there’s more. Meta’s own internal research, leaked by whistleblower Frances Haugen, showed that Instagram makes body image issues worse for a third of teen girls, increases suicidal thoughts, and worsens eating disorders—and they buried it while planning Instagram for Kids. The algorithm that keeps you scrolling is the same one that amplifies rage and conspiracy theories because engagement equals ad revenue. Haugen testified that Facebook dissolved its election integrity team right after 2020, and weeks later came January 6th. Ethiopia. The Philippines. Election interference in multiple democracies. This is the track record. This is what the money machine produces.
What Zuckerberg actually built with Thiel’s “Angel Investor” money is actually an investor-owned utility masquerading as a social platform with no guardrails. Except actual utilities have obligations—service standards, price controls, accountability. Meta has none of that. They can change the product whenever they want, harvest your data however they want, and your only recourse is to leave. Which you can't, because that's where your people are. By design.
We really need better words than "genius" for people Like Zuckerberg who just got really rich. Tesla and Edison didn’t perfect electricity and get to own all the infrastructure – why should Zuck, Thiel, and all the other oligarch tech bro billionaires?
