Saying he was a teenager to excuse the morally questionable behavior and reduce his culpability is invalid when he isn’t really a teenager based on legal standards. He would be tried as an adult in any legal proceeding and fully morally and legally responsible for his actions. So my point stands.
Pedantic doesn’t mean anything relevant to this conversation.
We're not talking about an act of criminal violence, or indeed anything illegal at all. We're talking about a private, off-the-cuff remark, isolated from much surrounding context or knowledge of what was going on in his mind or heart when he made it. For all we know it was just a dumb 19-year-old joke, so there's not even any clear evidence of immorality, apart from by the person who publicly shared a private conversation.
OK, I understand that for a lot of people, it's really important to fixate on this "gotcha" instance, to take the view that the worst possible conceivable motive just has to be the only plausible one, even though there is no possibility of undertaking the kind of forensic or judicial examination that would be required to properly determine such a thing.
But seriously, regardless of what it may or may not reveal about Zuckerberg, fixating on it is just not a healthy or productive way to look at the world.
I invite you to explore the psychology concept of the shadow [1], and consider that when we fixate on other people's flaws and transgressions like this, there's very likely plenty wrong that we're not seeing in ourselves, but that we could greatly benefit from paying attention to.
That's is why I call out this trope whenever I see it on HN. Not because it upsets me that people are saying mean things about Mark Zuckerberg. It's that in focusing on other people's supposed sins, they're likely avoiding looking at what they could pay attention to in themselves, and thus embrace big opportunities for their own personal growth.
Say what you like about Zuckerberg and Facebook's current/recent conduct. There's plenty there, and there are plenty of valid and important discussions to be had about the role of Facebook etc in the modern world.
But this 15-year-old comment trivialises these present-day issues, and is also just super-boring.
By the way, the Oxford dictionary and Wikipedia both define "teenager" as any age ending in "teen", so nobody is wrong to use it in that way. You can apply a different interpretation, but it would only be for rhetorical purposes, not to correct any errant assertions of fact.
You’re switching the issue. The debate is whether he was young and therefore excused for saying something dumb. But he was of an age that he would be held responsible for much more serious acts. Joking about disclosing peoples private details without consent is not criminal but he was old enough to be expected to know that would be perceived as wrong. Indeed by alluding to the concept of trust, the comment indicated some awareness. This is not an example of gotcha culture because the point I am arguing against is that a 19 is excused because they are a teenager. He was an adult in the eyes of society based on legal status. I am open to debate about whether that age of culpability needs to be adjusted based on neuroscience.
The shadow is not applicable, and just a red herring, not relevant to whether a 19 year old is an adult. I am not even getting into whether his comment indicates a willingness to log into their email without permission. Why excuse this? If you heard an 19 year old joke about walking into someone’s house would you think they were too young and shouldn’t know better?
As far as the Oxford dictionary, I’ll stick with the general legal definition, as it is more relevant a social measure of whether he should have know better based on generally acceptable measures of conduct at that age, and is fairly held responsible.
This 15 year old comment doesn’t trivialize anything, it serves as an anchor over a 15 year period where the underlying intent is established and the intervening conduct makes more sense and is much worse. It’s impossible to argue that disclosure is inadvertent when this intent was present at the very beginning. He was literally selling peoples information for social credibility with a friend. You may think it’s boring, but I am just as pissed as the first day I heard it and have been off of Facebook for the last 10 years as a result. I hope everyone hears this comment over and over, maybe then it would sink in.
OK, I think we've established that we see this matter very differently and are not going to find consensus, but I'll leave some final points for the record then bounce out.
- Instead of saying "He wasn’t a teenager" and continuing to double down on this, you could have made the discussion a whole lot more productive by just saying "he was old enough to know better". That's a reasonable position that people can have a productive discussion about. As far as I can find, "teenager" has no official legal definition that's separate from the dictionary definition (as distinct from "major" or "age of responsibility" which are legal terms). Using legal conventions is unhelpful. People under 18 (and thoroughly "teenage" by your description) can be legally culpable for murder, yet people in the U.S. are considered too immature to buy alcohol before age 21. Everyone knows maturity and sound judgement is a spectrum and numerical age is only one factor in it.
- I understand that for the people for whom this matter is significant, it stems from the view that Facebook is a wholly malevolent influence on society, and is responsible for much of what is wrong in the modern world, including recent election outcomes and other major world events, and that Zuckerberg is primarily responsible for most of it. I don't share that position, about Facebook/Zuckerberg, or indeed about anything/anyone, really. I regard Facebook and Zuckerberg's persona as having emerged out of their surrounding culture, and like pretty much all people and companies, have done some good things and some bad things. Where they've done good they should be commended and where they've done wrong they should be condemned and motivated/compelled to reform. I think people should generally be given a pass for stupid things they said/did 15 years ago, as most people change significantly in that time, even if they were already grown adults, but even more so if they were young. And I think that the propensity to cast Facebook as a primary cause of the world's ills, including but not limited to unfavourable election outcomes, is another example of avoiding confronting our own failings (i.e., our "shadow"), and missing opportunities for learning and growth. And I think this mindset is particularly counterproductive for those of us in the startup world, where it's impossible to do anything important and impactful without risking getting things wrong at least some of the time.
I understand that the ideas in that last point are unpalatable for some people, and that's OK. My own take on such matters comes after a solid number of years exploring these ideas through particular self-development practices I've chosen to undertake, but I understand and respect that everyone has their own background to their worldview, and people are entitled to see it differently.
