I appreciate both you pointing this out AND the dunks on Zuck both here and on his post at FB. I'm surprised they didn't set up a custom algorithm to bury the most critical responses at his post.
Anyway, here's an attempt at some thoughtful nuance:
There's lots of wisdom readily available out there that describes how to most responsibly deal with critical feedback. For example Rapoport's Rules (via Dan Dennett). First you express the other's position so they can say "yes, that's exactly how I feel". Then, you describe where you agree and what you've learned. Finally, you can go into where you disagree.
Another framing is to ask "what is true in the feedback?" with the presumption that there is truth to be found.
This and other approaches are all about maximizing what to actually learn from feedback.
By contrast, Mark's post is a textbook-worthy demonstration of how to be politely defensive, even being candid about your emotional vulnerabilities, recognizing your frustrations, not lashing out in anger… all while admitting absolutely ZERO about anything in the criticism having any merit or opening any questions to really grapple with. At its best, his letter says "I'm really saddened about how my work is misunderstood, and I don't want to blame the critics, but I'll work to get past my reactive feelings and go back to continuing my wonderful work that has been so unfairly maligned".
I'll grant that this is more mature than a tantrum that attacks the critics and spreads rumors and lies about them. Zuckerberg is a more thoughtful and nicer person than Donald Trump.
> I'll grant that this is more mature than a tantrum that attacks the critics and spreads rumors and lies about them. Zuckerberg is a more thoughtful and nicer person than Donald Trump.
I wouldn't conclude anything about Zuckerberg's character from this letter. There is absolutely no way he wrote it. I'm sure he signed off on it, but he didn't write it. Some PR crew filled with lawyers and communication specialists wrote it.
Maybe, but he's in charge. If he cared about the concept of learning from feedback and trying to find out what is true from criticism, that sort of approach would be part of the whole FB culture and would be part of how speech-writers write things.
Regardless, being nicer and more thoughtful than Trump is such a low bar it's meaningless. I could believe Zuck to be that way and also believe that Zuck is a fundamentally clueless sociopathic moral monster. I don't really know of course. I suspect there's at least some complexity here.
But it's not just this letter, everything I've ever heard from Zuck indicates that he believes his own company's BS or at least stands by it.
Why would anybody defend Zuck or Facebook? He hired the political activist that leaked all these documents, knowingly and expected a different result? Just like Google, these corporations don't seem to learn their lessons and act surprised when these activist employees betray them?
