The idealism is the current corporate story - "enabling communication" etc. - but you're right that there was no idealism to start with. Zuckerberg set up The Facebook so undergrads at Harvard could rate how hot girls were, scraping their images from unprotected university servers.
The main conclusion is that Zuckerberg is a pure, amoral opportunist, which is why Facebook has been so successful through an era of "ask for forgiveness, not permission".
This is the first time I heard about anyone buying into any sort of "idealism" of Facebook. Isn't Zuckerberg famous for calling Facebook users "dumb f***s" back in the early days for willingly handing over all sorts of information?
It wasn't so much "idealism" than it was the fact that social media was directly responsible for the election of Barack Obama in 2008, the US's first Black president. It also gave him a significant advantage in 2012. Nobody wanted to touch social media out of fear of putting future Democrat POTUS candidates at a disadvantage.
Notice how, in 2017, it's only after everyone starts post mortem evaluating the 2016 election that the "idealism" of social media begins to sour.
> It wasn't so much "idealism" than it was the fact that social media was directly responsible for the election of Barack Obama in 2008, the US's first Black president.
That's a very strong claim, hence needs strong evidence to be taken seriously.
I can't cite sources since it would involve trying to piecemeal together tons of almost 20 year old Twitter posts (the ones that are still even online in some capacity). But I'd strongly encourage anyone interested to research both the 2008 campaigns of Barack Obama and the late John McCain. Obama went hard into social media like FB and Twitter with almost daily updates, and also used those platforms to directly connect with voters. McCain's campaign, if I remember right, largely stayed off of them until right before the election. And even then, McCain/Palin only used it like an RSS feed and really didn't engage with anyone.
It's the same strategy that propelled Bernie Sanders to the national stage in 2015/2016. It's the same strategy that got Donald Trump elected, legitimately or otherwise, both in 2016 and 2024. No one wanted to touch it until it made both Trump become POTUS and made a Clinton lose an election.
This is a great podcast centred around the film about it - The Social Network - but it delves really interestingly into the story and motivations of the early years: https://www.ppfideas.com/episodes/the-great-political-films%...
The main conclusion is that Zuckerberg is a pure, amoral opportunist, which is why Facebook has been so successful through an era of "ask for forgiveness, not permission".