Business, Spoken

Mark Zuckerberg took to Facebook Wednesday to once more defend himself and his platform. Responding to a cavalierly-tweeted charge of anti-Trump bias from the President of the United States, Zuckerberg again repeated his claim that Facebook was [a platform for all ideas,” and that, contrary to unfolding public opinion, his company did much more to further democracy than to stifle it. For evidence, Zuckerberg—as is his wont—turned to the data.

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In February, a grizzled 50-something white man approached two Indian avionics engineers at a bar outside Kansas City. He began haranguing them about an all-too-familiar topic: their visas. After bar patrons kicked out the agitator, he returned with a gun, screamed “Get out of my country!” and shot both engineers, killing one of them, Srinivas Kuchibhotla. The alleged shooter, Adam Purinton, is now facing hate crime charges in federal court.

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This story is about Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest and most successful private hedge fund. But first I want to talk about the Buddha. In the 13th century, the Japanese Buddhist philosopher Dogen wrote a famous series of precepts called the Genjo-Koan. In them, he preached that there was no such thing as an “abiding self.” “The buddha way is, basically, leaping clear of the many of the one,” he wrote. “To study the Buddha way is to study the self.

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Facebook is now enmeshed in several investigations into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Last week, the company agreed to give Congress 3,000 political ads linked to Russian actors that it sold and ran during the 2016 election cycle; it previously had handed that information to special investigator Robert Mueller.

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This month, two magnificently embarrassing public-relations disasters rocked the Facebook money machine like nothing else in its history. First, Facebook revealed that shady Russian operators purchased political ads via Facebook in the 2016 election.

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The backroom conversations politicians have with their base always seem to come back and bite them in the ass. You still remember Mitt Romney’s infamous "47 percent" remarks, when he told a room full of well-heeled donors during the 2012 campaign that 47 percent of the electorate are “dependent upon government,” “believe that they are victims,” and would vote for President Obama no matter what.

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It was early March, not yet two months into the Trump administration, and the new Not-Normal was setting in: It continued to be the administration’s position, as enunciated by Sean Spicer, that the inauguration had attracted the “largest audience ever”; barely a month had passed since Kellyanne Conway brought the fictitious “Bowling Green massacre” to national attention; and just for kicks, on March 4, the president alerted the nation by tweet, “Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower.” If the administration had...

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In a video introducing the iPhone X, Apple design chief Jony Ive speaks in his usual sonorous tones about features like polished stainless steel and new formulations of glass. Twice, he also calls out a feature of the $999 device that its owners will never see: the A11 “bionic” processor powering the phone. The new chip’s prominence reflects Apple’s deepening investment in chip design.

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Chamath Palihapitiya, an early Facebook executive and outspoken presence in Silicon Valley, is unapologetic about his frustrations with the venture-capital industry. There’s too much money chasing deals, making it harder to generate strong returns. Too many VCs conflate luck with talent. And everyone who benefits from the current system is resistant to change. Technically, Palihapitiya is a venture capitalist himself.

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It is a sure sign that Facebook’s algorithms have run amok when they allow anyone to target ads to people with an expressed interest in burning Jews. Likewise, when Russians can sow chaos in American elections by purchasing thousands of phony Facebook ads without Facebook realizing it, the automated systems selling those ads may need some oversight.

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