Will Mark Zuckerberg Use Mind Control to Become President of the United States?
How's that for a clickbait title? Pretty good, right?
Many people think "mind control" is some spooky, tin-hat-wearing, conspiriacy theory thing. To me, it's a pretty straight forward form of social engineering from a materialistic determinism perspective. There are maybe a half dozen to a dozen major worldview frameworks most people operate under (with various flavors and mixes, of course). Within those frameworks, it's pretty straightforward to know what will trigger someone or gain their enthusiastic support. The inputs, given a known mental framework, create predictable outputs.
"Mind control" might be nothing more than understanding people and how they will react to certain inputs to generate predictible outputs.
I think Facebook is better positioned to do this than almost any other company. What mainstream media used to do with the nightly news, Facebook does with notification icons designed to release feel good chemicals in your brain and stimulate a response.
I'm not the first to consider this idea of President Zuckerberg. The idea has already been seeded by the mainstream media:
Mark Zuckerberg probably isn’t running for president - New York Post
This one basically gives evidence that he will, but says it may be a bad idea.
Will Mark Zuckerberg Be Our Next President? - Vanity Fair
"He wants to be emperor" is a phrase that has become common among people who have known him over the years.
Why People Can't Stop Talking About Zuckerberg 2020? - WIRED
And it didn’t help that, a month before he announced the tour, unsealed court documents revealed Zuckerberg had attempted to restructure Facebook stock to allow him to retain voting control if he served in government for two years, or served indefinitely, with a few stipulations.
Why Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg won't be president - USA Today
Zuckerberg’s election would mean handing over the leadership of an already privacy-violating government to the creator of one of the world’s most invasive surveillance platforms
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Mark Zuckerberg is randomly touring small towns in Iowa...
More signs point to Mark Zuckerberg possibly running for president in 2020 - CNBC
May 2017 Zuckerberg Quote: "Some of you have asked if this challenge means I'm running for public office. I'm not."
With his $71B net worth, the White House photographer he hired, the political strategists, the 50-state tour, etc, etc... His actions sure seem like those of someone positioning for a political campaign. As for the flat denials, they are still accurate statements. He has not, publicly, declared an intention to run for president so these things can't, by definition and as far as the public is concerned, be part of running for office. If he were to change his mind (*wink, wink) and make a public announcement, then all the same activities would now be considered "running for office."
I started thinking about this more seriously when I happened to catch a tiny bit of his recent Harvard Commencement speech. It wasn't just about the content, which was very presidential, but it was the delivery. I remember Zuckerberg's first public speaking. It was bad. REAL bad. Like, it was painful to watch his early speaking. This? This was completely different. He almost even seemed human.
I know, right?
He was funny, smiling, engaging, excited, and passionate. Give it a watch. If the office of the presidency of the United States is a popularity contest, he's got a nice head start with 100,000,000+ followers. Trump got less than 62M votes in the last election.
So why am I thinking about this today?
Here's what I saw on my Facebook mobile app this morning:
Facebook is deeply inolved in this government game. Did we already forget what Snowden taught us about NSA programs like PRISM which allow the U.S. government to get direct access to data from companies like Facebook in ways they can't freely discuss?
Since 2014, we've known how Facebook Tinkers With Users’ Emotions in News Feed Experiments, according to the New York Times:
But last week, Facebook revealed that it had manipulated the news feeds of over half a million randomly selected users to change the number of positive and negative posts they saw. It was part of a psychological study to examine how emotions can be spread on social media.
The future is going to be quite interesting with the rise of AI and discussions of a universal basic income (which Zuckerberg mentioned in his speech). If we're not paying attention, those who are will define our future. If we don't maintain control of the media we consume through decentralized solutions provided by projects like the STEEM blockchain, then we'll just be cogs in the machine, reacting to inputs controlled by others.
Stay woke. :)
Consider voluntaryism. We have cryptocurrency, decentralization, morality, peace, and love. On that note, I'll be at anarchapulco.com this year (finally!). You going?
So what do you think? Will we see a Zuck POTUS in 2020? Maybe 2024?
I didn't see it that way until you put these facts here. It is indeed scary to think of it, but there's every possibility that it might happen (look at what happened with Donald Trump). So it's highly likely that today's generation, so influenced by Facebook and social media, would possibly vote for him. God bless America.
I might agree with you.
First I have to check my social media feed to see what my "friends" think. Heheh.
I think he's too creepy to win, but running against trump might be the way to look more human...Facebook would be nuts during that election
Oprah. Zucc. Krusty The Clown (Kanye).
TRUMP is safe.
I’ve had a thought about decentralised social media like this very place.
Say you’re Mark Zuckerberg. You’ve got access to a lot of working capital. You decide that, say, you’re going to install five massive whales onto the network. Once in place, you can do several things:
At that point, you pretty much are the central influencing factor on the chain. How do we know this is possible? Because it is happening right now with the entire drama that is playing out. And that’s one user, one whale.
Now I love this place from my experience so far but I feel it is going to face challenges from its decentralisation as it can actually disempower individuals. Decentralisation is great for some things, having controls in place is better for others.
I’m watching with interest to see how this all plays out over the year.
Yes, the lack of distribution in Steem Power definitely creates issues. From my perspective, it's another lack of decentralization. The main token holders, right now, are too centralized which gives some people more power than others. The way to fix that is to have other rich people with good intentions buy in to combat the bad actors. That would also increase the value of the current token holders which may make it too expensive for anyone else to reasonably get enough influence.
As for someone like Zukerberg doing it, well, they have more money than we can comprehend, so yeah, that definitely could do it. The nice thing about that is how Smart Media Tokens may create situations where we can continually fork our own communities off the main line and use them as we see fit with our own SMT Oracles to enforce rules that specific community wants.
That latter part sings to me. I think that is where the benefit will lie, especially for the niche interests. Plus more control will help communities manage people just in it for the money.
I’ve seen some shockers on here. People who grabbed photoshops of bad Christmas jumpers to win community competitions, people who literally copy and paste your comment with a few word changes and an upvote to nick any potential interaction rewards. Mad!
One of my concerns with the SMT model is that we'd create to many echo chambers where different communities exclude everyone they disagree with. That might get weird.
Thanks for this thoughtful reply. Just learning Steemit strategy. Smart Media Tokens do seem like the way to build your habitat.
At least if multiple real world "whale" groups start competing with each other for Steem influence, we'll all get rich lol
We’ll have a whale of a time.
@heymattsokol good point there! The steem price will go very high if this big real world whales deciede to inject funds into the steem blockchain, and this might happen sooner or later!
Regards, @gold84
The number of references in this post is huge. If it is being talked about at this time with such interest, it is going to happen. The press is also part of the plan. The talk is happening for a reason.
After reading this, I won't be surprised if he becomes POTUS.
Not every American billionaire should be a president ^-^
I included that one in my article. It basically argues for the opposite of the title.
I knew .. I confirm your argue though :)
Wow, these news pretty much scare me. I liked the mention of USA Today stating that facebook is invasive (and indeed I find it too invasive)...
This is also worse by the fact that most of the politics these days I have seen are made on Facebook. Just very old people are voting only influenced by TV media. The rest of the younger population are spreading news and sharing articles about politics on Facebook so Mark Zuckerberg the president of US, this is not unlikely at all, I would say that this is almost unavoidable.
You are right about the fact that people should move from Facebook where the news can be easily manipulated and even the users and their news-feeds, o decentralized social media platforms like Steem but unfortunately Steem looks for many people these days something that only hipsters use. If we compare Steem with Facebook, just 1% of the followers of Mark are the whole user-base of Steem.
Interesting but somehow sad times ahead but I hope I am wrong :)
Wow bro @lukestokes! This is just an amazing evaluation of an existing phenomena. The way you interlinked the mind-control and Facebook and Government all in a bid to express your point is intriguing.
I have always wondered what happens behind the scenes of Facebook. I had always suspected that there could be some inside joke with people's brains.
And now he's interested in what's happening in the crypto-arena. Who knows? He may just be positioning for more power and may even have an eye for the most coveted position in the world.
I just keep promoting steemit everyday so that more people can join us to combat all the dangers associated with a centralized world.
Finally, "YES"! Your title is a sure knockout click-bait-ish but with HUGE CONTENT.
Cheers!
#AIR-CLINIC
Thanks for your support and encouragement!
Just think of the Campaign laws he would encounter - how would you ever calculate the value of all his Facebook influence?
Ahhh probably we will see Mark Zuckerberg as a president of United States in future...^_^ & maybe Mark Zuckerberg will likely run for president of the United States one day...
He will wait until 2024 to become president, before he has to integrate the new Facebook on the Steem Blockchain first, that might take a bit
Hahah! I like the way you’re thinking.
I see it as a realistic scenario though lol
Steem has no chance of hosing a site that uses 90K transactions per second. facebook will always be centralized.
Agreed. EOS may have a shot. We'll see.