The "legacy media" is not a single individual who has total control of billions of dollars in capital to do whatever they want at the drop of a hat. You're conflating two very different issues.

Zuckerberg deserves all of the negative attention he draws, and I'd argue that his spotlight is his own doing. He, individually, could choose to do good at the global level. He chooses not to. That, to me, means that your finger pointing is inverted. "Legacy media" may have had that level of influence in the past but properties like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp now hold those cards. One can only hope Zuckerberg ends up being displaced in the same way.

> But I think the legacy media deserves 100x that criticism for doing the same thing.

No, they don’t do the same thing.

Have you read Sarah Wynn-Williams' book? The whole org is rotten.

legacy media is not proactively manipulating us via algorithmically amplifying division to increase 'engagement', all to sell us some ads... I do think Zuck is one of the more harmful figures in modern history. That being said, good open models? great!

I always hope that people who write things like this are considerably younger than I, because as someone who experienced "legacy media" for decades before the Internet was widely available, the idea that "they’re not doing anything more evil than what was already the norm" is complete, total, 100% bullshit.

Yes, "clickbait" was a thing even before people were clicking. "Yellow journalism" helped start the Spanish-American war over 125 years ago. But the pernicious effects on society of social media are way, way worse, if only because social media companies have way more data, and correspondingly more levers to act on that data. They run addiction machines that legacy media could only dream of, and they do it for the sole purpose of making money, all other consequences be damned.

I'm into a rather niche artistic pursuit, and I get lots of reels on this topic, and I noticed that the top comment on these reels is always the dumbest, most asinine comment imaginable. It's like if HN's algorithm were literally reversed. It's like this because of course these comments get lots of "engagement" because it's just rage bait. And all of Facebook is like this - they deliberately push the most rage inducing content because it's profitable.

Zuckerberg deserves all the opprobrium he gets and then some. I'm not necessarily arguing that legacy media is more "moral", but they simply never had the tech to tear society apart like Zuckerberg does.

> But I think the legacy media deserves 100x that criticism for doing the same thing.

This comparison is absurd.

"Legacy media" wouldn't even be technically able to cause so much damage because they send one message to everybody while meta aims their messages and members at specific other members of their platform.

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...

https://www.npr.org/2026/03/25/nx-s1-5746125/meta-youtube-so...

So yeah, Zuck's reputation might be even too good these days but I may see it wrong. It may be that the moral levels in the US are so deep right now that he looks better to me from the outside.

...compared to Elon for example.