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According to this highly viral and popular tweet from democracy diva, Mark Zuckerberg created a website to rank his classmates by their appearance, however, I haven't found any evidence to substantiate that claims.

Oddthinking
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SSimon
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  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been [moved to chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/108930/discussion-on-question-by-ssimon-did-mark-zuckerberg-create-a-website-to-rank-hi). – Jamiec Jun 05 '20 at 10:06

1 Answers1

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Yes.

LONG: "You put up pictures of two women and decide which was the more attractive of the two, is that right?"

ZUCKERBERG: "Congressman, that is an accurate description of the prank website that I made when I was a sophomore in college."

Video: https://grabien.com/story.php?id=165963

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    The quote suggests that the website that allowed rating attractiveness was independent of Facebook and thus the quote is wrong. That website didn't do anything to "destroy democracy". – Christian May 30 '20 at 08:45
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    @Christian That's true, but that's not the part of the quote that OP is skeptical of. – F1Krazy May 30 '20 at 09:40
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    @Christian: My impression was that OP was not asking whether Mark Zuckerberg succeeded in destroying democracy, but instead simply about whether he created a website along the lines of FaceMash, which he did. –  May 30 '20 at 10:22
  • @user135187 I would like to know in context of democracy – SSimon May 30 '20 at 18:30
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    Neither your question title or question ask that. – Martin Smith May 30 '20 at 20:21
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    @SSimon - Questions that ask for opinions regarding the end of democracy (or the future of it) are off-topic here, and also in practically every other corner of the stackexchange network. – David Hammen May 30 '20 at 21:39
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    @SSimon - As a frequent user of [Politics.SE], I can tell you that we're probably the only site on Stack Exchange where that question _could_ be on topic, and we would most likely close it for being opinion-based if it were anything more than a simple "What does this mean?" question. – Bobson May 31 '20 at 02:00
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    @SSimon: If your question is in fact about whether Mark Zuckerberg succeeded in destroying democracy, then you should rewrite your question accordingly. Right now your question contains nothing about that (other than the screenshot, which also contains various other claims, e.g. on the consequences of toxic masculinity) . –  May 31 '20 at 04:42
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    @user135187 I tried, but they dont allow – SSimon May 31 '20 at 07:08
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    Whether or not facebook ended demoracy is indeed a question that's not very on-topic on Skeptics. It's however clear to me that @democracydiva does suggests that FaceMash was a website that evolved into facebook as we know it today when that's not the case – Christian May 31 '20 at 13:37
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    @Christian Eeeeeeh. As someone who makes websites for a living, they influence one another. And the names are right there. It’d also be disingenuous to say they have absolutely nothing to do with one another. He made Facemash first, and then made Facebook. They’re both a kind of social networking application. As I recall, Facebook was initially solely for his campus, and much of it was about dating. They’re not unrelated. The fact that they started the codebase over from scratch for Facebook (assuming they did, in fact, do that) doesn’t really matter. – KRyan May 31 '20 at 18:24
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    @KRyan agreed, anyone who believes that "it was just a prank bro!" (or that face mash and face book aren't a related idea) doesn't have all their cylinders firing. As if he wasn't trying to create a hotornot clone (and then iterated on the idea to create Facebook). Reminds me of the recent Trump claim that injecting disenfect was totally just sarcasm. – eps May 31 '20 at 21:11
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    I'm not sure how Mark Zukerberg's denial that the IP of a previous website is at all connected to facebook is strong evidence. There are many plausible reasons why he'd make a lie to that effect, and no independent evidence presented that it isn't a lie. It is akin to asking "did X actually murder Y", and responding with a quote by X denying murdering Y. Mentioning unsubstantiated claims doesn't add value. – Yakk Jun 01 '20 at 17:48
  • @Yakk I'm not sure by what logic you conclude that the sworn testimony of the very person in question adds no value to the answer. It is, in fact, the entirety of the answer. The reader can make their own decision whether to believe his testimony or not. – wavemode Jun 01 '20 at 18:41
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    @wavemode While an answer to "Did OJ actually kill his wife" is "OJ says he didn't kill his wife"?, it is a really bad answer. "He was found not guilty" is a better answer. "He was found not guilty, but liable in civil court" is a better answer. When someone has an obvious, clear reason to lie, making part of an answer rest only on their word makes a poor answer. What more, here we have a moderator editing someone else's answer to insert those words. The first part of the answer is top notch, the part the mod edited in makes the average reliability of the answer much lower. – Yakk Jun 01 '20 at 20:07
  • I'm shocked @yakk – SSimon Aug 20 '20 at 06:00
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    @Yakk: I hadn't noticed the edits made by that particular moderator. I've now rolled back to my original post. However that particular moderator is basically the boss of this site so if that particular edit is what he/she likes most, then that's probably what this site will have to put up with. –  Aug 20 '20 at 08:00
  • OddThinking's edit looked constructive to me; that we shouldn't automatically believe something just because someone said it would seem obvious. Still, probably not too much need to worry. OddThinking does a lot of good work trying to help facilitate good content on SE.Skeptics, which can often include helping folks (especially less active users) composing their answers, but they're not a tyrant about it. In any case, worth noting that you also rolled back an automatic format-preserving edit (StackExchange recently changed their markup), causing your post to differ from the original. – Nat Aug 20 '20 at 15:56
  • If you want your post to appear as it originally did, then you can do as the bot did in Edit #3: adding a `>` mark to the empty line between the two quotes, causing the two quote boxes to become one. (In the prior markup system, the two quoted lines were merged as one; in the new markup system, non-consecutive lines aren't automatically merged. The bot edited your post by adding the `>` in order to maintain the original appearance of your answer.) – Nat Aug 20 '20 at 15:59
  • Perhaps you can explain why the edits I made were problematic. I "inlined" the URL, which is widely recommended in style guides. I gave context to the quote that was missing from the original - the year, the fact it was testimony, and the nature of the "court". I also clarified that he denied it was related to Facebook, which seems appropriate to give the bigger picture - in fact, it seems openly misleading to leave it out. Were all of these edits bad enough to justify rolling back? – Oddthinking Aug 21 '20 at 17:23