Facebook billionaire Sean Parker blasts internet in 9,000 word rant defending his Lord of the Rings themed wedding and stating regret for the world he helped create
Facebook billionaire Sean Parker has railed against the internet, foundation stone of his own fortune, in a 9,000+ diatribe word to TechCrunch, following criticism of his wedding amongst bloggers and the press.
Parker recently indulged in a lavish $2.5m Tolkien themed wedding which drew allegation of damaging a redwood forest, prompting the social media pioneer to retort: “[B]logs attack you, do their damage, and then move on to their next target. Now, because of the permanence of the Internet and the ease of Google, these vicious online attacks leave behind a reputational stain that is very difficult to wash out.”
Acknowledging the perceived hypocrisy of such a statement Parker continued: “I have been one of the greatest individual beneficiaries of this seismic shift in media. I have made, quite literally, “a billion dollars,” which, as I’m constantly reminded by the media, is “cool.””
“But I’m the first to admit that this shift away from a centralized, top-down media towards a decentralized bottom-up media, did not come without a cost. At some point in time everyone, whether they engage actively with these new mediums or not, will experience a violation of their privacy, will find their reputation besmirched publicly, and may even find their sanity challenged by some combination of these factors.”
In words unlikely to go down well with Mark Zuckerberg Parker goes on to state that: “In its present form, social media may be doing more harm than good… [W]e need to consider stronger privacy laws here in the US, a basic right to privacy along the lines of the laws enjoyed by the citizens of most Western European nations.
“We are all at risk of becoming “public figures” in a world where the media has expanded to include nearly everyone. In such a world, our defamation laws need to be updated to provide individuals with the protection from public persecution that they deserve. We also need to reinforce our personal privacy by beefing up the intellectual property laws that govern the personal content that we generate and share via services like Facebook.”