Study: Low Carb Diet May Prevent, Reverse Age-Related Effects Within the Brain - <AUTHOR> https://news.stonybrook.edu/newsroom/study-shows-low-carb-diet-may-prevent-reverse-age-related-effects-within-the-brain/ <comment><USER3> The title is terrible, it should read ketosis/ketones may prevent, reverse age-related effects within the brain.

"Low carb" as the title currently reads does not necessarily result in ketosis and your body/brain running on ketones, which appears to be the scope of this study. There is more to dietary ketosis than low carb, just as an example carnivore or paleo diets are low carb, but those will generally not result in ketosis, in protein rich diets your body will convert the protein to glucose which will continue to be the primary fuel for the cells in the brain/body.

If you have never entered ketosis and experienced your brain running on ketones, I would suggest you experiment for yourself. I would say a minimum 2-3 months which should be enough time for your microbiome to change and your body/brain to adapt primarily running on ketones.

<comment><USER4> > _If you have never entered ketosis and experienced your brain running on > ketones, I would suggest you experiment for yourself. I would say a minimum > 2-3 months which should be enough time for your microbiome to change and > your body /brain to adapt primarily running on ketones. _

I've been on Keto for about 8 months (before giving up), measuring my blood ketones and being in deep ketosis between meals (over 2 mmol/L). I've also seen values going over 4 mmol/L.

In spite of popular belief, nothing happens, there's no magic at the end of that rainbow for most people. If you felt anything different, there's a high likelihood it was just self suggestion, aka placebo.

Also most people are in ketosis before eating breakfast in the morning, because the liver's glycogen is partially depleted overnight, enough for the liver to produce significant ketones. And nothing will make you enter ketosis faster like skipping a meal or two (aka starvation ketosis). People with a healthy metabolism cycle in and out of ketosis all the time.

Also the idea that your microbiome has to change and your body/brain to adapt for you to feel any better and that it takes months ... is a complete myth. Your body takes only mere days to adjust to any dietary strategy. Also the dreaded keto flu is just dehydration from all the lost glycogen, which pulls a lot of water on its way out.

<comment><USER5> I actually agree with most all of your posts. The one big difference, though, in my opinion, is that when adapted to a very low carbohydrate diet, it's actually easier for me to not eat. That's it. To me, it's the lone advantage. It's not about the palatability of the low-carb meals. It's that I just seem to be less hungry. I can skip a meal and it's no big deal. When I'm higher carb, missing a meal takes a way bigger toll.

One other thing I'd offer -- for long endurance activities at higher heart rates (e.g., cycling in zone 4 for more than an hour), you absolutely have to supplement with carbs. You can go a long time in Zone 3 on a low carb diet, but as exertion increases, you burn through those sugar stores and bonk. I've tested this repeatedly. In case it's helpful to others, you can consume quite a bit of sugar on a hard ride and be right back in ketosis hours later as your muscles take up the glucose first.

<comment><USER6> When you state "very low carbohydrate diet" \- what do you mean? Do you mean you're actively avoiding fruits and vegetables, oats, nuts, etc? Or are you avoiding processed foods and the carbs that go along with that? The "carbs are the devil" argument is a huge misconception with people.

You mentioned that it's easier for you to not eat on a very low carbohydrate diet. My main eating regimen is two feeding periods that are generally between 12:00P and 8:00P. My diet is mainly plant based, so very high in unprocessed carbohydrates - and I do still eat fish and am also not opposed to eggs from time to time. I have no problem not eating. If I don't eat at all until the early evening I am generally never hungry.

So I'm genuinely interested in what you mean by "high carb". Processed carbs and satiety don't go hand in hand, but a "high carb" intake of whole foods is not remotely the same.

<comment><USER7> By "high carb," I only mean to suggest easily-digestible high-glycemic index carbohydrates. I really do think there's something to the blood glucose spike and crash cycle and its relationship to satiety. I suspect you agree with that. However, whether through plants or other foods, I think it's the fat that most effectively satiates. You can get those fats through nuts and plant oils, but I find it's easier and tastier to get it through butter, eggs, and red meat.

<comment><USER6> With regard to agreement, not exactly. There's a lot of research around high fiber intake being one of the most prominent indicators of satiety [0]. Keep in mind most all meats are densely loaded with calories compared to whole plants. Fats are less satiating than fiber in many studies [1]. Hence it's far easier to overconsume fats via meats because no meat contains fiber and, again, is more dense per gram with regard to fat.

[0] [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41430-018-0295-7](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41430-018-0295-7)

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK53550/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK53550/)

<comment><USER7> I don't actually read either of your linked studies to support what you say. But be that as it may, I think fiber is also satiating. It's just difficult to hit my macros when eating all broccoli. Broccoli, butter, and steak, on the other hand, is a nearly perfect meal. I get the sense you're invested in a plant-based diet. Good for you! I'm sure there are way to engineer the outcomes you want with plants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's the actual study, I'm always skeptical of University PR reports on studies:

[https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/03/02/1913042117](https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/03/02/1913042117)

"Together, our results suggest that brain network destabilization may reflect early signs of hypometabolism, associated with dementia. Dietary interventions resulting in ketone utilization increase available energy and thus may show potential in protecting the aging brain."

<comment><USER9> Definitely skeptical here as well, but the article seems to echo these sentiments fairly accurately. I'll have to head the study though to say for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sugar, not fat is the killer. Incredible how for decades bad research and the likes of Ancel Keys and Phil Sokolof put the health of millions at risk.

<comment><USER11> Is this definite and scientific consensus?

Nutrition research seems to change as often as JavaScript framework of the month. I saw one Ted talk that essentially said "everyone is different and no rules apply to everyone".

<comment><USER12> The real issue is that nutrition science is bad and everyone has a book. Maybe 1 in 20 studies don't have obvious confounding factors that cause us to have no real base facts, but we can find a lot of correlation. Unfortunately, this is kind of the nature of the beast, nutrition science isn't bad because nutrition scientists are bad, but rather because it's so complicated it's tough to have very clean data.

Demonizing fats in favor of sugar as a country has allowed one of the biggest and longest population studies of its kind, and it's pretty obvious from the health of the population that very high calorie, sugar rich diets are overall bad for you (notice the wide strokes we have to make here).

Everyone is different, and no rules apply uniformly to everyone, but general rules do apply to everyone. Fructose in a caloric surplus is more damaging than glucose, for instance, but different bodies are more or less effective at mitigating this. Most people have some inflammation response to gluten, but for the vast majority of people, it's minor. Most things are a sliding scale, on one end is no measurable result, on the other end is acute response.

NOTE: I'm not interested in arguing about what the research says here. I know the pro-gluten party will come out in force, and I've made an enemy with the bread baker's union. I'm not a researcher, I'm just a nutrition hobbyist. There are much smarter people doing much more comprehensive breakdowns and having much more meaningful debates than I can, so go listen to them. Read the research yourself with a skeptical eye. Take all dietary advice with a grain of salt, and check the opposite side of the research, nutrition and biology is WEIRD.

Also, we're still learning very basic things that have massive impacts. No one was talking about "gut health" unless you had a chronic disease roughly 10 years ago. Microbiome didn't have much place in the conversation about health and nutrition, no crossfit people knew about resistant starches, etc.

<comment><USER13> The government may have been advocating low fat diets but of course people don't follow nutrition advice. If you look at what people were actually eating in the time you describe they started eating more of everything. Consumption of chicken and cheese in particular exploded.

Sugar consumption has actually been in decline for years now and obesity keeps climbing. Yes sugar is bad for you but blaming modern health problems just on sugar is not accurate.

<comment><USER12> Yeah maybe I should be clear here, I'm not talking about putting granulated sugar in your coffee. I'm talking about the explosion of dumping high fructose corn syrup into everything that occurred during these years. And teaching children that they need to eat foods based off the food pyramid was directly opposite to what was actually good for you. Of course everyone doesn't listen to the government recommendations, but it's naive to say it doesn't have an impact.

In addition to that, eating a bagel for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, and having bread on the side with dinner is pumping carbohydrates for you body to break down into sugars 24/7\. These things are higher in calories.

To reinforce what you're suggesting, I'd need to see trends of added sugars to food going down and the obesity rate increasing. At the end of the day, it's calories in vs calories out, but pumping things with fructose increases the calories and the palatability of food, increasing how much you eat. There are a number of negative health side affects, but sugar likely causes obesity by secondary affect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've been on a keto diet almost exclusively for over 2 years now.

Results have been very impressive for me.

Not just in weight management, but also for fitness/performance.

Anecdotally, cognitive performance/output feels like I've moved the needle in the right direction.

Not sure if related, but multiple tests on telomere measurement(associated with cellular ageing) show "genetic age" well below my chronological age.

Despite all of this, I really don't know.

The low carb and no sugar diet really seems to work for me.

If I had to guess, I'd say there is no single overwhelming factor to increasing longevity.

I think brain health is a mix of:

Healthy nutrition Hydration Fitness/activity level Sufficient sleep Low stress(but not no stress) Purpose People in your life Traumatic brain injury prevention Life long education Reading as a hobby No smoking

But in terms of mental agility(if not brain aging), I have a feeling that some low level of hunger is a positive indicator of short term mental agility.

I reckon there's a high performance zone for brain health/performance for both short-term and long-term.

I look forward to more quantifiable research in this space.

Just my amateur 0.02c

</comment><comment> Munky-Necan I think the prevailing theory will eventually be that a diet rich in monosaccharides is detrimental to health. It's been demonstrated that low carb, high meat diets are not the optimal diet, in that most adults will eat red meat or some type of processed meat and little fiber. Both add to the numerator when looking at myocardial infarction, stroke, and colorectal cancer. When one is in kidney failure it is recommended by the American Society of Nephrologists to attenuate protein derived from animal products.

Essentially, balance is what the current recommendations say, but also to stay completely away from sugar.

All my sources shamelessly stolen from Uptodate:

> U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Department of > Agriculture. 2015 – 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. 8th Edition. > December 2015. Available at > [http://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/guidelines/](http://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/guidelines/)

>Carbohydrate quality and human health: a series of systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Reynolds A, Mann J, Cummings J, Winter N, Mete E, Te Morenga. Lancet.

>Changes in diet and lifestyle and long-term weight gain in women and men. Mozaffarian D, Hao T, Rimm EB, Willett WC, Hu FB. N Engl J Med.

>Meta-analysis of the association between whole grain intake and coronary heart disease risk. Tang G, Wang D, Long J, Yang F, Si L. Am J Cardiol. 2015;115(5):625. Epub 2014 Dec 18.

<comment><USER15> I miss my up to date access. Tangential -- I do not think people realize a resource like UpToDate exists. Well written up to date summaries of various medical topics based on the latest research. Were something like this to be publicly accessible it would do wonders. If anyone is working on or wants to work on this type of problem please let me know, I'd love to help out (programmer, former MD).

</comment></comment><comment> hoka-one-one Is it too much to ask that anyone promoting low-carb based on personal experience post bloodwork? I think it's pretty clear no one on here is well- versed in nutrition as we're all programmers, so maybe it'd be good to have some intellectual integrity.

I'm interested in prolactin, thyroid, liver, cholesterol, CO2.

<comment><USER16> I've gone through several thousand papers the past year or two so I feel like I'm more well-versed in nutrition than most nutritionists/dieticians at this point, certainly in my understanding the recent clinical/research literature. I rarely post any nutritional/health related statements without citations to peer-reviewed work (see: [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=lhl](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=lhl) )

I think most people don't publish labs because they view it as personal, but I did a write-up last year, which includes (IMO) basically all my relevant markers: [https://randomfoo.net/2019/09/17/1-year-personal-health- inte...](https://randomfoo.net/2019/09/17/1-year-personal-health-intervention- summary)

A very strange set of lab markers you're interested in btw - prolactin has very little clinical value for men (and is almost never tested), but I tested my testosterone at the one year mark (it's fine, 772ng/dL, I have not sequential tests). I had a thyroid panel last year as well and TSH, FT3, and FT4 were all in range. My CO2 has stayed the same regardless of diet - I don't know why that would be relevant at all.

For people looking to track their metabolic health, the bloodwork I think is most useful to track over time: CMP, CBC w/ diff, basic lipid panel (fasted 12h), A1c, fasting insulin, Vitamin D, hsCRP. I also was getting a full iron panel, and it was interesting to see my ferritin remained elevated last year (but is within range now - likely a marker of resolving MetS).

The thing that almost no one gets measured that is almost criminal IMO is fasting insulin - while it's highly mobile, it's also dirt cheap ($8 more than FBG+A1c direct-to-consumer price), allows calculating the best IR indices, and is a 10-15y leading indicator for chronic metabolic disease.

At home, waist circumference to height ratio (WHtR, WSR) is the best simple marker for tracking metabolic health.

Ashwell, Margaret, and Sigrid Gibson. "Waist-to-Height Ratio as an Indicator of 'Early Health Risk': Simpler and More Predictive than Using a 'Matrix' Based on BMI and Waist Circumference." BMJ Open 6, no. 3 (March 14, 2016). [https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2015-010159](https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2015-010159).

<comment> hoka-one-one This is really cool and I think you're doing more due diligence than any HN user I've ever seen. The confounding variable is that you lost a lot of weight, of course, and I think many people who lose weight will be healthier at least in the short term. A question I've had in my head for a while is whether someone who has to stay on a ketogenic diet to be a healthy weight has "healed" or has just masked the underlying issue.

Would be interested to see your thyroid numbers as you continue on your ketogenic/fasting diet. "In range" does not necessarily mean optimal, and in general I'd be worried about T3 uptake going from 33 to 23 even though both are in range. The liver converts T4 to T3 in response to glucose availability -- this happens in many tissues, but they all depend on a liver enzyme, and most of the conversion occurs in the liver.

Low CO2 is a sign of kidney stress and acidosis. I also believe it's a marker of a low metabolic rate, much like thyroid.

Prolactin is a longer discussion I don't want to get into here (much like you on your LDL-C :)) but I'll definitely be following your posts as I think you're doing your part and have done more research than I have so maybe I'll comment on your blog sometime. Put very briefly I believe high prolactin in men can be a sign of chronic stress and calcium deficiency. It's been linked to gynecomastia, for example, which makes a lot of sense. In general I like to look for tests that show whether something's wrong, rather than what's specifically wrong. Someone might have alright D but still have issues properly metabolizing calcium.

<comment><USER16> I'd argue that weight loss _isn 't_ a confounding variable, as resolving dyslipidemia and MetS is actually one of the main points of the intervention. As for "masking the underlying issue" \- let's face it, if you go back to regularly eating a terrible diet, yes, you'll become unhealthy again, but the same would go be true for any chronic insult.

Personally, I'm a believer in metabolic flexibility and I do take time off (vacations, parties and special events, or just when I feel like it) to indulge. The difference now is that I am more acutely paying attention to how the food is making me feel (turns out for example when I have excess bread/sugar, I end up getting a pimple or two that I had originally never connected to being driven by dietary excesses), having a framework to think about how the food will affect my health (what do I think my liver glycogen levels are at?), and much pickier in general about how much I'll eat (my "worth it" taste bar is much higher - if it doesn't taste good I can now just stop). I also feel like I now have effective tools to pull various metabolic levers, whereas before I didn't.

Regarding thyroid numbers, IMO taking about what is "optimal" is actually much trickier than "in range" (which are just standard deviations) because they need to be taken in the context of how you actually feel and if you present any symptoms (for hypothyroidism that would be fatigue, increased sensitivity to cold, weight gain, muscle weakness, etc) - which may be another reason people don't post numbers. Surrogate markers are most useful 1) sequentially per individual and 2) need to be considered with whether those numbers actually correlate with symptoms/reflect pathophysiology. Some are pretty obvious, but thyroid numbers seem to be one of those that requires a lot of careful nuance, but seems not worth the trouble (tracking TSH, T3, T4, rT3, rT4, TPO, Tg) unless you're presenting.

For kidney issues, eGFR is something you'd look at, you'd want to take a look if any of your CMP numbers are out of wack, but I personally wouldn't be worried about acidosis - it's almost never a problem for non T1Ds (would be a sign of a major insulin:glucagon issue at least) but you'd definitely know (and need to know) if it were an issue well outside of regular bloodwork.

If metabolic rate is a concern, I think RMR and DXA are a much better combo for tracking, btw.

As for prolactin, if that's something you want to track and can use as a long term marker that is actionable for you, great, more power to you. It looks like it's only $60 out of pocket, so not terrible, but just recognize that if you throw it out there as something that a number that people should know or care about, or that you want to compare with, it simply won't be.

For chronic stress, I'd suggest 24h cortisol, and maybe some inflammatory markers (I use hsCRP as my one catch all canary, but other common ones include ESR, IL6, TNFa), but for most people, you'd probably get more value day to day from mood and sleep tracking (especially ones that can track HRV or CNS values like the EMFIT).

Calcium is measured via the CMP and deficiencies would I suppose show up in a DXA as well (eg if your bone density Z-score was quite low), but again, I think that's a thing where you'd only be worried about it if you were presenting symptoms (extreme fatigue, hair and nail issues, sleep issues, etc).

I do think that if you are trying to track down nonspecific issues (eg "fatigue") you're going to have to do a bunch of detective work, which may involve more and more esoteric labs, but I'd also posit that most of those could probably also be addressed by relatively simple lifestyle interventions, starting with an appropriate/nutrient-dense diet and the most basic mood/energy tracking (eg:1-5 phone app like MySymptoms or Daylio correlated with interventions), and an engineering mindset.

<comment> hoka-one-one I think a lot of people are aware of prolactin because a lot of overweight men have manboobs and don't want them. But up to you, at least you're testing liver and cholesterol -- not everyone can say that. I listed it first because if someone would only agree to test one thing and nothing else, I think it should be prolactin.

Well the suggestion wasn't for me personally, it was for people doing keto. My contention is that if any of those numbers are off, they're probably wrong or missing something about keto.

Interesting pts on the thyroid stuff, I'll have to think about it

<comment><USER16> OK, so I haven't done much research on this particular issue, but lets say you have an issue with gynecomastia - this presents itself as a fairly obvious physical symptom. Does prolactin measurement change either your diagnosis or the intervention - eg, does it tell you anything you don't know beforehand or change how you would correct the issue?

Personally, if we're talking about single markers, I think fasting insulin is the one I would pick because it does fulfill those criteria - it gives you a 10y+ lens before other markers do on diabetic pathophysiology (which now affects 80%+ of American adults) and also give you guidance on how to treat/how effective your interventions are. The negative is that there is no home test (yet, this is being worked on by some people), so it's not as good as something that can be measured more often/continously.

Everyone who gets an annual physical/bloodwork should be getting their liver numbers (at least AST/ALT, although in the US GGT is not standard) with their CMP, although most people (clinicians too) don't really understand what they mean. I like this presentation on liver markers btw: A/Prof. Ken Sikaris - "Fatty Liver & Chemical Pathology." [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c_QYbCxC6g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c_QYbCxC6g).

It's also important to get these sequentially to see what the actually progression is (the time frames are usually not captured since people tend to get these tests once a year at most).

A basic lipid panel is cheap and is somewhat useful for diagnosing gross dyslipidemia but it's worth noting that it's also much more mobile than most clinicians believe:

Grant, Azure D., and Gary I. Wolf. "Free-Living Humans Cross Cardiovascular Disease Risk Categories Due to Daily Rhythms in Cholesterol and Triglycerides." Journal of Circadian Rhythms 17, no. 1 (April 24, 2019): 3. [https://doi.org/10.5334/jcr.178](https://doi.org/10.5334/jcr.178).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Not sure if I believe all the hype about these wild benefits low carb/keto diets have but I will say I've felt so much better on it...I rarely feel tired anymore and have been weirdly healthy the last 2 years. My doctor was surprised with my blood tests and weight loss when she heard what I eat lol. I'd never go back to the amount of carbs I was eating.

<comment><USER18> How do you start? I can't seem to find a consistent diet plan that isn't insanely difficult to get into.

<comment><USER19> Drop all starchy carbs and replace with meat, eggs and vegetables. It's not rocket science.

<comment><USER20> You need to add some butter, oil and heavy cream, or chances are you are not in ketosis: 80% of you calories intake should come from fat to guarantee ketosis.

<comment> tokamak-teapot This is a popular misconception. Please check the [1] keto FAQ on Reddit.

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/wiki/faq#wiki_how_do_i_start_a...](https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/wiki/faq#wiki_how_do_i_start_and_what_can_i_eat.3F)

<comment><USER20> Reading that FAQ, the idea behind low fat intake is that body will provide fat, which means you need to have some high calories restrictions to initiate process.

E.g. you need 2k calories for your day-to day life. If you don't want to eat lots of fat, to get into ketosis you need to decrease your food intake to say 1k, with idea is that 0.05k calories will come from carbs in food, say 0.2k calories will come from protein in food, 0.75k calories will come from fat in food, and another 1k will come from body fat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> 1\. Dietary cholesterol is only weakly correlated to blood cholesterol.

2\. Most people eat wayy too much. Calories are calories, consume less calories and run your body in calorie deficit if you wanna lose weight and surplus if you wanna gain weight.

3\. LDL aka bad cholesterol might not be that bad. There are some new studies which claim that people who had low LDL suffered more from heart issues. What gives?

4\. People who eat more sometimes do so to comfort themselves (they've deeper psychological issues), they'll benefit from eating less.

5\. Polysaturated fats are good fats, monosaturated fats are bad fats.

6\. Carbs are not bad, consuming too much carb is bad for you. Want to lose weight? Reduce your calorie intake (preferably dinner). Reduce feeding window, do not eat after 7pm, eat only after 10am.

7\. Lift weight and perform cardio.

That's your current nutritional knowledge.

Want to increase muscles? Much better to start from skinny state and consume protein, workout and slowly build lean mass through progressive overload. Eat more protein will not build muscle faster, body will only use what it needs, not what's given

Most guys/gals on fitness YouTube channels and magnize have achieved that physique through use of drugs. So do not compare yourself to them and be disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER22> I read some time ago about the Keto diet showing good results even in Alzheimer/dementia cases. Keto is not the same as low carb but it's close enough. Our molecular biology and internal chemical reactions are still areas of research in early phases. Just on a different topic, but in the same direction - last 10 years research discovered that immunity boosting has much better results in certain types of cancer than all the other non-surgery treatments (chemical or radiation).

<comment><USER23> Keto diet also has efficacy in managing epilepsy.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6361831/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6361831/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I am a bit conflicted. According to the comments, one should do very low carb diet to adapt to Ketones as energy. For example, fasting would not be enough for this purpose. But that implies the need for a ketogenic diet.

Very low carb diets are difficult to do, at least if you are not very rich: Most of them require a lot of meat. Now, that differs by country. These diets are probably easiest to do in the USA with its huge industrial meat industry. In other countries, like here in Europe, you'd probably need to be a millionaire to buy that much meat in the first place. I don't know anyone doing this successfully.

But in any case: is it ethical? I doubt that this would be sustainable for everyone. If everyone would eat mostly red meat, we'd probably roast our planet pretty quickly. I don't think free range farming would support 7 billion carnivores, nor would the fish in the sea.

I realize the people doing Low Carb are not necessarily the same who care about sustainability. But if there is such a benefit to Ketogenic diets - <USER2> all our sakes - we should think about what happens if everyone wants to do it.

Of course there are options. There are low carb Vegans (e.g. [https://www.reddit.com/r/veganketo/](https://www.reddit.com/r/veganketo/)), but boy is it a chore to do. Also, I doubt this can be done with anything resembling local and unprocessed products. Furthermore, a lot of vegan protein products are high in soy. Which is fine really for any amount you'd normally consume. But if you are serious about low carb, you might eat so much that we get into that "questionable" range in terms of recent research.

Perhaps carbs need not be too low. Yeah we can eat a lot of veggies, probably. But it'll be a challenge, I think. Or not?

Say, you eat meat once a week. How do you do a ketogenic diet without losing your mind in planning etc?

<comment><USER25> There are two things being conflated, eating cheap keto and eating vegan keto.

Cheap keto its eating tons of eggs, berries, cauliflower, zuchinni and soy beans. Eggs are really the main thing though...tons and tons of eggs. Luckily there are hundreds of different ways to make them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I don't really understand the briefing here; so would taking exogenous ketones also help mirror the beneficial effects of ketosis seen in this study? They did mention feeding their participants exogenous ketones but didn't say anything about those peoples' carb/fat ratios.

I'm all for jumping on the high fat/low carb diet; however, I love getting all my polyphenols and other beneficial compounds that are part and parcel with eating plants (higher carb). As many benefits we see from being in ketosis, we also have tons of data on the health benefits of eating plants, so I've been confused as to how to get the best of both worlds here.

<comment><USER27> There are studies looking at this question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have been on Keto for about 8 months, felt terrible and interrupted the diet, only to later find that a lot of the theory behind it (the CIM model) is complete bullshit.

And whenever seeing claims of the effects of low carb or keto diets, most claims are confounded by the diet being hypocaloric, or with a significant variance in protein when compared with control, with its proponents constantly shifting the goal posts.

This study seems interesting and it has been known that ketosis can help epileptics. But take it with a grain of salt ;-)

<comment><USER28> What exactly did you eat, and in what quantities? List all that you ate, if possible. Unfortunately keto has such a broad definition that a lot of harmful stuff (like seed oils) can be considered part of the diet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> _"The bad news is that we see the first signs of brain aging much earlier than was previously thought. However, the good news is that we may be able to prevent or reverse these effects with diet, mitigating the impact of encroaching hypometabolism by exchanging glucose for ketones as fuel for neurons."_

The alternation with ketosis as source of energy is key as it seems...

 _The brain's response to diet was tested in two ways. The first was holistic, comparing brain network stability after participants had spent one week on a standard (unrestricted) vs. low carb (for example: meat or fish with salad, but no sugar, grains, rice, starchy vegetables) diet. In a standard diet, the primary fuel metabolized is glucose, whereas in a low-carb diet, the primary fuel metabolized is ketones. However, there might have been other differences between diets driving the observed effects. Therefore, to isolate glucose vs. ketones as the crucial difference between the diets, an independent set of participants was scanned before and after drinking a small dose of glucose on one day, and ketones on the other, where the two fuels were individually weight-dosed and calorically matched. The results replicated, showing that the differences between the diets could be attributed to the type of fuel they provide to the brain._

</comment><comment><USER30> The reason I refuse to read about keto is that pretty much all doctors and public health organizations I've seen recommend basically the same things: whole grains, fruits, vegetables, replace saturated fats with unsaturated if possible, low fat dairy, nuts, legumes, fish, some poultry sometimes, strictly controlled alcohol.

Until these guys start recommending something such as keto my basic assumption is that it's either a weird fringe diet or a diet only applicable to very specific medical issues (eg seizures) that me (not a medical professional) should not try on myself.

If I go to a doctor and they ask how my diet is and I tell them I eat the stuff I listed above, I'm fairly certain they will tell me good job. If I do some extreme fringe thing, I doubt it will be their response with the same likelihood (though a few probably like it).

This is just my personal opinion.

</comment><comment><USER31> Noted that the underlying cause for the improvement comes from ketones. This should indicate that intermittent fasting would also show similar results. Low carb diet, keto diet, intermittent fasting, they're all just different ways to switch the fuel source from glucose to ketones.

<comment><USER32> Would a time restricted feeding type of intermittent fasting, with a 16/8 schedule, really result in the production of ketones? I thought that it would take about a day and a half or longer to exhaust carbs and start the switch to ketones. Then it's only the longer fasts (like 5/2 days) that could help.

<comment><USER11> If you pee gets more yellow in that time period (I think) its indicative of ketosis. If anyone is more knowledgeable than me please chime in.

<comment><USER33> I.. don't think that's true at all. Ketones in your urine is indicative of ketosis. Smell of alcohol on breath is indicative of ketosis. Urine color is not an indicator for ketosis, it's an indicator for hydration.

<comment><USER34> You are correct. Urine color is an indicator of hydration. But sugar in your urine will cause your urine to be cloudy and more opaque. I've noticed that when I'm in ketosis that my urine is super transparent (just looking at transparency/opaqueness, not at color).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This isn't new. Doctors have seen a link between sugar (carbs) and Dementia / Alzheimer's

[https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/551528/](https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/551528/)

<comment><USER36> No, they saw a link between HIGH carbs in blood over long periods of time associated with dem\alz.

Eating normal ammounts of carbs isn't going to kill you, it's literally our main energy source.

<comment><USER37> The issue that people, at least Americans, run into is that consuming a "normal amount of carbs" is shockingly hard if you're not consciously trying to avoid them. Foods that don't really need sugar in them often have it in huge amounts because it delivers more flavor oomph (and _separately_ delivers a dopamine hit). This is especially true in the aftermath of the war on fat because, shocker, fat tastes really good and when you remove it, food tastes worse. How do you make up for that? Add sugar.

<comment><USER38> Totally agree this is the issue.

Most people don't realize that a plain bagel (55g) has more carbs that a slice of pie (43g).

[https://www.eatthis.com/foods-high-in-carbs/](https://www.eatthis.com/foods- high-in-carbs/)

<comment><USER39> Do you believe that a plain bagel is less healthy than a slice of pie as a result? The pie will definitely have more added sugars. A plain bagel would make for a reasonable breakfast. Pie?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> What is the current, best thinking on managing LDL, especially while doing paleo?

I got huge benefits from paleo and partial calorie restriction. The biggest being my very bad psoriasis all but disappeared.

But it also spiked my LDL.

The statins didn't agree with me. I settled on eating every kind of soluble fiber I can find. eg: My morning porridge is steel cut oats, quinoa, chia seeds. I also resumed eating high(est) fiber rice.

Alas, all these seeds and grains have carbs.

I'd like to find strategies for high soluble fiber while reducing carbs. Even better, would be managing LDL directly.

PS- I spotted u/eatmyshorts comments about LDL and misc.

</comment><comment><USER41> IF has really saved my life. I definitely feel like i reverse aged a few years as a result of it. I enjoy food more now, weight is in check, I look younger.. hard to beat the benefits.

<comment><USER34> As it turns out, insulin resistance, like that associated with type-2 diabetes, is also related to inflammation (apparently due to cytokines: [https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/inflammation-and- diabetes](https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/inflammation-and-diabetes)), which in turn is correlated with heart disease.

As I understand it (disclaimer: I'm not a doctor), the inflammation results in damage to the blood vessels, which your body repairs by using cholesterol, among other things, that are in your blood. When LDL cholesterol (the "bad" kind of cholesterol) is used in this way, it calcifies over time, leading to hardening of the arteries. As someone with a high CAC score and premature calcification of my arteries, my doctors have advised me to move to a low-carb diet and combine that with statin drugs to lower my LDL cholesterol. Low carbs generally means lots of meat and lots of saturated fat, which is the opposite advice that doctors traditionally have given for patients at risk of heart disease.

Lately there have been lots of studies that show that dietary LDL cholesterol is only very loosely correlated with LDL cholesterol in your blood--primarily because the cholesterol in your blood is produced in your pancreas, not ingested/absorbed from your stomach. So I did a self experiment--go on a ketosis diet for 3 months before I started taking my statins and test to see if my LDL cholesterol changed. It didn't--it went slightly down in my case. Then I went on statins--now my LDL cholesterol is at "normal" levels.

So, basically as I understand it, low carb diets can help prevent your body damaging your arteries in the first place, such that they don't need repair. Then, the statins lower my LDL cholesterol such that when my arteries do need repair, the cholesterol that is used doesn't calcify over time. Basically I'm attempting to address my heart disease from both sides: prevent the damage in the first place, and remove calcifying LDL cholesterol from my bloodstream when arterial repair is necessary.

Note that this is all pretty cutting edge stuff, and we don't have good studies to demonstrate its effectiveness yet. If you have issues with calcification of your arteries, it is best to work with your doctor to find a program that works for you.

<comment><USER13> Dietary cholesterol is very directly correlated with blood cholesterol levels. You can feed someone cholesterol and directly watch their levels spike. But your body will clear it if you give it time which is why your fasting cholesterol may not show this if you have naturally low levels.

But during that window if time that cholesterol is active in your blood it's not doing you any favors. This is why heart attacks very often follow shortly after a meal.

<comment><USER34> That is what we used to think. But it's not true: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22037012](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22037012) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8857917](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8857917) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26109578](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26109578) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7585286](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7585286)

Note that dietary cholesterol only correlates to blood cholesterol in about 40% of the population. And even within that group, "Even though dietary cholesterol _modestly increases LDL_ in these individuals, it does not seem to increase their risk of heart disease" ([https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/dietary-cholesterol- doe...](https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/dietary-cholesterol-does-not- matter#effects) \-- emphasis is mine)

<comment><USER13> You're talking about baseline or fasting cholesterol. You can do the experiment of feeding someone a high cholesterol meal, then immediately take a blood sample and see the spike in their blood. This has been confirmed many times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> A lot of folks here are using the term "intermittent fasting". This is a term that can make people struggling with eating disorders kinda lose their minds.

May suggest to replace this term with what's probably a better way of saying it anyway, because it's more accurate to what people are really doing when they say IF: Call it _" time-restricted eating"_. You're eating the food you eat for a day in a smaller window. Not really fasting.

<comment><USER43> There is some correlation between the benefits of "time-restricted eating" and full-blown fasting (autophagy, etc), so it makes some sense to talk about them similarly. There are many benefits to full water fasts, even for 2-3 days (and it's much easier to do successfully if one is already in ketosis). See the work of Dr. Jason Fung: [https://thefastingmethod.com/](https://thefastingmethod.com/)

<comment><USER42> While we're at it: "Intermittent fasting" versus ... fasting until you die? All fasting is intermittent. IF just doesn't communicate anything regardless. I think it's clear it's just a bad term. Time restricted eating actually describes something specific.

<comment><USER43> Haha, point. To the extent that the term still applies, "periodic fasting" would be more accurate; but then, that could just as easily refer to yearly fasting during Ramadan. Does one describe the action, or the absence of action? The norm, or the exception? I dunno, language is a funny thing. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm confused because I thought the brain liked sugars:

"The bold implication of this idea is that the effects of ego depletion could be undone by ingesting glucose, and Baumeister and his colleagues have confirmed this hypothesis in several experiments."

Kahneman, D. "Thinking, Fast and Slow". 2011. pg. 43, para. 2, Se. 5.

<comment><USER45> Ego depletion was one of the key losers of the replication crisis in psych. Book was published right before the peak of the crisis. Basically it's impossible because the body can't even digest the glucose in time for the purported effect. Baumeister is also a hack who refuses to let go of the idea while others have moved on.

changelog: key example -> key losers

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> This is the first time I've seen something reference ingesting or drinking ketones. While I imagine it doesn't have the dietary benefit for losing fat, if this is a thing, and it's safe, I'm surprised it's not made it's way into energy drinks.

<comment><USER46> And it has: [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ketones+drink&va=z&t=hk&ia=web](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ketones+drink&va=z&t=hk&ia=web)

Probably should have searched first :)

<comment><USER47> These are ketone ester drinks, but nothing really mainstream or in energy drinks. Esters are far too expensive and the taste far too bad for that. Most people have never even heard of these, in my experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> How about weight training and low carb and sometimes IF? Would weight training prevent age related effects within the brain? Also you can't go full keto if you also want weight training, imo.

<comment><USER49> > Also you can't go full keto if you also want weight training, imo.

You absolutely can, and people are doing it just fine.

Check out Metabolic Autophagy: [https://www.amazon.com/Metabolic-Autophagy- Intermittent-Resi...](https://www.amazon.com/Metabolic-Autophagy-Intermittent- Resistance-Longevity/dp/1790686393/)

<comment> tokamak-teapot Yep working fine here on 'full' keto (not sure what other kind there is) Depends what you want from your weight training. I enjoy it but I'm not trying to get massive gains.

<comment><USER48> Can you detail on this and what type of training you do? Also what type of gains you experienced?

Sure you can do full keto and weight train but I am interested in the gains versus low carb / medium carb diets.

As for me, I'm on a low carb diet mostly, although I do enjoy some days of high carb as well.

<comment> tokamak-teapot I've recently restarted weight training after a few years off due to injury.

I already do plenty of other exercise (martial arts, swimming, yoga, a decent amount of fast paced walking, circuit training) and I used to weight train so my form's okay and I haven't experienced anything unusual in terms of soreness.

I've been from light weights (~70% of my previous max) slowly up to my previous max from a few years back and not experienced any problems. I feel like I'm close to the limit on each exercise but I'm already at my previous max weights.

And... since I used to do this, I've gone keto. So being on keto doesn't seem to have any observable negative effect on my weight training.

I can't say what I'm going to hit because I'm moving slowly and carefully. For some real stats you'll need to find studies. I could just be lucky.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I've been on Keto for 2 months now but I hardly lost any weight. I'm wondering if my protein intake is too high.

</comment><comment><USER51> What's the point of living forever if you're miserable and worn out all the time from managing oddly unnatural longevity diet regimes?

</comment><comment><USER52> I love carbs.

</comment><comment><USER51> I still don't understand the tech bro fascination with disordered eating.

<comment><USER49> Given the current state of health in western countries, I would claim the stasus-quo is actually disordered eating.

<comment><USER51> Current status quo is whatever quick fix is fashionable at the moment, i.e IF, Ketosis, Binge & Purge...

<comment><USER49> No, that's the current diet fad, which is not at all the same as what most people eat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Well here I am again. Here are things I think people should know:

Gluconeogenisis does not kick you out of ketosis nor is it's existence a counter-point to the keto diet.

I have first hand experience with keto and psychosis. I experienced something traumatic a while ago and began to have psychotic symptoms similar to schizophrenia. I had read an article beforehand written by a doctor claiming that keto benefited his psych patients, so I tried it. It cured me. Most symptoms gone in a couple days, total remission within a couple weeks. So PSA: if you or someone you know is having problems with psychotic mental health problems, keto may help you.

And I should add I was formally diagnosed with psychosis and prescribed antipsychotics. And the symptoms correlated perfectly with going on and off keto. Very little ambiguity. They are doing a study on this in Finland but results won't be out till December.</comment>


American Fall – The Sequel to American Spring by Naval Ravikant - <AUTHOR> https://startupboy.com/2016/10/18/american-fall/ <comment><USER2> Wonderfully written article that nobody will want to acknowledge.

One enormous thing missed, however, are the geographies that control the majority of food and fresh water supplies.

Other than that, Naval knocked it out of the park yet again, but most won't even realize it.</comment>


Reconciling Abstraction with High Performance: A MetaOCaml Approach - <AUTHOR> https://www.nowpublishers.com/article/Details/PGL-038 <comment><USER2> Those interested in metaprogramming might also want to check out Terra, a low- level system programming language that is embedded and meta-programmed in Lua: [http://terralang.org](http://terralang.org).

Unlike MetaOcaml, the low level language used for running the algorithms is different from the high-level language used to meta-program it. The low-level terra has a type system and semantics that is much closer to C (including pointers and many different integer types), while Lua is a straightforward dynamic language with a very simple type system.

I wonder how statically typed Ocaml compares to dynamically typed Lua for the metaprogramming bits of the system.

<comment><USER3> What I find astounding with meta ocaml is that the compiler guarantees that your program will not generate a program [that will not generate a program]* that will not compile.

How does Terra fares in this regard ?

<comment><USER4> As you may have expected, Terra doesn't approach this from a type safety perspective. The generated code is of course type checked, but the metaprogram is not. Instead the goals are productivity and performance. And along those axes I have to say it does remarkably well. I've built or been involved in building a number of compilers, I've never seen any other system that has made it as quick and painless to build a system, and get competitive performance[1] out of the gate.

[1]: And just to be clear, when I say competitive, I don't mean with C. I mean with hand-tuned assembly and/or vector intrinsics. I regularly get performance with Regent that you simply can't get in a C compiler without writing vector intrinsics by hand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The "tagless-final" DSL style used here is cool in its own right. The author has a page about it here: [http://okmij.org/ftp/tagless- final/index.html](http://okmij.org/ftp/tagless-final/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> It used to be a free download until June 11, but they've extended that period to June 23.</comment>


Mark Zuckerberg: Building Global Community - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/building-global-community/10103508221158471/ <comment><USER2> I find this letter to be deeply cynical. There's a baked in assumption that a global community is a good thing and that the only possible reason to resist it is because you're being left behind by its benefits. I don't think that's true and I certainly don't think it should be assumed a priori. There are people in this country, and every where in the world, who don't want globalization. And it's not because they haven't received enough of the benefits or need to be educated better, they don't want it for real reasons and, in a Democracy, that should be an acceptable stance. If we're not willing to accept that stance than we're forcing people into a global community that matches our vision for the future, not theirs. In other words it's a plot for world domination of one world view over another. I find it deeply cynical that instead it masquerades as a virtuous plan to help all man kind.

<comment><USER3> You bring up great points, and hit on the miscalculation and hypocrisy of the left. They seem to think that globalization is a universally good thing, and if you're against it then you are somehow disconnected, a racist, and a monster. This a common symptom not just isolated to globalization.

<comment><USER4> We've brought 3 billion people out of poverty in the last 30 years and haven't had a major-power war since WWII when we set up all these globalist institutitions.

I'd say the record holds up pretty well.

<comment> wu-ikkyu >We've brought 3 billion people out of poverty in the last 30 years and haven't had a major-power war since WWII when we set up all these globalist institutitions.

What about the other 3 billion people left behind in poverty? That's more than what the total global population was when these "globalist institutions" were set up.

<comment><USER4> We've gone from 85% of the global population in extreme poverty to 25%.

[https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/declining-global- poverty-...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/declining-global-poverty- share-1820-2015)

<comment> wu-ikkyu Percentages can be highly misleading because they abstract from the hard reality of absolute numbers. This is especially true when considering the exponential nature of population growth.

The cited percentage change would be far more encouraging if population was constant, but it's not.

<comment><USER5> There's been a significant decrease in absolute numbers as well as percentage :)

[https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population-in- extre...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population-in-extreme- poverty-absolute)

<comment> wu-ikkyu That graph is more informative. In terms of absolute numbers, extreme poverty has decreased by about 30% since 1820.

I tried finding a similar graph/data set in regard to "regular" poverty (rather than "extreme") but couldn't find one. Does anyone have a source for the change in absolute numbers of regular poverty?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One simple way to improve the quality of news republished on Facebook (albeit at a possible loss of some revenue) is to pull out the date of publication and clearly indicate to the person sharing how old the article is. Well-meaning friends are constantly posting urgent-sounding stories about events that happened months or years ago because they overlooked the date of publication.

For example, I know a good few people who are opposed to that pipeline being built in North Dakota right now. Unfortunately they sometimes repost _any_ news story about an oil spill or pipeline failure they come across in the mistaken assumption that they're seeing because it just happened.

<comment><USER7> A way I'd prefer: quit letting people share news on facebook.

Heck, let's go back to text-only status updates and I can go back to reading what my acquaintances are eating. That would be much more pleasant than today's facebook.

<comment><USER8> How would you like them to share the news?

<comment> m-p-3 In their own words.

<comment><USER9> Actually this gave me an interesting thought. The amount of effort required to "share" or "retweet" something is almost zero - it's a click. On the other hand, the effort to summarize something in your own words is more. Not a whole lot more, but enough that many fewer people do it. So I guess the tl;dr here is: maybe the shares that required more effort could be ranked higher.

Maybe a better summary: "retweets are cheap"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Notable functional promise to reduce prevailence of clickbait/fake news:

> Fortunately, there are clear steps we can take to correct these effects. For > example, we noticed some people share stories based on sensational headlines > without ever reading the story. In general, if you become less likely to > share a story after reading it, that's a good sign the headline was > sensational. If you're more likely to share a story after reading it, that's > often a sign of good in-depth content. We recently started reducing > sensationalism in News Feed by taking this into account for pieces of > content, and going forward signals like this will identify sensational > publishers as well.

<comment><USER11> Same thing should hold true for blind upvotes on social sites like this.

<comment><USER6> That fails if you do a first-order implementation because you have no way of knowing whether the person voting/sharing had already read the article, but not necessarily shared it at the time of reading. As a simple example, I subscribe to _The Economist_ and prefer reading the paper version. If I see a story from there cited by someone else, I don't need to read it again to recommend it.

Also, depending on the content and source it may be possible to infer the value or significance of something from the headline alone, eg when one has specialist domain knowledge and sees a headline one knows to be an accurate summary of recent developments in that field.

<comment><USER12> > That fails if you do a first-order implementation because you have no way of > knowing whether the person voting/sharing had already read the article, but > not necessarily shared it at the time of reading.

It might still hold for a large group of people, though, and be valid in a statistical sense? Which is what they're really after.

<comment><USER6> It could definitely help as long as it's appropriately weighted rather than being a binary choice. It'll be interesting to see how it pans out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "How do we help people build a safe community that prevents harm, helps during crises and rebuilds afterwards in a world where anyone across the world can affect us?"

For one, give people using your site some basic privacy so their own governments can't use your site to target political enemies.

<comment> angry-hacker Paying the fair amount of taxes wouldn't hurt either.

Yes, it's not illegal to do those crazy tax schemes, but it sure is unethical.

I believe he truly, in his own powerful bubble, thinks that he does good to the world and sincerely doesn't understand he is big part of the people rejecting globalization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> To me this all sounds like "Hey I'm sorry that fake news took over my website and seemed to slide things into a horrendous direction for a while, so let me blame the audience for their inaction rather than redesign my service around truth, honesty, and verifiability of information."

</comment><comment><USER15> Is there a special filter or manual curation process for the comments at the bottom of Zuckerberg's posts?

From my skimming through the first 30-40 comments, they're uniformly positive. I find it hard to believe that any internet forum open to public commentary would have that many positive responses.

<comment><USER16> "Zuckerberg relies on a team of at least 12 people to delete harassing comments and spam from his page while an additional team manages his communications and writes his posts and speeches, Bloomberg reports."

[http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/18/14314872/mark- zuckerberg-p...](http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/18/14314872/mark-zuckerberg- personal-facebook-page-comments-team)

<comment><USER17> holy shit wtf

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I also just read a BBC article[1] that includes an interview with Zuck regarding this piece, and I can't help but think "they still don't get it." There are valid concerns regarding globalism that have gone largely ignored by (usually liberal) politicians. Those who raise issues like manufacturing jobs moving abroad[2] or violence from a sudden influx of refugees[3][4] have been labeled racist, bigoted, and ignorant. Connecting the world's population and facilitating the sharing of information and perspectives worldwide is laudable, but in a democracy you can't simply ignore that many people believe a move towards globalization and specifically opening national borders to foreign goods and people is not a decision that should be so cavalier.

[1] [http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38998884](http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38998884)

[2] [http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/caterpillar-moving- jo...](http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/caterpillar-moving-joliet- production-lines-to-mexico/article_3f54e2be-3e3a-5062-87c5-754cae03dccf.html)

[3] [https://www.rt.com/news/373853-sweden-no-go-zones- gangs/](https://www.rt.com/news/373853-sweden-no-go-zones-gangs/)

[4] [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/05/germany- crisis...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/05/germany-crisis- cologne-new-years-eve-sex-attacks)

<comment><USER19> As much as this sounds as a defence of people who want to build walls, I have to agree with it to some degree. I don't agree with the "violence from a sudden influx of refugees" claim, but here's an interesting anecdote on the issue.

When NAFTA was originally signed in 1994, with the intention of opening borders to big businesses, there were some unfortunate side effects.

A lot of Mexican farmers used to operate in smaller scales. Many worked on communal lands that grew food in smaller scale.

Now, fast forward to NAFTA. Part of the deal phased out tariffs that were protecting and helping these small farmers keep in place. With the market open, American corn started flooding Mexico, bringing many of these millions of small farmers out of business or severely hurting their economic prospects.

What was left for them to do? Mexico didn't have a supply of alternative jobs for all these people, so illegal migration to the United States picked up. Lots of illegal immigrants didn't move to the US because things are just "better" there; they were willing to leave their home land, their families, cross a desert, risk not only decoration but their lives and move into an unknown country that speaks another language because they were desperate. They didn't have a choice, since they lost their land and source of income. It was, and still is, a big risk and sacrifice.

That's largely why we saw that 20 year hump in Mexicans coming illegally into the United States (Mexican migration to the US has been falling these last few years though).

It's interesting, because now the US wants to close their borders. Effectively the consequence of this development is that big food corporations greatly benefited from the open borders, but the average person did not.

This is not black and white, about opening borders always, or having nothing go through. Globalization and open borders needs to be to the interest of the people, and it's not always good. Building physical walls is incredibly stupid and childish, but there do need to be some hurdles in place so the big fish doesn't eat the small, specifically, so the big corporation doesn't destroy local economies all of a sudden.

A few interesting reads.

[http://www.npr.org/2013/12/26/257255787/wave-of-illegal- immi...](http://www.npr.org/2013/12/26/257255787/wave-of-illegal-immigrants- gains-speed-after-nafta)

[http://www.politicalresearch.org/2014/10/11/globalization- an...](http://www.politicalresearch.org/2014/10/11/globalization-and-nafta- caused-migration-from-mexico/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > _For the past decade, Facebook has focused on connecting friends and > families._

Look, I get it and I think for a while it actually worked. Mostly because the User base was, offhandedly speaking, more responsible with how they used the Communication Tool of Facebook. When the internet was "difficult" and not as instant as turning on a TV, look, there was a threshold of participation that resulted in Selection Bias of sorts.

Let's take an extreme example of another type of Tool, that when placed in the "Wrong" hands - so to speak - can wreak a lot of havoc: A Firearm. In the hands of a Responsible Person, a Firearm is a Tool, though it can also be a Weapon if so intended. It has pretty limited scope, but it's useful and can be controlled.

Put the Firearm in the hand of an Irresponsible Person and the outcomes will likely be "Unpleasant" to put it lightly. Irresponsibility takes many forms - sometimes it's a case of Emotional Stress (relationship break up), Financial Catastrophe (debt), Desperation (drug addiction). Humans are very much unrefined and uncivilized as much as we'd like to promote a different image.

I mean, when I think about BIG PROBLEMS it's stuff that Facebook isn't really the right tool for the job. You know, things like water. I just checked, and the UN posits:

> _783 million people do not have access to clean water and almost 2.5 billion > do not have access to adequate sanitation._

It might seem like I'm moving the goalposts here, but it's actually kind of a way of twisting your attention around a little.

My impression is that Facebook, in the past two years, has been one of the most divisive, family and friendship havoc wreaking wastelands and, like it or not, a behemoth with only a vestigial relationship to Zuck's latest missive. I've seen far too many posts time and time again about people noticing their lives are happier and more positive by either vastly reducing or altogether eliminating participation in Facebook.

It's hard to bring the world together when providing the forum for it to tear itself apart. Right? Maybe that essay is still in the works.

</comment><comment><USER21> Just imagine a Chinese, Russian or Indian company head writes such a post.

It's talking about building global communities, so anybody or everybody could or should have such an ambition.

Does that give one a sense of unease thinking about it?

If that is the case then maybe global community in that sense may not be a popular or good idea.

In this context, I'd like to draw your attention to how developing countries viewed technologies and ideas from the developed countries until a couple of decades ago. They've copied them first and then moulded them to their specific needs.

But technologies and ideas of the last decade or so cannot be copied and moulded, instead the ideas subsume them. There's no Facebook like thing in India. They use Facebook. There's no Google like thing in India. They use Google. This is ok as long as it's affecting only a small slice of their experience. However that slice has been growing and becoming more important every passing day. More people are becoming more concerned.

That concern is a lot like the sense of unease I alluded to earlier.

</comment><comment><USER22> where to even begin?

> Zuck: How do we help people build supportive communities that strengthen > traditional institutions in a world where membership in these institutions > is declining?

what is meant by "traditional institutions"? Maybe the problem is that "traditional institutions" (which are what, exactly? churches?) are not addressing people's real concerns and have become irrelevant.

> Zuck: How do we help people build a safe community that prevents harm, helps > during crises and rebuilds afterwards in a world where anyone across the > world can affect us?

it sounds like he's talking about responding to terrorist attacks. this is such vague language that it can be interpreted to mean anything at all. sounds like he's practicing writing campaign rhetoric. Zuck wants to run for president?

> Zuck: How do we help people build an informed community that exposes us to > new ideas and builds common understanding in a world where every person has > a voice?

I hope he's sincere about this. Facebook has proved itself to be one of the greatest disseminators of propaganda, distortions, clickbait, manipulative media, and many varieties of malicious (as in privacy violating) advertising and data-mining. I somehow doubt we're going to see a real reversal of policy on this subject from Facebook. Maybe I'm just cynical and jaded but being a vehicle for disinformation and invasive advertising has made Facebook a lot of money.

</comment><comment><USER23> "For the past decade, Facebook has focused on connecting friends and families." \--> you have been focused on selling ads, not changing the world. People would still be "connected" to each other without facebook because of the technology we have now (built buy normal engineers doing incremental improvements without "change the world" god complexes).

</comment><comment><USER24> Mark Zuckerberg: Building Global Surveillance

</comment><comment><USER25> More comments are at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13663737](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13663737)

<comment><USER26> [Deleted by user]

<comment><USER27> The two mods don't see everything. If you're aware of an issue like this, you can contact them via the Contact link in the footer. They're generally very responsive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> As long as that global community is all in Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER29> This smacks of Zuckerberg 2020.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/01/zucke...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/01/zuckerberg-2020/513689/)

</comment><comment><USER30> Did he just proclaim the Facebook Global Government?

<comment><USER31> As Lessig said, the code is law. Given facebook's role, undoubtedly they will (and do) play a role in governance.

<comment><USER30> Facebook could upend the world order if they built elections into their platform. I mean who 's gonna delegitimize a government elected online by massive audience? People would create new countries

<comment><USER32> I really don't believe that's realistic, and if you think that it's possible I would encourage you to broaden your social groups. The idea of a private company holding an election to choose my representatives is completely unacceptable - much less the concept that it would be global and not tied to the places I care about.

People go to war over that kind of thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm still tryig to figure out how to process all this.

My first thought is, communities do not need facebook to form/grow. They never have.

However, even in light of the Arab Spring and other social uprisings around the world, I still can't buy into anything Zuck says.

I just can't reconcile in my head how the most detailed online advertising machine can ever 'help create' any real or longstanding community.

Real communities are based on real people with real interactions. Granted, I know there are discussions and groups on fb (my wife is part of a group that meets up every few mos in the 'real world'). But i also see how mich time people spend with their faces plowed into their devices, ignoring the real world going on around them.

I'm not saying fb or twitter aren't powerful tools to organize with. I am saying that I put little to no faith into them as stewards of global community building. Their motives are not altruistic and I'm sure if their ad market dropped out next week, we would not see any of these types of posts from Zuck.

And regarding the fake news bit, what's to do about that? People found massive audiences in their system and deliberately posted lies to sway opinions. To me, that's a complete failure of the benefit of fb ('connecting' the world) and why I just don't believe anything that comes out of there.

I been on campus numerous times and have quite a number of friends that work there, so it's not like I don't get fb and how they make their money. I really do. But, are these really the types of companies we want to build? You can probably say this about a lot of tech companies nowadays, but when it's free, you're the product.. This is not good for the global community long term.

</comment><comment><USER34> This comes from a guy who literally built a wall around his house and tried to evict people from his estate in Hawaii.

</comment><comment><USER35> It is one of the very few publically shared items on Facebook that I'm allowed to read without an account.

<comment><USER36> I work at Facebook. Can you provide another example link for something that's "public" but you can't access? Most public content is accessible without an account.

<comment><USER37> doesn't the modal "sign up for facebook" that cannot be dismissed take somewhere between 50 and 80% of your screen space? I'm talking of these "public posts" your users chose to share.

Or is this just my large font preference for vision impaired? Either way, it leaves very little room for text, sometimes none at all.

News flash: Dark patterns harm accessability, but you knew that. Good work.

<comment><USER36> Yes, I agree that the "Sign Up for Facebook" box is annoying. That's not my wheelhouse and not something I'm likely to have success changing. If, however, public content gives a forced login dialog, that sounds more like a bug that I can fix.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> "In times like these, the most important thing we at Facebook can do is develop the social infrastructure to give people the power to build a global community that works for all of ^us^."

'Us' includes: Three letter agencies, marketeers and other data gathering companies.

</comment><comment><USER39> Not sure if I should like that Zuck supports globilization or dislike how out of touch he seems. (At least he thinks he's trying?)

</comment><comment><USER40> Facebook has a "mission"? What a joke. Their mission is to make a fortune on fake news. Masking this in nobility is absurd.

</comment><comment><USER41> Mark Zuckerberg: Building a Global Hivemind

</comment><comment><USER42> >are we building the world we all want?

the rich are building the world they all want. everyone else is struggling to survive that world. so, no. we aren't building the world "we all want" because many of us want different things, and have different means to gain them. i'll note that facebook isn't intentionally blocking or supporting this dynamic... and i'll also note that they could have answered their own question by looking at their data set. but this is public relations, where facts are slim and the opinion of the actual public doesn't much matter.

>How do we help people build supportive communities that strengthen traditional institutions in a world where membership in these institutions is declining?

non-starter; facebook is anathema to traditional institutions because it localizes power within itself instead of relying on them... and this has been the goal of facebook all along. put differently: honest answers to this question cannot include facebook as part of the solution without actively subverting the "traditional institutions". furthermore, in the US at least, the institutions are hollowed out anyway.

>How do we help people build a safe community that prevents harm, helps during crises and rebuilds afterwards in a world where anyone across the world can affect us?

also a non-starter; facebook is a social network and software platform, not an army of robotic guards. "preventing harm" will be conflated with "enforcing stability" when they are prompted by groups with more power (governments).

>How do we help people build an informed community that exposes us to new ideas and builds common understanding in a world where every person has a voice?

don't let people use facebook unless they have a college degree or higher. you'll see university classes fill suddenly. more seriously: facebook is a filter bubble by design, and cares absolutely nothing about the reach of people's voices... and it's tiring to hear otherwise.

>How do we help people build a civically-engaged community in a world where participation in voting sometimes includes less than half our population?

by doing something that facebook won't do: taking a stand and promoting groups pushing social change forward. they already know that this is a line they won't ever cross. we all know that they won't cross that line. facebook is a large institution, which by default sides with other large established powers rather than the public. i will also note that "civic engagement" is a dogwhistle for the disempowered members of the public doing something to improve their own standing, typically in opposition to (and rarely, in cooperation with) the established powers. they don't even genuinely want to improve civic engagement, because civic engagement leads to them being obsolete.

>How do we help people build an inclusive community that reflects our collective values and common humanity from local to global levels, spanning cultures, nations and regions in a world with few examples of global communities?

what if we don't have common values, and what if we don't want inclusive communities? what if those of us who follow the western liberal tradition want nothing to do with those who live in contradiction to it and despise it? some cultural chasms can't be rectified... and i can definitively say that facebook won't change that.

in summary: leaving the construction of a global community to facebook is a surefire way to make sure that the "global community" is neutered and ripe for profit extraction. i guess this comes off as a very negative post, but come on-- think about who benefits if people worldwide jump on the zuck train and think about things in the way he's encouraging here. does anyone really think that facebook is actually interested in doing anything other than making money?

</comment><comment><USER43> Its very hard to see facebook raising in my expectations.

I'm really against facebooks spying, hiding and deleting people's account culture.

Also forcing people in these small ghettos gives to me strong claustrophobia feelings.

Also calling users "Dumb f.." is really low..

Nope Mark, cannot see this happening.

</comment><comment><USER2> Copying over my comment from the other thread that sparked some interesting debate:

I find this letter to be deeply cynical. There's a baked in assumption that a global community is a good thing and that the only possible reason to resist it is because you're being left behind by its benefits. I don't think that's true and I certainly don't think it should be assumed a priori. There are people in this country, and every where in the world, who don't want globalization. And it's not because they haven't received enough of the benefits or need to be educated better, they don't want it for real reasons and, in a Democracy, that should be an acceptable stance. If we're not willing to accept that stance than we're forcing people into a global community that matches our vision for the future, not theirs. In other words it's a plot for world domination of one world view over another. I find it deeply cynical that instead it masquerades as a virtuous plan to help all man kind.

<comment><USER44> What are those "real reasons"? And are they against globalization in the abstract or against specific models of global institutions? I find being against globalization in the abstract very strange, because it takes arbitrary historical divisions of human-kind and tries to set them in stone. A global human community almost always seems like a more natural positive future than a fragmented system of hostile parties defined by birth location and operating in anarchy. Maybe I am lacking some context or some value system that the anti-globalist have and which might have its merits, and if so I would love to hear the argument, but to me the idea of "this person is more valuable or interesting to me because it was born my neighbor than anyone born a hundred miles away" seems to lack some ethical foundation. Let alone the same argument defined by religion or race, instead of plain location.

<comment><USER45> > Maybe I am lacking some context or some value system that the anti-globalist > have and which might have its merits, and if so I would love to hear the > argument, but to me the idea of "this person is more valuable or interesting > to me because it was born my neighbor than anyone born a hundred miles away" > seems to lack some ethical foundation.

Why? People care more about what happens around them. I care more about housing issues in the Bay Area than I do the same problem in New York. I care more about Oakland crime rates than Chicago crime rates. People care more about things that directly impact them and those close to them. If people see their hometowns and communities falling apart when the main industry moves overseas, and only receive second-order benefits like slightly reduced price of good a few years later, what incentive do they have to support globalism?

<comment><USER44> Their children's having better opportunities as wealth created by their countries participation in globalized trade creates chances for improved education, scientific advancement and new industries?

Don't get me wrong, we are failing many of those communities. But is not a failure to stop globalization, it is a failure to share the gains of globalization more broadly with those most affected by its negatives. We can do both. Is not either let them starve or stop global trade, both can be prevented. Besides, a lot of those industries that keep being brought up as examples of victims of globalization only ever got to be as significant as they were due to globalization: consider the American manufacturing industry, which greatly increased in significance after WW2 mostly due to the demand for its production in war-ravaged Europe. Or the American agricultural industry, where people complain about Mexican workers "stealing" jobs, while ignoring that Mexico consumes $17.7 billion of that agricultural production from U.S. exports.

<comment><USER45> That's not reality though. Their schools are failing, opiate addiction is rising, and opportunity is drying up. We are failing essentially all of those communities. Global corporations have no incentive to share the gains of their decisions with the communities they damage. Pressure to make them do so will likely just quicken the pace of automation, not suddenly make people care about the plight of the middle America. We can do both, but if the history of globalization is any indicator, we won't.

<comment><USER44> Fair enough, but you really consider isolationism, trade barriers and anti- immigrant rhetoric either significantly more feasible than or preferable to trying to improve wealth and opportunity distribution? Do you think forcing companies to bring manufacturing to the U.S. and fire foreign workers will result in anything else than automation, loss of foreign markets for U.S. companies and even further poverty for these communities, absent any other measure or the political will to help them? It seems to me just as hard to assist them under nationalism as under globalism, and globalism still has at the least the potential of doing better. For my part my current view is that I should try to both champion globalism and try to make it do better in whatever small sphere of influence I have.

<comment><USER45> Yes, I think trade barriers are both more feasible and preferable. I perceive automation as a constant, it's happening no matter what. Enforcing a border adjustment tax is easier than trying to remove every international tax loophole a la the double Irish. How is reshoring not trying to improve wealth and opportunity distribution, just with the benefactor being Americans and not the factory town in SEA or Central/South America? How does it not "have the potential to do better"? Someone keeping or re-gaining a job in their field is better. Those people contributing to their cities and towns in the form of taxes and other spending makes them better. I work in electronics manufacturing, and people are generally pretty excited about the potential changes.

<comment><USER44> You assume the rest of the world will remain open to you as you slam the door in their faces. At best you might end up in a situation where you don't have to compete with Shenzhen in your local market, but where all other markets are closed to you and open to them. Except now you won't even have access to collaborating with Shenzhen and other significant electronics hubs. I think you underestimate how much wealth moves into the U.S. _because_ of globalization and has since the early 20th century. Now, you can argue that you won't go completely closed, but I think you will lose out in proportion to how much you close things, specially if you do it to the point that other countries find themselves needing to retaliate with their own trade barriers and alternative trade treaties, and even more so if at the same time you are also restricting flow of talent into the U.S.

<comment><USER45> > Now, you can argue that you won't go completely closed but I think you will > lose out in proportion to how much you close things, specially if you do it > to the point that other countries find themselves needing to retaliate with > their own trade barriers and alternative trade treaties...

I agree with you the most here, and think it's true that unless a trade policy of that nature is implemented very carefully it could easily cause more harm than good. On the other hand, I think concerns about a complete walling off of collaboration/trade, or US manufacturers suddenly becoming unaware of international markets are overstated.

Manufacturers who have stayed alive already compete aggressively on price, which for them is more about materials management, relationships with suppliers (NXP, Samtec, Maxim, whoever), and process optimization. Component cost varies pretty dramatically by region, and how effectively a US based shop can navigate that is a big determining factor in how competitive they are with China/Mexico/etc.

From that perspective, most of the burden of something like a border adjustment tax is primarily on their customers, especially if they only do mid or low volume / high complexity runs (think medical/telecom/some consumer stuff). High volume / low complexity isn't something most US shops are geared for these days [1], so manufacturing will likely remain overseas and see a price increase in line with whatever policy change occurs. That probably won't hold true for high volume / high complexity (smartphones, etc) where cost of total assembly is higher. That seems to align with all the chatter about Foxconn, Samsung, Sharp, Toyota, etc. investing in US operations. [2][3]

The risks you mention are absolutely real, and my biggest hope at this stage is that any proposed changes are drafted and discussed openly, and given ample time for public review and comment.

1\. [http://www.assemblymag.com/articles/83764-managing-high- mix-...](http://www.assemblymag.com/articles/83764-managing-high-mix-low- volume-assembly)

2\. [https://www.macrumors.com/2017/02/08/sharp-lead- on-7-billion...](https://www.macrumors.com/2017/02/08/sharp-lead-on-7-billion- plant/)

3\. [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/12/business/trump-asia- aliba...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/12/business/trump-asia-alibaba- foxconn-samsung.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My god it sounds like the philosophical ideals of somebody plucked straight from the Star Trek universe. Are silicon valley billionaires really this detached from reality?

The reason globalization is coming to a screeching halt is that human cultures vary so much. It's slowly going away, but in general for a belief to truly die off; everyone that believes in it needs to be dead. This gives us around 70 years before the walls really start coming down. That's assuming hate and prejudice are globally snuffed from the ears of the young and impressionable yesterday.

Sounds like he thinks a globally ideal society is possible and not that far away. Sounds like he needs to visit a country locked in civil war for the last 50 years for a week or two.

The "developed" world is quickly approaching utopia, but the other 4 billion people are rapidly being left behind. It's a tragedy that a double digit percentage of the human population is starving to death while I sit here in my heated and air conditioned house with ten foot ceilings, more rooms than people in it, nearly free electricity, running water of any temperature, instant access to any information I want through the internet, and more vehicles than people living here.

He needs to take a look at Bill Gates who's a lot older and wiser than Zuck appears to be. Bill has gained immense respect from me in recent years even though I'm still not a fan of Microsoft. He's doing things that will truly make a difference that nobody else wants to pay for. We make such a hero out of somebody that runs into a burning building to save one person. Bill Gates is bank rolling malaria vaccines that might save 400,000 lives a year. What does that make him? A saint at the least.

Zuck should go back to building his internet satellites, that's a lot better use of his billions than some kind of fairy land curated "safe space" for SJW's to hang out in.

<comment><USER46> Change occurs in bursts and spurts. Perhaps we are seeing some backlash to the current wave of globalism. But do you really think the fundamental forces that push us towards globalism will stop?

As barriers to communication and travel continue to diminish over time, cultural diffusion will naturally increase, leading toward the major differences being smoothed over. We will become well acquainted.

Eventually, we will reach some point of "globalism saturation". But it seems to me that, currently, there is plenty of opportunity for continued melding of cultures and people groups. This is a natural process that is unfolding, an emergent dynamic resulting from our social nature and changing technological context.

We've barely begun, especially when considering future tech advances that will further reduce many of the artificial, anachronistic barriers between people groups. Most large differences in culture are just accidents of history and distance, not fixed, immovable characteristics.

Of course, we shouldn't blindly proceed. New, important concerns will spring up as the world gets smaller. Surveillance is one obvious example. There will be many more, and we will have to remain vigilant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Reading this article, one does raise questions about Facebook's past practices which in my opinion, is becoming very aggressive and contradicting. I don't think I need to call them out in particular, just look at all opinion pieces on various analysis of Facebook's numbers with a google search.

I think the HN community have discussed at great lengths and even Veritasium's video have talked about some of the things they like to do when Wall Street is watching.

So my question is, _why_? Why show one side to the world and the other a very different treatment one that must appease Wall Street?

I get that public companies are on the line when it comes to Wall Street but if a company that is supposedly almost as valuable as Google but unable to print cash like Google, does it not make sense that Facebook will be overly aggressive and downright questionable when it comes to strategies to maximize it's user base which it heavily relies on for it's current valuation?

This is the vibe I'm getting whenever I read something Mark writes. No credibility that matches my standards which other tech giant easily passes.

Just take a look at TWTR. Investors are signaling they are increasingly anxious to see more cash and sooner. TWTR looks like the first to go and as global risk premium increases so do the continued viability of FB against cash rich giants like Google & Microsoft.

I'm going to do some research on FB and see if there's any shorting opportunities. If TWTR can crash and burn, there's nothing stopping FB which operates on the same business model of building an audience first before seriously monetizing it.

I'd love it if somebody could offer more insights or even correct me, but I can't shake the feeling, Facebook is in serious trouble as reflected in their strange policies recently, especially around Fake News and trying to enter an attricious battle in China.

Why would FB keep doing what they were doing 10 years ago if they have money printing machine like Google Adwords? I don't think they'll figure it out in time.

<comment><USER48> Facebook's business today is completely different from what it was 10 years ago. Mobile ads now account for 80% of its total ad revenue (on total revenue of $27.64 billion). A lot of people questioned if Facebook could make _any_ money from mobile when it went public.

<comment><USER47> Interesting but yet unclear how much of a dent this really puts against Google's monopoly. I'm not even sure if mobile ads is sustainble, just as the desktop's invasion of AdBlock, I feel like it's not a solid revenue model going forward.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2016/11/25/does- faceb...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2016/11/25/does-facebook- generate-over-half-its-revenue-from-fake-news/#73aaaa512f33)

It also seems like they don't make it clear where these revenues are coming from.

Apart from large brands, I wonder how effective FB ad campaigns are. How do you measure ROI and attribute it to FB ad campaigns?

I feel like this is Nielsen ratings all over again on a dwindling platform. Inaccessible to rest but large brands with money to splash around. Google Adwords seem more comprehensive and diversified. $4.5 USD per FB user is ridiculous in my opinion. FB users aren't looking at Ads unless they are forced to. Google users _want_ highly relevant ads. This discrepancy explains the CTR between the two...yet FB is considered right up there with Google...it just doesn't make sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Interesting that the original submission was deleted after universally bad comments.

</comment><comment><USER50> Sorry for the somewhat cynical post - but this kind of soft corporate propaganda deserves at least some skeptical challenge.

"On our journey to connect the world"

\+ By which he means 'take over the world'

"Our greatest challenges also need global responses -- like ending terrorism, fighting climate change, and preventing pandemics. "

\+ Virtue signalling and false altruism, associating his brand with highly moral causes with which Facebook has no material connection.

"Progress now requires humanity coming together not just as cities or nations, but also as a global community"

\+ By 'coming together' he means turning the world into a globalized, culturally secularized and homogenized suburb as like the faux-facades and fake architecture of the building he is standing right in front of. Rhetorical question: Why does the Silicon Valley not have 'it's own' kind of identifiable architecture? Because the answer to that question is telling.

On this point, we can forgive him a little. Ironically, the soft message of 'diversity' from these folks - often hails from a positive motivation (i.e. 'equality and inclusion') - but it ultimately implies 'diversity of skin tone and of last names', but otherwise a total homogenization of cultural norms, values and ideas. Even language, local customs, laws, food and architecture.

When the entire world live across the street from a Starbucks, drives a Honda, and communicates in a manner sanctified by the thought-monitors at Facebook - I'd argue the world will be _less diverse_ , less resilient, less interesting - and less human - place to live.

"Yet now, across the world there are people left behind by globalization"

\+ Wonders the man who has personal wealth equivalent to entire African nations.

"withdrawing from global connection."

\+ I'd argue some are withdrawing from your imposed social order of homogenized 'Utopia', for what _they_ see as regaining some degree of self identity, self expression, and dignity.

" In times like these, the most important thing we at Facebook can do is develop the social infrastructure to give people the power to build a global community that works for all of us. "

\+ A serious degree of assumption: most of the people in the world have a very different view of what 'works' than the global elite - who's values he shares. What happens when people are 'given a voice' and they want something completely different than your specific vision of cohesion?

Without getting into 'pro' or 'anti' European Union arguments - if it were put to a popular referendum - the EU would fail immediately because people in just a few key nations would vote against it. In France, anti-EU sentiment runs at 60% - a full 10% points higher than in the UK before Brexit (though this doesn't necessarily imply they would vote to leave - its's a pretty negative sign). It's almost 50% in Germany. And it's growing.

The people of France voted against the treaty of Rome - and yet it was enacted by their government. Ditto in Netherlands and Ireland.

Ironically - it's through Facebook and social media that people are voicing their antagonism towards many globalist causes, that seem to be 'out of touch' with the will of citizens.

I'm not making an argument for or against anything - I'm pointing out that many of these 'let's come together' globalist voices have personal views which are totally inconsistent with most others - and they seem to be keen on projecting those views in an authoritative manner.

"How do we help people build supportive communities that strengthen traditional institutions"

\+ By turning off Facebook, and turning on to life?

I like Mark Zuckerberg, and having nothing against Facebook, but I wish they would stop with this rubbish and let people be - and accept that 'the true will of the people' in many ways will be inconsistent with that of the leaders of such globalist institutions.

</comment><comment><USER51> Facebook: Jumping the shark since 2017.

</comment><comment><USER52> Would Mr. Zuckerberg please stand up?</comment>


4 successful open source business models to consider - <AUTHOR> https://opensource.com/article/17/12/open-source-business-models <comment><USER2> > Software that can be freely accessed, redistributed, and modified can be the > basis of a successful business.

and later:

> SaaS

The initial intent of "Software that can be freely accessed, redistributed, and modified" was to limit the control the distributor had on the end user (At that time, the question of service providers running software for you wasn't so relevant).

Although SaaS can certainly be more user-friendly and convenient, it still takes away some control from the end user ... to give it back to the service provider.

Actually, the man who coined the word "Open-Source" does not like Saas very much:

"In general, I don't allow myself to rely on such services. And I have a rule: unless I can get all my data back through some sort of export or dump function in a non-obfuscated format, I won't go there. I recommend this rule to others as well." ( Eric.S.Raymond, [http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=932](http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=932) )</comment>