Astral Codex Ten

Zuck

4 min read

Zuck

Article

Zuck is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between September 22, 2022 and July 21, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “unlike Zuck, they were not able to keep their thing going strong”; “D’Angelo, he used to work for Zuck”; “I heard Zuck offered him fifty billion to work at Meta AI”. It most often appears alongside Amazon, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: September 22, 2022
  • Last seen: July 21, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Highlights From The Comments On Billionaire Replaceability
September 22, 2022 · Original source
I’m still not sure about this line of thought. How is this situation? Do we think Mark Zuckerberg wouldn’t have founded Facebook, or Bill Gates Microsoft, if he could only get $1 billion? Can people really tell the difference between $10 billion and $100 billion? Has Jeff Bezos even spent $10 billion?
I think this is actually a significant problem w/ Scott's last argument - the founders of Friendster and Myspace aren't infamously super-rich, because unlike Zuck, they were not able to keep their thing going strong, in the face of competition, over a long period of time. Getting in first is a huge advantage - but then competition comes in and challenges you. If you don't rise to that challenge, you may walk away with some I-did-it-first money, but the competition will wind up getting the big pot. If you consistently whoop the competition, it's either because you're providing better value, or because you're shrewder at business (this latter part is something the left can perhaps legit complain about, but it's a hard thing to correct accurately). To the extent you're providing better value than all the other competitors who come along over the years, you should reap proportionate rewards. So it is w/ amazon - no one else has 2 day shipping afaik. This accords w/ a general statement about profit margins and competition - low competition should naturally lead to high profit margins, because you're apparently doing something so hard or risky that hardly anyone else can manage to pull it off (this argument falls apart completely when you have low competition because you're exploiting regulation, e.g. IP laws, or when you have a true monopoly).
Son Of Bride Of Bay Area House Party
December 12, 2023 · Original source
“Are you talking about Sam Altman?” asked a man who you didn’t even realize was listening to the conversation. “I’ve been trying to figure the whole situation out. I understand that Toner was part of the deep state conspiracy and McCauley was part of the effective altruist conspiracy. And D’Angelo, he used to work for Zuck, so he must have been part of the Meta conspiracy - Meta as in Facebook, not meta-conspiracy in the sense of a conspiracy controlling all the others. There was a meta-conspiracy controlling all the others, but that was . . . “
Press Any Key For Bay Area House Party
July 21, 2025 · Original source
"Hey man," says Mark Zuckerberg, grabbing your wrist. "You wanna come build superintelligence at Meta? I'll give you five million, all cash."
Mark Zuckerberg, heavily bruised and covered in glitter, stands in front of the smoking ruins of your wheelchair and laughs maniacally. He is holding a small silver box he has extracted from one of the fragments. “I got it!” he shouts. “I got the last GPU in San Francisco!”
“Let me guess,” you say, finding the host. “You got Zucked.”