Is he more of a "villain" than Trump? I think most Americans understand that you have to step on a few toes (or many toes) to build a global empire the size of FB.
Also remember that in American society, might (money) = right. Everyone knows that Jobs was an asshole, people still worship him anyways. It's sad, I know, but it's a fact.
Trump is a chest-thumping buffoon, but he's also a "manly man" -- just look at how he made Marco Rubio apologize for obliquely questioning his penis size, while shamelessly bragging about being well-endowed. He was also willing to tap into America's latent racism, something I doubt Zuck could credibly do. He doesn't have a good story besides "technocrat in chief," and many people will just see the oblivious, arrogant nerd who spent his high school years getting chocolate swirlies.
Case in point: Bernie Sanders. Also before Trump surged ahead, Jeb "low energy" Bush was the GOP front-runner.
It's true that Trump ultimately won, but I don't think his "manly man" image was the key factor. Recall '08 when Obama defeated the Maverick and his gun-toting mama bear VP.
It's not $1 billion, but are you going to tell me that giving Jeb 6x more money would've made him competitive?
Let's say Trump doesn't get impeached or bored with the job, and runs for reelection in 2020. There are almost no viable Democrats younger than retirement age, and Zuck could drop a few billion on the primary and general. Or let's say that Trump serves through 2024. As long as Zuck picks a party instead of going full Ross Perot, he only has to shift a few hundred thousand voters in the right places.
Don't take me too seriously, but I wonder if there's a socially-valuable benefit here to the advertising industry, since it makes it easier for anyone to jump in and run for office.
Don't take me too seriously, either, but I would say it makes it easier to translate money into other things. The surveillance economy is all about collecting information and renting it to the highest bidder. Buying crap you don't need? Voting for X instead of Y? Being sent to jail for doing Z? It doesn't matter -- money talks.
That's a solid point. Most people don't realize this, but Trump's path to re-election is really just a handful of key counties in a handful of key states. So long as he brings jerrrbbsss to those areas, he's going to win.
If Zuck starts building FB data or operations centers in flyover, America, that'll all but confirm his intentions to run.
I think a team of handlers could prob mold Zuck into presentable shape.
See the interesting thing there is, he was viewed as the bad guy by the older viewers that watched the movie, but not by the younger viewers.
In which he was the villain.
He has more or less zero people skills, but truckloads of money, and creepy amounts of personal information. IMHO his best bet for being elected President would be to straight-up purchase a major party's nomination, then buy the necessary votes in swing states. Let's say it costs $1b to buy a party's nomination. Florida was won by about 100,000 votes in 2016, and he can probably target persuadable voters using FB's data. Can he buy those people's votes for another billion (i.e. $10k apiece)?