Can one of the mods explain the dramatic killing of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16687588 its a perfectly valid discussion with an article by a reasonable publication?
Facebook's Zuckerberg will not appear before British MPs
71–80 of 130 posts
Re: Facebook's Zuckerberg will not appear before British MPs
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everything you've said is utterly accurate and yet I still think this is a terrible decision. We'll have to witness some hapless middle-manager undergo the same circus, but with every new person to speak we'll have a customary "I simply cannot believe Mr. Zuckerberg did not think it was important for him to be here in person!". Having a fall guy give terrible answers looks worse than him giving terrible answers. At t…
I'm old enough to remember the 1993 Jack in the Box e. coli outbreak... and then fast-forward to Chipotle's 2015 handling of the same thing. The responses between then and now were staggering differently. Back then it was "deny, deny, deny". In today's PR conscious world - for better or worse - the people expect an immediate confession from the very top. Given's FB's breadth and depth of exposure to many people's liv…
Perhaps this is a form of karma. After all, the change in how PR works today compared to last century has a lot to do with the rise of social media and 24 hour news cycles.
Re: Facebook's Zuckerberg will not appear before British MPs
#73This was obviously never going to happen and is absolutely the right decision for Zuckerberg and Facebook. House of Commons select committees bagging a big scalp invariably turn into show trials, with MPs possessing a completely deluded sense of their own insight into a subject queuing up to play to the cameras. The spectacle of having Zuckerberg there would have been absolutely excruciating. So, much as I'd like to…
As an American, I have to say Parliament debates are relatively entertaining and seem light years more intelligent than what comes out of Congress.
Re: Facebook's Zuckerberg will not appear before British MPs
#74Has Zuckerberg done any thing like this before (e.g. Microsoft vs. United States style things)
Re: Facebook's Zuckerberg will not appear before British MPs
#75> "You have a wealthy company from a developed nation going into an economy or democracy that's still struggling to get its feet on the ground - and taking advantage of that to profit from that," he told MPs.
Christopher Wylie (ex-Facebook whistleblower) just gave the primary reason why Facebook is blocked in China.
Re: Facebook's Zuckerberg will not appear before British MPs
#76No representation without taxation. Why should Facebook send Zuckerberg when Facebook paid a grand total of £2.6 million taxes to the UK in 2017. If the British parliament wants Zuckerberg to attend, make the UK relevant to Facebook. Tax it. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/04/facebook-...
If Facebook and Zuckerberg cross the invisible line here -- and they may be doing that with this decision -- then political will is going to turn sharply against them. It wouldn't be at all surprising if their tax situation became dramatically worse shortly afterwards. It's basically free money for the government and free political points too.
Re: Facebook's Zuckerberg will not appear before British MPs
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you feel the same way if the CEO of some massive Russian or Chinese firm holding the private data on millions and millions of American citizens refused to appear before the American Congress?
I mean....I would still recognize it as the correct business decision, even though I would personally dislike it. Those two are not mutually exclusive.
Interesting how the "correct" business decision often deviates from what we feel is morally responsible.
Re: Facebook's Zuckerberg will not appear before British MPs
#78Not a complete surprise, but I suspect this is a strategic mistake from Zuckerberg. It's going to send the wrong message, at a time when Facebook is already under pressure and regulators in the EU are about to be given the most powerful privacy tools (and the most heavy penalty regime) they've ever had to work with.
I wonder if regulators will just decide the split up facebook. It would take a ton of leverage and political goodwill across both the EU and the US, but i have no doubt it could happen.
> I wonder if regulators will just decide the split up facebook.
I keep hearing this suggestion and it makes no sense. Split into what? It would be like asking to split Google into one company doing the search and another one doing the ads. You're talking about loss leader strategy here and you cannot have a company whose only product is a loss leader. Majority of users won't pay to have search or social network. They value their privacy much lower and would trade it to get the services without direct monetary compensation.
Re: Facebook's Zuckerberg will not appear before British MPs
#79I hope this hate on FB ends already, I'm tired of seeing the home page of HN polluted by it. We all knew what was going on on FB, so acting surprised is silly. And we all know this won't change nothing because most people don't care and will happily keep using FB. And we also know even if people stop using FB they will keep using WA/IG. So what's the point? Is this only a problem now that Trump took advantage of it?
There's an awful lot of people posting "we knew it was bad already, why do you care now?" Remarkably consistently across all articles relating to Facebook. Clearly you want nothing done about this and are happy with this low level of privacy. But on the other hand a lot of people have been unhappy with it for a long time; suddenly the dam has broken and the public discussion in the media is taking an interest. This h…
> Clearly you want nothing done about this and are happy with this low level of privacy.
Facebook already locked down their platform in 2014-2015. There's no use asking Facebook to do anything now. What needs to be done is to hunt down the companies that extracted the data, one by one, trace every copy of it and delete it. But that is really hard to do. It's easier to just keep attacking Facebook.
Re: Facebook's Zuckerberg will not appear before British MPs
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everything you've said is utterly accurate and yet I still think this is a terrible decision. We'll have to witness some hapless middle-manager undergo the same circus, but with every new person to speak we'll have a customary "I simply cannot believe Mr. Zuckerberg did not think it was important for him to be here in person!". Having a fall guy give terrible answers looks worse than him giving terrible answers. At t…
I'm old enough to remember the 1993 Jack in the Box e. coli outbreak... and then fast-forward to Chipotle's 2015 handling of the same thing. The responses between then and now were staggering differently. Back then it was "deny, deny, deny". In today's PR conscious world - for better or worse - the people expect an immediate confession from the very top. Given's FB's breadth and depth of exposure to many people's liv…
Zuckerberg seems confident he doesn't need to really give a crap. FB will be fine either way. Why bother? He's got better things to do with his time.