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Facebook CEO speaks to select members of European Parliament

politico.eu

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Re: Facebook CEO speaks to select members of European Parliament

#41

Post by KenanSulayman »

I was very surprised and suddenly pulled back into a feeling of tangible hope when around the end of the plenary session a French / Belgian member of the parliament went mad about unanswered questions.

He said: " ... There are a number of questions that have been put by other colleagues that I want an answer to. That said, I'm anxious about this brave new world that Mr. Zuckerberg has presented us -- a brave new world what tens and tens and tens of thousands of private people are scrutinizing us and are saying “what is fake news” and “what is not fake news”, “what is hate speech” and “what is not hate speech”. Don't you think that this is a public task?"

He very subtly mentioned that the anti-trust bodies could mobilized to look into this if questions wouldn't be answered [1] -- https://youtu.be/bVoE_rb5g5k?t=5285.

[1] "... And competition for example: an anti-trust thing, that's important! Do we need -- I think we're gonna push our anti trust agency to go into this if there is no good answer to!"

---

Here's an interview with Guy Verhofstadt (thanks, repolfx! I wasn't aware of who he is): https://www.channel4.com/news/guy-verhofstadt-mep-on-mark-zu...

Re: Facebook CEO speaks to select members of European Parliament

#42

Post by danmaz74 »

netsharc wrote: post #39
stingraycharles wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I liked how Guy Verhofstadt called him out on that, that he has apologised 15 or 16 times in the past years. I’m annoyed that I cannot vote for the guy for EP elections because he lives in another country, one of the many weird things about EU politics, but this man deserves a medal.

If you read (and believe) Yanis Varoufakis' book "Adults in the Room", he's a part of the group of assholes who was determined to bend Greece to their will, mainly that "austerity will work!", never mind the economic squeeze means hungry, homeless people and the rise of suicides. Currently I love how the EU is making the British Brexit team look like a bunch of clowns, but the EU is no saintly organization, the way t…

Verhovstad is just one mep, you can like him or not (i do on some issues, not other ones) but he isn't in any way "the eu" :)

Re: Facebook CEO speaks to select members of European Parliament

#43

Post by repolfx »

KenanSulayman wrote: post #41

I was very surprised and suddenly pulled back into a feeling of tangible hope when around the end of the plenary session a French / Belgian member of the parliament went mad about unanswered questions. He said: " ... There are a number of questions that have been put by other colleagues that I want an answer to. That said, I'm anxious about this brave new world that Mr. Zuckerberg has presented us -- a brave new worl…

That's Verhofstadt, the head of the EU Parliament.

I don't know what gave you hope about that. It's mafia tactics and confirms the worst suspicions people have had about EU anti-trust enforcement.

What does privacy rules have to do with monopoly or anti-trust? As far as I can tell, nothing. But the EU appears dangerously close to taking an official policy that anti-trust fines are based on whether Guy Verhofstadt and his friends personally like your answers at unrelated hearings. Make Guy happy or you'll be inconveniently re-classified as a monopoly. Never mind the existence of LinkedIn or Google+ or other competing networks.

Re: Facebook CEO speaks to select members of European Parliament

#44

Post by repolfx »

majewsky wrote: post #33
bachbach wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Educated people are naturally more skeptical of their media and what the sources are. I have not found that to be the case and I think you should scrutinize that assumption very carefully. Perhaps a majority of intellectuals in the West thought the Soviet Union was a step forward - again and again it's the 'smart' people who get the big things wrong.

> Perhaps a majority of intellectuals in the West thought the Soviet Union was a step forward I wasn't there at the time, so I have no way of knowing, but this smells like hindsight bias.

No. It was obvious at the time that the USSR was bad news. George Orwell was writing about the dystopian nature of Soviet society in 1948.

It had become obvious decades earlier that the Russian revolution had gone horribly wrong, after western powers realised that Soviet lumber exports were coming from forced labour camps.

And the fact that a Russian revolution would go wrong in this way was obvious even at the turn of the century. Lenin was put on a train in Switzerland and sent back to Russia specifically to cause chaos.

Going even further back, it was a constant frustration of Marx that the working classes in the UK (where he lived) stubbornly refused to rise in violent revolution. His ideology was well discussed in his own time but somehow actual working people were too smart to believe in it. Only intellectuals far removed from the real lower classes thought his theories were good.

tl;dr it's widely known that academics and other intellectuals couldn't accept the disastrous nature of communism long after supposedly more "stupid" people had fully understood the nature of Marxist ideology.

Even shorter tl;dr - education often seems to make people dumber in important ways, not smarter.

Re: Facebook CEO speaks to select members of European Parliament

#45

Post by cJ0th »

rjsw wrote: post #37
bogomipz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you make a good point. I think many people came to the same conclusion after he testified before the Senate in the US. I think it's it quite damaging to dissemble the way he does by moving his mouth without ever answering the question that was asked. And to do this for hour after hour an even in response to simple "yes" or "no" questions is nothing short of a farce. I have to wonder what his employees back in…

People do keep wondering whether he will run for an elected office, he is just getting in some practice first.

He would have to make a quantum leap in his development. If he keeps running scripts to address real people he'll fare at best as good as Hillary Clinton.

Re: Facebook CEO speaks to select members of European Parliament

#46

Post by jonbarker »

jedberg wrote: post #7
QueensGambit wrote: post #3

I have a controversial view, correct me if I am wrong. I think democracy has a major flaw, because, most people are selfish/unfair and most likely vote for populist leaders. But, it has been so far saved by media because of the elitist journalists who want the world to be a fair place and were able to convince people to reject populist leaders. With social media, these journalists are bypassed and the populist leader…

It all has to do with education. Educated people are naturally more skeptical of their media and what the sources are. Before social media, it was admitted a lot harder for unreliable sources to get an audience, so that skepticism was less critical. But I think it will come back. Education is the antidote to social media news. Deity willing, the next government will see that and push for better education.

The tech platform companies are all competing for mindshare in the education market as well. In fact, a FB apologist once went so far as to suggest that the best antidote to FB is readily available FB in classrooms; this way students will learn to be less distracted by it. The problem with this is that even the mere availability of the resource is a source of distraction.

Re: Facebook CEO speaks to select members of European Parliament

#47

Post by zerostar07 »

ianai wrote: post #38
zerostar07 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can the EU break up foreign monopolies?

There are no sovereign companies. For instance, the NY financial regulations matter so much across the world because a large portion of the financial world’s business is headquartered there. But more so, governments set legal standards. If those standards are not met then products/services are outlawed. I’m pretty sure the EU could simply ban browsing to IPs associated with FB, as an example. I think the largest comp…

yeah but that's not a break-up

Re: Facebook CEO speaks to select members of European Parliament

#48

Post by s73v3r_ »

zerostar07 wrote: post #18
GreeniFi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did I deduce from today’s hearing: 1. The weird question/answer format was probably a negotiated condition of Zuckerberg appearing. 2. This underlines the power of Zuckerberg: setting conditions for the EU Parliament is quite a show of force. 3. This condition was probably set because Zuckerberg is a very poor spokesperson. The end of the session was quite frankly bizarre when Zuckerberg refused to take question…

How can the EU break up foreign monopolies?

Isn't FB still an Irish corporation? As in, an EU company?

Re: Facebook CEO speaks to select members of European Parliament

#49

Post by adventured »

zerostar07 wrote: post #18
GreeniFi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did I deduce from today’s hearing: 1. The weird question/answer format was probably a negotiated condition of Zuckerberg appearing. 2. This underlines the power of Zuckerberg: setting conditions for the EU Parliament is quite a show of force. 3. This condition was probably set because Zuckerberg is a very poor spokesperson. The end of the session was quite frankly bizarre when Zuckerberg refused to take question…

How can the EU break up foreign monopolies?

They can't. They can attempt to block access to the EU market in a situation where they require a break-up of Facebook and Facebook refuses to comply. It would require the EU to implement a draconian Chinese firewall to bring into full effect.

The EU is 250m of Facebook's 2.2 billion users. They could easily drop all EU business if they needed to (the business operations within the EU is the easiest aspect for the EU regulators to target). Their profitability would drop from ~$23 billion for 2018 to $19 billion or so at worst. That'd be made-up for with one year of growth. Once Facebook's business operations in the EU are shut down, Facebook could continue to operate the user accounts and leave it to the EU to attempt to censor what their population is allowed to access online.

Watching the EU attempt to install Chinese style repression and censorship to limit what its people can access online, would be quite the comical circus.

Re: Facebook CEO speaks to select members of European Parliament

#50

Post by s73v3r_ »

mseebach wrote: post #9
QueensGambit wrote: post #3

I have a controversial view, correct me if I am wrong. I think democracy has a major flaw, because, most people are selfish/unfair and most likely vote for populist leaders. But, it has been so far saved by media because of the elitist journalists who want the world to be a fair place and were able to convince people to reject populist leaders. With social media, these journalists are bypassed and the populist leader…

The mechanism you're describing also made the non-populist politicians complacent, they forgot (if they ever learned) how to articulate why their way is actually better. See for an example the completely anemic campaigns fought by Hillary Clinton and the remain side in the brexit referendum. Those should not have been hard battles to fight.

"Those should not have been hard battles to fight."

Unless you're in the world where facts and truth don't actually matter.

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