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> He repeatedly refused to attend meetings with politicians in the UK, sending other Facebook representatives in his place. "I did hearings in the US. I did hearings in the EU," he said. "It just doesn't really make sense for me to go to hearings in every single country that wants to have me show up [...]" Not sure how Brexit supporters feel about that.
I have to say, as someone who's been somewhat critical of Facebook's dealings for the past years, I read the entire thing and I can't pick up on anything that doesn't seem like a reasonable thing to say to your team. Is anyone able to educate me on why there seem to be some air of hawks swooping on Zuckerberg because of this?
Because taking a single line out of context is great clickbait. The entire transcript on the verge was posted on HN yesterday and died with 10 upvotes and no comments. This story is much less interesting with context.
> "I don't want to have a major lawsuit against our own government... But look, at the end of the day, if someone's going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and you fight," he said in the recording.
> "It doesn't make election interference less likely. It makes it more likely because now the companies can't co-ordinate and work together," he added.
Microsoft fought releasing data subpoenaed from its Irish data center. Apple fought backdooring iOS for the FBI. AT&T fought against being broken up in the 70s. So why is it surprising that Facebook would fight against it?
And his second statement is in no way a threat.
i'm not sure what a breakup can accomplish beside populist political goals. I meant to avoid losing the great societal benefits of the large networks the resulting post-breakup components/parts would have to be interoperational. Then why not enforce interoperability upon the too big players right now? Why not enforce that any client can be used for Twitter, that any player can federate/aggregate Twitter, and that any…
Many newspapers have died out because the more inter networked we get it's more efficient to consolidate. Info flows around gatekeepers as the network gets more and more connected. Yet notice how we have so many news sources divided along social differences. They resist merging with each other.
Those same forces resist consolidation of 6 billion people onto a single network.
This has already happened with China, Russia, Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, North Korea etc where the differences are stark. Many countries are already demanding local data centers. As soon as that happens it's guaranteed some political entity will misuse the data to hold onto power and further pressure builds.
Give it time and few more elections where one side has to loose (we will see many more Obama/Trump/Brexit type event where one group goes viral and beats another) and the pressure on the consolidated network will keep growing from the disappointed parties. This is still early days in the history of a social network.
Niall Ferguson's book The Square and the Tower is full of examples from history of how networks of people grown, merge and break apart. Highly recommended for anyone interested in this stuff.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? He went to Europe. Obviously he's not going to Leichtenstein and Azerbaijan.
Did he go to England? > Azerbaijan This is a very wide definition of Europe...
I have to say, as someone who's been somewhat critical of Facebook's dealings for the past years, I read the entire thing and I can't pick up on anything that doesn't seem like a reasonable thing to say to your team. Is anyone able to educate me on why there seem to be some air of hawks swooping on Zuckerberg because of this?
I read it as Zuckerberg considering democracy an existential threat to FB, more so than FB a threat to democracy, and thinking that might is right. Sure, FB is nowhere near special in that, but just because it metastasized all over the place doesn't mean it's not cancer. It's reasonable, just like it was reasonable for Exxon to keep what they knew about fossil fuels and the climate on the down low, reasonable within…
I don't understand how a reasonable person can read it that way.
Here's the full quote:
> That doesn’t mean that, even if there’s anger and that you have someone like Elizabeth Warren who thinks that the right answer is to break up the companies ... I mean, if she gets elected president, then I would bet that we will have a legal challenge, and I would bet that we will win the legal challenge. And does that still suck for us? Yeah. I mean, I don’t want to have a major lawsuit against our own government. I mean, that’s not the position that you want to be in when you’re, you know, I mean … it’s like, we care about our country and want to work with our government and do good things. But look, at the end of the day, if someone’s going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and you fight.
I do not understand how you can interpret that to mean anything other than that the "existential threat" is "to break up the companies". And it would be a far stretch to somehow move the goalposts to say that breaking up the companies is somehow fundamentally an aspect of democracy.
Unless you are willing to tie opposition to anything that any elected official has ever proposed as opposition to democracy itself, I guess.
>>>There's no bombshell revelation in this leak Oh boy is that an understatement. Of course Zuck's strategy if the government attempts to break up Facebook for antitrust or whatever else they can spin together is to fight it legally. Of course his preference is going to be for a presidential candidate who hasn't made an overt commitment to force that break up. There's really no there, there.
The bigger thing is a mismatch between the employees of facebook and the management. These weekly meetings happen all the time, what is different is now the employees are recording them and releasing them to the press. This means at least one employee no longer thinks the interest of upper management and the workers align and she or he spent forethought in order to record the conversation and then spent time afterwar…
That's strange. I interpreted it to mean that there was a worker that thought that the media was greatly misrepresenting facebook and facebook management's position and they released these extensive transcripts to show just how banal the reality was.
Is there any concern about the implications of breaking up big tech in an attempt to make US markets more competitive, but in so doing allow a foreign competitor to swoop in and become the de facto choice in some market? I imagine the US benefits substantially from the likes of Google and fb dominating competitors in foreign markets.
This concern does get expressed from time to time, but I think it is sacrificing the long-term for the short-term. Sure, you can prop up bad businesses through government intervention in the short term, and we do it all the time. But in the long term, they're still bad businesses, and you end up with entire industries that are dysfunctional. Eventually, someone else eats your lunch. In fact you can argue that's happe…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? He went to Europe. Obviously he's not going to Leichtenstein and Azerbaijan.
Did he go to England? > Azerbaijan This is a very wide definition of Europe...
wtf? what definition of Europe doesn't include Azerbaijan?
> As European I am pretty pissed off just by this affirmation.
According to wikipedia, there are 50 countries in Europe. So are you truly pissed off that he would say that it doesn't make sense for him to go to Malta or Azerbaijan just because they want to parade him before some cameras? And that the company would be happy to send a representative that is senior/authorized to represent them in such legal proceedings.
Or maybe you just mean, well, you don't count those smaller countries. Just the big ones. In which case, the UK would be behind 4 other european countries by population. And if that's what you feel matters, maybe he should first go to the 7 chinese provinces with greater population and the 7 indian provinces. And all that would just be if we accept the UK as the very minimum of what he would have to go to if requested.
Really the whole idea is nonsense. The idea that the CEO of some company needs to be at the beck and call of every elected official in some podunk country is crazy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read it as Zuckerberg considering democracy an existential threat to FB, more so than FB a threat to democracy, and thinking that might is right. Sure, FB is nowhere near special in that, but just because it metastasized all over the place doesn't mean it's not cancer. It's reasonable, just like it was reasonable for Exxon to keep what they knew about fossil fuels and the climate on the down low, reasonable within…
> I read it as Zuckerberg considering democracy an existential threat to FB I don't understand how a reasonable person can read it that way. Here's the full quote: > That doesn’t mean that, even if there’s anger and that you have someone like Elizabeth Warren who thinks that the right answer is to break up the companies ... I mean, if she gets elected president, then I would bet that we will have a legal challenge, a…
> other than that the "existential threat" is "to break up the companies"
The government derives its legitimacy from the people, and running a corporation is a privilege granted by said government. If it wants to split companies up because they became too powerful, that's perfectly fine. To get all "let's fight" about that is like a dog thinking it actually should sit on the couch because it has teeth.
> Unless you are willing to tie opposition to anything that any elected official has ever proposed as opposition to democracy itself, I guess.
It's not general "opposition" based on reasons that respect the reasons the other side has, it's pure self-interest. I, very much reasonably so, think that that meeting is the tip of an iceberg, and that when Zuck says "go to the mat", he means go to the mat.
> And it would be a far stretch to somehow move the goalposts to say that breaking up the companies is somehow fundamentally an aspect of democracy.
No, but the ability to do so very much is, and should be in no way dependant on the legal prowess or pocket depth of the company subject to that operation.
If you can't put a muzzle and a leash on companies that have the ability to fuck with democracy in a very real and serious way, especially if they show no sign of having any moral compunctions about doing so, you don't have a democracy, you have a theater group in a mall.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did he go to England? > Azerbaijan This is a very wide definition of Europe...
> > Azerbaijan > This is a very wide definition of Europe... wtf? what definition of Europe doesn't include Azerbaijan? > As European I am pretty pissed off just by this affirmation. According to wikipedia, there are 50 countries in Europe. So are you truly pissed off that he would say that it doesn't make sense for him to go to Malta or Azerbaijan just because they want to parade him before some cameras? And that th…
From the Wikipedia article you mention: """The UN Statistics Department places Azerbaijan in Western Asia for statistical convenience: "The assignment of countries or areas to specific groupings is for statistical convenience and does not imply any assumption regarding political or other affiliation of countries or territories." The CIA World Factbook places Azerbaijan in South Western Asia, with a small portion north of the Caucasus range in Europe. National Geographic and Encyclopædia Britannica also place Georgia in Asia."""