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Facebook's Zuckerberg will not appear before British MPs

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Facebook's Zuckerberg will not appear before British MPs

#81

Post by chrisseaton »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #60

I said it in a previous post but if the congress/senate were allowed to summon Tony Hayward, BP CEO, over the Deep Water Horizon disaster then the UK Parliament are well in their rights to summon, and expect attendance, of Zukerberg over this.

> the UK Parliament are well in their rights to summon, and expect attendance, of Zukerberg over this

But they aren't within their rights to summon him. That's not a power they have. They can invite him, and they did, but he doesn't have to go and speak to a committee if he doesn't want to.

Re: Facebook's Zuckerberg will not appear before British MPs

#82

Post by Slansitartop »

chrischen wrote: post #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.

>> "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.

No. China isn't a "democracy that's still struggling to get its feet on the ground," China is a country run by anti-democratic authoritarians who want to protect their power by controlling the information their people see. It's also rather protectionist, and does not want foreign companies to be major players on its internet. The way Facebook makes its money has nothing to do with why it's blocked there.

Re: Facebook's Zuckerberg will not appear before British MPs

#83

Post by maxerickson »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #60

I said it in a previous post but if the congress/senate were allowed to summon Tony Hayward, BP CEO, over the Deep Water Horizon disaster then the UK Parliament are well in their rights to summon, and expect attendance, of Zukerberg over this.

I don't understand the point of the comparison.

Hayward didn't meet with Congress because of international equanimity, he met with Congress because he damn well knew they'd twist his arm if he didn't. The extensive US operations of BP make said arm twisting a rather easy thing to accomplish.

It's funny, people are speculating about whether Zuckerberg will choose to appear before Congress. But it isn't up to him, they have the power to compel him to appear. If they don't do that, it's their choice, not his.

(they have the power as a practical matter anyway; Zuckerberg isn't going to spend time in jail to avoid a trip to Washington)

Re: Facebook's Zuckerberg will not appear before British MPs

#84

Post by JumpCrisscross »

babuskov wrote: post #78
kazen44 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. The…

> Split into what?

Here’s an easy start: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp.

Re: Facebook's Zuckerberg will not appear before British MPs

#85

Post by Slansitartop »

babuskov wrote: post #78
kazen44 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. The…

> I keep hearing this suggestion and it makes no sense. Split into what?

Instagram, WhatsApp, and multiple competing Facebook copies (say Facebook Red, Facebook Green, and Facebook Orange) with a mandate to interoperate with each other and with other networks. Existing accounts are divided randomly and evenly between the copies.

Re: Facebook's Zuckerberg will not appear before British MPs

#86

Post by Slansitartop »

babuskov wrote: post #79
pjc50 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That covers only part of the scandal, which IMHO has at least two parts:

1) Facebook data was widely shared to all kinds of 3rd parties.

2) Facebook data can be used to manipulate individuals and inappropriately influence the political process.

Even if Facebook fixes #1, #2 is still a problem (either by Facebook itself, or those using its platform).

Re: Facebook's Zuckerberg will not appear before British MPs

#87

Post by bertil »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #5
gianmaro wrote: post #4

It feels like Zuck is in panic and listening too much to his PR advisors who are likely telling him to stay out of the public until the storm settles. Not a smart move on this particular case

To be fair being called in front of MP's is like a ritualised grilling, nothing ever comes out of it other than total humiliation for the victim.

It’s less of a grilling when MPs know what they are talking about, which I suspect is not the case here. I expect some will wrongly describe Facebook’s business model as “selling personal information”.

Sending Schrep & Chris will help assess this and clarify some things.

Re: Facebook's Zuckerberg will not appear before British MPs

#88

Post by AngeloAnolin »

Mark was invited and he declined. What's really wrong with that?

His wisdom and personal belief (including legal and lawyer suggestions) tells him that coming over to the invitation would not do him (nor his company) any good.

And, given with all the information he has supposedly with people, he may already have some knowledge of the personality of the MPs who are going to grill him that he may think otherwise that appearing before them would tantamount into a gong show.

Re: Facebook's Zuckerberg will not appear before British MPs

#89

Post by paulddraper »

ModernMech wrote: post #77
gambiting wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No one said "morally responsible", just "I would personally dislike it".

I also dislike that I'll have to wait at red lights this morning; that doesn't make red lights morally deviant.

Re: Facebook's Zuckerberg will not appear before British MPs

#90

Post by paulddraper »

martinald wrote: post #8

Facebooks PR seems all over the place. It seems to go like this: 1) Blame users/say it wasn't as bad/not a breach 2) Controversy gets worse 3) Apologise, say we got it wrong, working on it I think this is especially dumb as FB took out a personally-signed-by-Zuckerberg letter in 6 UK sunday papers last weekend. It looks very fake.

Should we assume that people can only hold one thought in their head at a time?

(1) It was a breach of contract by an app developer.

(2) Facebook now has more limited permissions.

(3) Facebook is looking at more ways to limit the consequences when #1 happens.

---

The bizarre thing is how differently the public treats this from Obama for America.

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