Facebook's Zuckerberg will not appear before British MPs
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
So, much as I'd like to see Facebook deleted from the internet, at least we'll be spared the embarrassment of the world witnessing the caliber of our elected representatives.
...and if I were a betting man, "not going to appear."
Zuckerburg's strength is not PR or public conversations. It makes zero sense to me why he would represent Facebook to US Congress.
* Monthly meetings with Yuri Milner after he invests $200 million dollars of Gazprom money in facebook after the 2008 crash.
* Facebook assigning liaisons to work at the Trump campaign offices - side by side, if not directly with, Cambridge Analytica. Kushner implies it's directly with them.
“We found that Facebook and digital targeting were the most effective ways to reach the audiences. After the primary, we started ramping up because we knew that doing a national campaign is different than doing a primary campaign. That was when we formalized the system because we had to ramp up for digital fundraising. We brought in Cambridge Analytica. I called some of my friends from Silicon Valley who were some of the best digital marketers in the world. And I asked them how to scale this stuff."
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/magazine-40852227/the-digital-gur...
Having a fall guy give terrible answers looks worse than him giving terrible answers. At the very least send Sheryl Sandberg - the message they're sending out right now is that they aren't taking it seriously.
Now if he's summoned to appear before the US or EU government, skipping that I suspect would not turn out well.
FB, sooner or later, will regret this decision.
Given's FB's breadth and depth of exposure to many people's lives, I would expect no less than to see Zuck fielding questions in front of the cameras. It will certainly be a circus and many people will tune in to watch - but if handled correctly can bring an enormous amount of goodwill back to FB - which it desperately needs right now.
Here's a lengthy timeline of his many publicly verified interactions with Putin's lackeys, and the financial support they have provided facebook:
https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/85p30j/deleteface...
According to The Guardian, Facebook said that "the company would be putting forward its chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer, or its chief product officer, Chris Cox."
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/27/facebook-...
Cox and Schroepfer both seem more comfortable in front of cameras from what I can find online, and to be honest would probably have better insight into what happened. After all, it's their jobs as the heads of product, and technology.
They want a celebrity they can shake their fists at and give a right telling off to. Politicians don't build their careers giving tongue-lashings to non-public figures, and that's going to be a problem now.
As I type this, I've just read that Zuckerberg has agreed to testify before a congressional committee - this is going to piss off MPs in the UK all the more though because he snubbed them first (which in turns means whoever gets sent is going to get a lot more abuse and more of the "Where is he!?" feigned outrage).
I'm frankly surprised that Sheryl Sandberg isn't being sent to the UK if Zuckerberg is testifying in the US (although I don't see why he can't do both). The whole angle at the time of her hiring was that she would be "the grown up in the room". I realize that was a long time ago now, but if ever there was a time for the COO to step up this has to be it.
Arguably, that perception is exactly why he has to send a clear subordinate if he isn't going himself, and not someone perceived to be his babysitter.
I also dislike that I'll have to wait at red lights this morning; that doesn't make red lights morally deviant.
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.
Were they identically worded?
Source: https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/180325071038-01-faceb...
(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.
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The bizarre thing is how differently the public treats this from Obama for America.
I don't think it's at all surprised that the British public is more concerned with Brexit manipulation than the actions of a US election campaign.
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-...
The article I linked to in my comment showed that FBK paid (slightly) more taxes in 2017 than in 2016 following a public outcry.
Political pressure and HMRC's best and brightest could surely find ways to make Facebook pay a just level of taxes.
Perfect.
And the most strange part is how they now have celebrity appearances as well - comedians and actors?
There's a certain element of it becoming slightly worse due to being televised. In an era where there is a huge gap between government rhetoric and practice, it can be a useful way to signal ones 'principles' even as one files obediently through the government lobby when it comes to voting on actual legislation.
Sending Schrep & Chris will help assess this and clarify some things.
In all fairness, and with a healthy dose of irony, he isn't a terrific people person. At least not in front of the camera. Unfortunately, one of the jobs of the CEO of a crisis-stricken company is to be the face of the response.
If the vast majority of users are only working out what they have signed up for now, after using the service for years, then it would be hard to argue that Facebook's users have given informed consent to a contract, which is generally a legal requirement here for it to be said that you have agreed to something.
Either way, the simple existence of the tools to do so (via social media and data-crunching groups like CA) should be investigated. And governments rightly should take action to ensure "fake news" is not being used to subvert their elections.
In other words, this is embarrassing for the pro-brexit side.
A person who was pro-brexit may be inclined to downplay this, while a person who was pro-remain is less likely to sweep it under the rug.
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.
Its never been done recently - though god knows what old laws are still on the books that could be applied.
And yes of course they can't compel anyone outside the UK to do anything they don't want to do.
I think acts of attainder (ie your are declared guilty by parliament with out judicial process ) is not longer leagal
The act of attainder was considered so bad that was banned by the founders in the US constitution.
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)
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 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.
Here’s an easy start: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp.
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.
In 2014, Facebook paid £4,327 in tax to the UK. The next year, they paid £4.16 million, which seems to be an improvement but then in the same year they were given an £11 million tax credit, so not so much.
Christopher Wylie (ex-Facebook whistleblower) just gave the primary reason why Facebook is blocked in China.
> 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.
I disagree and believe they have other motivations behind protectionism, limiting democracy, and authoritarianism.
It seems you probably don't have background in Chinese history. There was a period pre-WWII where China was divvied up by colonial powers and humiliated in defeats for over a century (primarily due to a weak navy). The country was addicted at that time not to Facebook but to opium, which was imposed upon by foreign influence. Both nationalist and communist parties recognized this and vowed to unify and expel foreign power. The communists ended up essentially winning, but the legacy of weariness towards foreign influence persisted.
I can assure you the #1 and #2 things in China's mind when banning facebook and google are to #1 prevent a backdoor for the US into massive data collection and #2 nurture homegrown technology companies to prevent spilling wealth out. You might consider #2 to be unfair, but you'd also have to consider that the US was a fully developed economy, and China's developing economy would not be fairly competing against foreign tech companies. The decision has nothing to do with free speech as facebook would simply have to comply with local laws and would have gladly censored at the request of China—but that wasn't the issue.
That being said, protectionism isn't exclusive to China. It's adopted heavily in Japan too, as well as in the US. You can't really argue for or against it as it's a matter of sovereign policy as foreign citizens do not have a natural right to exploit a sovereign market.
Regarding democracy and authoritarianism, keep in mind the the country was super poor and uneducated. Ceding power democratically across the country would have probably resulted in massive corruption. The country is not a dictatorship though, but it is governed by a subset of the population who are communist party members. While they probably want to keep power to themselves, they'll also in theory be better governors than the general public.
Believe it or not the population of China overwhelmingly supports their government. The authority and legitimacy of a government does not come from democracy per se (nor from opinions of people half-way around the world), but from the people. Democracy is a great way to represent the power of the people, but as long as the population approves and delegates power to the government (by not rebelling), then it has legitimacy.
So no there's no democracy, but if they did have a vote right now the people would side with their government, and not the poorly informed foreign distant opinions from people like yourself. It just so happens their form of government does not delegate decisions of governance at the same granularity to the people as we do in America, but then again we don't have much granularity either through our representative form of government (we don't even pick the president!).
They pick their premier through rules of the communist party. We pick our president through a set of complex rules masking the fact that an electoral college actually selects the president (with things like super-delegates, which were enacted to reduce the power of the average voter since one election the democratically elected candidate didn't satisfy the DNC party expectations). In the end they have one party, we have only two real parties. There's not much difference except we directly elect a few more representatives than they do.
Are you claiming China's government isn't massively corrupt right now?
> The country is not a dictatorship though
Never claimed that it was (at this moment).
> Believe it or not the population of China overwhelmingly supports their government. The authority and legitimacy of a government does not come from democracy per se (nor from opinions of people half-way around the world), but from the people. Democracy is a great way to represent the power of the people, but as long as the population approves and delegates power to the government (by not rebelling), then it has legitimacy.
I too have seen that state-published English-language book about the survey that "shows" the Chinese people want a "moral" government before a democratic one. It's right next to a similar title about "true history" of the Dalai Llama (or something like that) in the bookshop in the international terminal of the Beijing airport. On some level, I agree it's true.
But the question of, "do the Chinese people support their government" is a complicated one that I don't think is even answerable at a meaningful level right now. The Chinese information environment doesn't permit it, since it doesn't give the Chinese people the necessary ideological framework or information about alternatives to even form an independent opinion. I'm sure some people do so anyway, but it's a much harder task. In the west people benefit from concepts like "you can love your country and hate your government;" relatively unbiased information; and more varied, competing, opinions.
> So you think the Chinese government's motivation for protectionism is purely because they are undemocratic evil-doers hell-bent on preserving their power.
> I disagree and believe they have other motivations behind protectionism, limiting democracy, and authoritarianism.
And those motivations are? The historic national humiliation thing? To be honest that reads as more of a convenient "surface" justification akin to American evidence-laundering via "parallel construction" from evidence obtained by illegal surveillance. It's not supported by the history of Google in China, for instance. They had a large ~30% marketshare until they refused to play ball on censorship, they then they were blocked, but not before.
The corruption happens at lower levels, and is usually a byproduct of too much power granted to someone who doesn't deserve it. Enabling democracy would have caused more corruption as it requires a well-informed public. China during the revolution was definitely not full of educated and well-informed people.
> But the question of, "do the Chinese people support their government" is a complicated one that I don't think is even answerable at a meaningful level right now. The Chinese information environment doesn't permit it, since it doesn't give the Chinese people the necessary ideological framework or information about alternatives to even form an independent opinion. I'm sure some people do so anyway, but it's a much harder task. In the west people benefit from concepts like "you can love your country and hate your government;" relatively unbiased information; and more varied, competing, opinions.
You're clearly not Chinese, and probably don't many people in China. But I am, and I know people who live in China (middle class, even poor people), and the sentiment is that the government is doing a good job.
> And those motivations are? The historic national humiliation thing? To be honest that reads as more of a convenient "surface" justification akin to American evidence-laundering via "parallel construction" from evidence obtained by illegal surveillance. It's not supported by the history of Google in China, for instance. They had a large ~30% marketshare until they refused to play ball on censorship, they then they were blocked, but not before.
Protectionism is preferred by countries in the same way as the "Buy USA" rhetoric in America that you may be able to relate to. The unique history China had with colonialism is just a bonus. It turns out that China was smart enough to recognize the national importance of the internet technology industry, and levied massive walls against them. You can't easily put an import tax on Google, but you can block them. I can guarantee you it had nothing to do with censorship. Google/Facebook are businesses and would never make a stand by jeopardizing their China business by not complying with local censorship laws. It was never about that. It was simply because they were not welcome, and that if they did flourish they'd have troves of data on Chinese citizens in the hands of a foreign entity.
On what basis do you make that judgement? Isn't it too difficult to truly learn about the activities of high government officials?
> China during the revolution was definitely not full of educated and well-informed people.
There has been quite a bit of time since the revolution. Do you think the Chinese people are well-informed enough for democracy (or at least more political liberalization) now? If not, why not?
> You're clearly not Chinese, and probably don't many people in China. But I am, and I know people who live in China (middle class, even poor people), and the sentiment is that the government is doing a good job.
I know many Chinese people very well. Are you yourself from China or do you similarly just know many people from there? I think the former is likely, but your phrasing is ambiguous.
> [Among] people who live in China (middle class, even poor people), [...] the sentiment is that the government is doing a good job.
That doesn't contradict anything that I wrote, in fact I said that's probably true. My point, stated more bluntly, is that it doesn't mean much if their opinion is controlled. The necessary environment for informed opinion includes open information and freedom from coercion, neither of which exist in mainland China.
The irony.
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.
Practically speaking, he just snubbed an influential, cross-party group of MPs, and the House of Commons where those MPs and their colleagues sit has the closest thing to absolute power that exists within our legal system.
These are people who could pass emergency legislation imposing a windfall tax on Facebook amounting to 100% of everything it does or owns in UK territory and authorising HMRC to immediately seize assets accordingly. They could pass laws requiring all UK-based ISPs to filter Facebook traffic any way they want. They could pass laws imposing an extremely privacy-focussed data protection regime, even more so than the GDPR that is already due to come into effect in a couple of months.
Now, obviously such extreme reactions are unlikely in response to this snub, even given the history here. But there is a whole scale of possible responses to Facebook's current situation, and large fines and/or some of the people involved actually going to prison are not out of the question. Tempting fate may not be the smartest business move Facebook could make.
Not just on Facebook, and not just in the UK. This crosses a line all democratic nations in which SV companies have significant interests and even more significant influence will take note of.
SV and apparently large parts of HN are completely delusional if they think this won't have serious consequences.
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?
Why do you think it is inevitable that people would use WhatsApp or Instagram if they decide to leave Facebook? Is that really as obvious as you are making it out to be? Is there any evidence of that?
The point is that finally, FINALLY the mainstream is paying attention to the potential ramifications of having a consolidated identity on social media, and how they potentially could have their perception of reality distorted by using such services. Now is the time to embrace changes if they come, not to get complacent at the news cycle based on ones own personal cognitive biases.
The media likes to drives us with rage because that attracts clicks, and once a new big thing happens this will be forgotten by everybody forever.
All of that will continue to happen no matter what until people start to think critically and question all the information they get, be it from their parents, school teachers, news outlets or social media.
In my circle of friends in fact a lot of people are using IG and WA and ditched Facebook long ago. I use all of the three solely because my business generates a lot of sales through these channels. So I think yes, people will continue to use it in the foreseeable future. But this opinion is based solely on my bubble that I live in.
Lets be honest, CNN is just a tabloid now. All they want to talk about is Trumps sexcapades when there are so many other things they can focus on that really matter.
This happens with many scandals. I'm reminded of LIBOR "rigging", which all the participants thought was entirely normal.
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.
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).
Primarily because a majority of the public can't sustain their interest in the subject beyond their day-to-day concerns in life.
I mean the whole argument here is that stolen user data from Facebook led a marketing agency to enable a political party with a certain agenda to deceive the public and win a democratic vote. Gathering so much power is a big victory in the first place, that is not so easy to ignore / forget / undo very easily, especially when most people continue to use Facebook products the way they did because the news slowly becomes old and people forget and move on.
This subject is bigger than Facebook, it reveals shortcomings of a democratic vote and how power in the capitalist system can render a democracy to be an illusion. Facebook's victory is to have accumulated so much power in the first place. Power aka most personal user data any institute has ever gathered. Never mind they used shady sly tactics to take permissions in the first place.