Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today | Hacker News Reader

Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today

techcrunch.com

209 pointslaktak308 comments

What struck me as quite interesting was Guy Verhofstadts sideremarks.

>"You have to ask yourself how you will be remembered," he said. "As one of the three big internet giants together with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, who have enriched our world and our societies, or on the other hand, the genius that created a digital monster that is destroying our democracies and societies."

I imagine you have to talk like this to a guy like Zuckerberg to actually have a chance to get through to him.

Presumably Zuckerberg has learned the lesson of Bill Gates: Europe periodically discovers a reason to fine American tech companies large-but-relatively-immaterial amounts of money. Then you eventually graduate to being Old Money, and Europe reminisces fondly about you.

What a load of crap.

By large-but-immaterial, do you mean the money escaped via tax fraud and illegal tax cuts?

'fraud' and 'illegal' might be problematic words here. The tax evasion schemes used by large corporations are often considered exploits of loopholes - i.e. technically legal. Countries try to offer companies a system to provide ridiculously low tax rates for larger regions, because if they get 1% of the revenue of the entire region it's more beneficial to them than getting 20% of their local revenue (numbers are fictional here). That's partly also a reason why e.g. Ireland is fighting on Apple's side on the $13bn ruling, despite them loosing out on $13bn. They'd loose the ability to guarantee companies a low tax rate, which is worth far more.

> 'fraud' and 'illegal' might be problematic words here. The tax evasion schemes used by large corporations are often considered exploits of loopholes - i.e. technically legal.

In your example on Apple this is not clear at all: there are two legal systems at play (the Irish one and the EU one). Apple is only playing by the rules of the Irish one. The problem comes from the EU saying that the Irish laws are not within the EU framework and thus not allowed.

Apple is very much doing not legal things from a perspective of EU law, hence the fine.

Wrong. Ireland's competition rules are harmonised with EU rules. Not by dictat either, it's a condition of signing the various European treaties that you will implement particular laws that conform to certain principles. In this particular case Ireland had broken her own laws on competition. Like with so much of the skullduggery that goes on in Ireland, it took an outside agency to blow the whistle.

it's a condition of signing the various European treaties

These treaties by the way, are passed with popular consent. As a constitutional democracy Ireland requires a Referendum for any constitutional change, which is always necessary when signing up to anything that says we'll conform to some outside agency.

I agree that it is not very clear - which is why I wrote "are often considered" etc. Also the Apple example was brought up to explain a nations' interest in low tax rates, not about whether they're legal or not.

Parent was the one making definitive claims about fraud and illegal actions.

Ireland also benefits from lots of highly paid, highly skilled employees, which it can tax, and also people are happy because there are jobs and oppertunities in Ireland. Many of the big name US tech companies in Ireland employee thousands of people each.

you mean that we treat people like human beings with their own rights, and not some spreadsheet item of potential revenue that have these dumb but exploitable thing called emotions and desires?

Human rights, emotions, and desires are relatively distant to why Europe fined Microsoft about a billion dollars. The thing which got them very vexed was, per the extensive written record of administrative actions, bundling Windows Media Player.

IE was already taken by the time EU came around looking for a reason to give them some well deserved punishment IIRC?

Boohoo, those poor American multinationals.

How about just follow the fucking laws and regulations of the countries you do business in?

Agree but his track record is 14 yrs long already. Let's not forget that.

"It's nearly impossible to get someone to understand something when their livelihood depends on them not understanding it." -- someone I forgot

> someone I forgot

That would be Upton Sinclair.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/30/salary/

Zuck probably thinks that he'll have time to redeem himself...ala Gates. But "If I stop now, FB crashes and I can't do as much good"

> "destroying our democracy and societies"

Imagine how you have to talk to a doomsayer like that knowing no matter what you say, there will be no chance to get through to him.

Depends, he's not wrong if facebook is used as a propaganda device

Disagree. FB will not be our destruction. This kind of hyperbole (and getting others to believe it) harms the type of rational discourse they claim they wanted. I disagree with the evasiveness of course, but this is grandstanding and witch-hunting. With those types of statements, how could one expect a productive inquiry? (hint: one couldn't...it was pandering/posturing and it accomplished that goal)

Inclined to agree. In $job_i_had we dealt with a partner who would routinely ratchet the rhetoric up to the max in this way and all it did was foster bad feeling, damage morale and productivity, as well as block any further useful discourse on whatever topic was under discussion. Not only was it extremely frustrating to deal with, but it didn't achieve anything. It certainly didn't get them what they (thought they) wanted any quicker - quite the opposite in some cases.

All this to show off in front of colleagues/superiors/underlings, or to give the impression of doing something or being actively involved in the process whilst actively causing harm and wasting other peoples' time.

I was occasionally heard to mutter that they could scarcely have done more to sabotage the project if they were actively trying to, which I don't believe they were.

(Btw, I'm not defending facebook: just saying that if you're really making honest enquiries or trying to have a productive discussion, this is not the way to go about it.)

At some point that seems to blur into blaming the printing press for propaganda posters.

That's the actual (but not an official one, just everyone knows what response to expect from the law enforcement services) case in Russia.

If the printing press decided what gets printed in what order and who sees it.

There's a good chance you could get though to him just fine. It takes two to tango in an arms race between platitudes and hysterics.

"As one of the three big internet giants together with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates..."

Please, that's just a poor attempt at flattery, right?

From what I gathered on news sources, most of the (german) MEPs are extremely pissed at Zuckerberg in regards to the question answered, the format of the Q&A and the refusal to livestream a real Q&A. He brought up the question about FB's monopoly on the market, stating that there are plenty of competitor products ("we might have a monopoly on cars but there are still planes, bikes and walking!").

Zuck didn't make friends, I'm fairly certain he made enemies in Europe.

The form of the meeting gave no chance for more than fleeting cross-questioning and ensured that while sharp questions could be asked in plenty Zuckerberg was free to respond with loose generalities and was never put on the spot.

That is the point I think, let him show his commitment or his lack thereof.

He did answer the spiky questions by ignoring them. (I know a real answer would be more useful to us, but I believe that what most interested MEP were Zuckerberg intents)

I think they were interested in getting answers from Zuck but with how the session turned out, I think most of them have most of the answers they need even if Mark didn't speak it out loud.

At least the format and the fact that a lot of the time was taken up asking long-winded questions was the fault of the European Parliament and not Zuck personally. Of course the idea that you can just drag the CEO up to account for whatever grievances you have against the company and hope to get anything out of it seems a bit misguided to me. Looks like more of a PR exercise.

> Of course the idea that you can just drag the CEO up to account for whatever grievances you have against the company and hope to get anything out of it seems a bit misguided to me.

Well, we have to restore the long-forgotten idea of responsibility. The CEO is legally responsible for any wrongdoings of the company. He should also be morally responsible for all unethical activities. But Zuck's defense strategy so far is "I see nothing wrong".

That's because the ethics of what Facebook (and by extension, all online companies) do is a relatively new question and business model. Morally questionable maybe, but it's taken e.g. the EU over ten years to finally start realizing what's going on - bit too late if you ask me. Moral grey area, and legally anything happening to actual Facebook users - who agreed to the terms & conditions - is fine.

The non-facebook users (and by extension, anyone being picked up by any analytics tooling or other 3rd party) is a different matter however.

it's taken e.g. the EU over ten years to finally start realizing what's going on

The Data Protection Directive is from 1995. The GDPR is only an extension and reformulation of it. For example, the existing law already killed the so-called Safe Harbor that US companies had to move data to the US[1], and forced FB to start providing copies of the data they hold to EU citizens[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Safe_Harbor_Priv...

[2] http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/Get_your_Data_/get_your_data...

That’s what I thought about both US Congress and EU. The GDPR on the other hand, is more effective (albeit constraining).

And a bad one at that. The first question I heard when I put on the livestream was something along the lines of: "answer yes or no to the following questions! (...) Will Facebook delete all fake accounts before $date and prevent all new ones from being created?", with the MEP putting on a stern look.

Zuckerberg is smart enough to show up and pretend to get a verbal beating, but I wish he would just point out to the governing bodies that if they want something they should pass laws. The GDPR is a start, but Facebook is not in the business of selling data under the table. They will get the consent they need and I'd be surprised if the percentage of users that make use of their right of access and to be forgotten is relevant to them.

I, for one, am very eager to see what is the official definition of a fake account. Sorry: the European Parliament guided, State Parliament confirmed definition.

Question one: Do either body claim to have jurisdiction over accounts who claim to be from, live in or are friends with European citizen, residents?

Question two: how many pieces of official document will need to be provided before registering, and does a temporary driving license, a refugee certificate, an official copy of your live birth certificate count (all are without photos)?

Question three: is Facebook mandated to confirm that the same piece of information, or the same name, is not used for several accounts; what are the tolerance level for optical matching and recognition?

Question four: is a user choses to change gender…

I’ve got dozens like that.

One idiot in the bunch asked Zuckerberg about having founded Facebook as a hot or not site. They had no idea what they were talking about.

Another politician just used the Q&A platform as an excuse to threaten Facebook with being broken up, while adding very little substance to the discussion.

Another was seemingly out of control emotionally, waving his hands angrily and belting hysterics, while pretending Facebook was going to bring on the end of Democracy and that Zuckerberg might be an evil villain.

Another tried to pretend that somehow Facebook needed regulation to stop bullying: as though bullying doesn't occur every day in every school in the world. It's like saying: we must regulate human behavior to end all crime! Good luck with that. They all seemed to not understand that Facebook = everything that you see everywhere else in life, from the public square to school to home. You can't actually regulate an end to bullying, no matter how sad that is.

After how much I've seen others talk up the wise politicians of Europe, I expected a lot more. They were no better than the US Congress. Which makes sense, given the condition of most of the EU and its politics.

> PR exercise

Yup, in the states we call that Grandstanding. It's not unusual for a witness testifing for Congress to answer one or two questions and the rest of the day is spent listening to long winded speechmaking from the panel with no actual questions.

Just to be exact, I think the MEP you quoted is Guy Verhofstadt[1], who is of Belgian nationality.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Verhofstadt

Yeah, I was reading it this morning and wasn't certain which of them said that or if I heard it elsewhere in a chat.

It's imo a good point and I really hope that the EU gets nasty with FB if they abuse their monopoly any further (or puts up steps to remove the monopoly as with IE (though I don't think the IE case really did much))

There's some irony in getting the Oath panel forcing me to consent to their tracking (in apparent violation of the GDPR) before showing me an article about Facebook's data handling problems.

By the way, if you want to read the article without agreeing to their stuff, stop the page load after the article shows up.

https://guce.oath.com/collectConsent?brandType=nonEu&.done=h...

Why would that violate GDPR?

you're not allowed to say usage of an application/service is conditional on accepting data collection.

I still don't see why not. Maybe it's what GDPR says, but it's wrong and I can't see this being enforced. If data collection is the "payment" for using the "service", you have two choices: you don't pay and don't use the service, or you pay up.

This is like saying a business can't make usage of a service conditional to payment.

"In the EU, personal information cannot be conceived as a mere economic asset: according to the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, the processing of personal data requires protection to ensure a person's enjoyment of the right to respect for private life and freedom of expression and association".

https://edps.europa.eu/sites/edp/files/publication/16-09-23_...

Which is another way of saying that people in the EU do not have the right of ownership over their own lives or property, including their data - that the State owns it and dictates what may be done with it. Terrifying.

It's funny though, to watch everyone talk about how people should own their data in these threads. And there's the EU proclaiming plainly that you in fact do not own your data and may not do with it as you wish.

How did you get that impression. When I read this I get a completely different meaning from it. The State does not own my live or property and they are also not dictating what I can do with it. They are dictating that no one else can do what they want with MY live, property or data without my explicit consent. The state can not give consent to my data: only I can.

adventured is saying that the State removed your possibility of using your data as payment, since now you can't consent if it's a condition of use of the service.

Or to put it another way: the problem with inalienable rights is that you can't alienate them :)

This is a uniquely American point of view on a European law though.

Businesses that make money off advertising are found all over the world, which is a bigger place than just America and the EU.

You can have advertising without user tracking.

But considering everything as a means to make money is American. Everything, including what is considered as a human right in Europe, that is.

I think they're intentionally putting severe restrictions on business models that are built around paying for a consumer service by analyzing and sharing consumers' personal data instead of taking money. You're viewing this as a bug in the law; Europe views this as a feature.

There are certainly cases where one can make access to the service conditional on consent: for example, if the service is to analyze your resume/CV and give you feedback on improving it, or even job leads based on it, of course you'll need to consent to them collecting and processing the personal information on your resume. But you probably don't have to consent to them selling that data or using it to target you with ads going forward. They don't want that business model to be easily and broadly viable in Europe.

I believe you can still store non-personally identifying information, that is to say if you cannot store that User X is a male of 40 years of age and that user x read the article, you can still store that a male of 40 years of age read the article. Probably you don't know User X gender and age under those conditions though.

But assume you have to store some personal information about User X and you do know gender as part of it. Or have code to derive gender at data saving time (This part is tricky by my reading, you have to be able to sort of sandbox the ways that you can get personally identifying info out so that you can show regulatory agencies that you're not pulling it out to do stuff you shouldn't. If you're pulling it out to enrich data before saving, but that data is still not personally identifying the user I think it is probably ok (I'm on shaky ground on this part)

User X as a user of service with login has to allow you to keep their login information or service cannot function. User X says you cannot save my reading history, meaning it cannot be associated with them. But at the time of reading it you save reading activity (this example is of course contrived and silly) - userType: 'requestAnonymous', haslogin: true, age: deriveLikelyAge(User), gender: returnLikelyGender(User), articleId: current.articleId

and so on and so forth. You still have quite a lot of valuable analytics, and you do have some other analytics about the user that has to be saved anyway - which is they have opted out of data collection schemes 1, and 3, but not 2,4,5.

Not all contracts are legal, not in any jurisdiction. The EU has taken the viewpoint that privacy is such a fundamental thing that you cannot be expected to forfeit it without limitation as a ”payment” for a service.

If privacy is a right it might be that in some legal systems you are not allowed to give up your rights, at least not in perpetuity.

Requiring consent as a pre-condition of a service is frowned upon under GDPR. If you have a legitimate requirement (which is fairly rigidly defined under GDPR) or legal obligations for that data then you don’t need user consent, but if you don’t then you need to offer the service regardless of the user consent or not.

I think that's where the wiggle room (or court battleground?) of GDPR will be. Lots of companies do that: Quora, Pinterest,...

There will be years of battles in court how to interpret the GDPR, but not for this.

> (Article 4 ) ‘consent’ of the data subject means any freely given, ...

> Recital 42: Consent should not be regarded as freely given if the data subject has no genuine or free choice or is unable to refuse or withdraw consent without detriment.

> Article 7: 4. When assessing whether consent is freely given, utmost account shall be taken of whether, inter alia, the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is conditional on consent to the processing of personal data that is not necessary for the performance of that contract.

I think quora and co is more about having an account and not about any sort of data consent per say.

Making an account is generally seen as a form of giving consent, especially as you need to agree to the terms and conditions when doing so.

you can make an account and still not consent, e.g. to be tracked because they can't prove that 'being tracked is necessary for reading quora'. the two are orthogonal

You have to be very explicit and clear about what you data you are handing over in GDPR and how it will be used. Making an account usually does not have that information.

Additionally, you need to give a person an option to not hand over that data and still use your app/site 'without detriment' unless that data was essential to your tool.

Techcrunch isn't an European company though, and IIRC they have no obligation to serve European customers so a "wall" is probably allowed. Even if it was european, I don't think the GDPR makes websites obligated to be accessible for everyone.

They are not European, but they have European "partners" (read: advertisers and ad-networks) siphoning off data from their EU users. They are not just a site that happens to be available to the EU.

> Requiring consent as a pre-condition of a service is frowned upon under GDPR.

No, it's not. Requiring extraneous consent as a precondition of service, that is, requiring consent for some processing as a precondition of provision of a service that does not depend on that processing is an indication that consent is coerced rather than freely given, and hence not effective consent, under the GDPR. But what that means on concrete terms with complex interdependent services (and whether it is a de facto ban on such services, because instead extremely granular services and granular consent is required) remains to be clarified, probably through practical enforcement. If one views, for instance, what Facebook was offering pre-GDPR as a service, then “consent for what the service entails or no service” is not extraneous consent. If you view it as a cluster of distinct services, that becomes different. Whether the monetisation model of “free” services is essential or not is another question, and it's quite possible that GDPR will result in a lot fewer free-of-charge services available in the EU.

Requiring extraneous consent as a precondition of service, that is, requiring consent for some processing as a precondition of provision of a service that does not depend on that processing is an indication that consent is coerced rather than freely given, and hence not effective consent, under the GDPR.

But if the service does depend on that processing, then you don't need to ask for consent at all, so why would you? In practice, the statement is true.

You still need to ask for consent.

"If the processing is necessary for a contract with the individual, processing is lawful on this basis and you do not need to get separate consent."

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-da...

There has to be a contract that it is necessary for, which is, itself, consent, and therefore does not—as your quote says—require separate consent.

Fair enough, I was incorrectly restricting "consent" to the one given separately.

Consent must be freely given, granular and revocable.

Consent is only one of the six grounds for lawful data processing. Consent is not always necessary, nor is it always sufficient.

https://gdpr-info.eu/art-6-gdpr/

> Consent must be freely given, granular and revocable

“Granular” appears nowhere in the article you cite nor the related recitals (and even if the exact phrase did, the specific degree of granularity required would still be an open question.)

> Consent is only one of the six grounds for lawful data processing.

I’d argue it's two of the six, as voluntary entry into a contract which requires certain processing is a form of consent, even if the word doesn't “consent” isn't used in that provision.

But in any case, it's the one that's going to be most important to a wide range of consumer online services.

“Granular” appears nowhere in the article you cite nor the related recitals

True, though it does appear in the Guidelines for consent: https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/article29/document.cfm?action=...

>“Granular” appears nowhere in the article you cite nor the related recitals (and even if the exact phrase did, the specific degree of granularity required would still be an open question.)

Recital 43 states:

"Consent is presumed not to be freely given if it does not allow separate consent to be given to different personal data processing operations despite it being appropriate in the individual case, or if the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is dependent on the consent despite such consent not being necessary for such performance."

Recital 42 states in part:

"Consent should not be regarded as freely given if the data subject has no genuine or free choice or is unable to refuse or withdraw consent without detriment."

This is quite plainly worded - if you don't allow users to freely choose which data they give you and what you do with it, then you don't have valid consent. I think that "granular" is a reasonable description. There's certainly a degree of grey area, but the spirit is clear. Putting that into practice requires careful thought. Would a reasonable person understand the implications of your consent agreement? Would they be surprised or annoyed at the scope of your data collection or the use you make of that data? Could you reasonably anticipate a user being unable to properly exercise their rights to choose due to the choices you offer them?

>I’d argue it's two of the six, as voluntary entry into a contract which requires certain processing is a form of consent, even if the word doesn't “consent” isn't used in that provision.

The distinction between consent and contractual necessity is significant. If you're relying on the grounds of contractual necessity, then you can only collect and use the minimum of data for the minimum duration and process it to the minimum extent necessary to fulfil that contract (Art. 5 & recital 39). You can't keep customer data indefinitely or tack on a bunch of clauses to your T&Cs that allow you to sell that data to third parties. If you want to go beyond the absolute necessities, then you'll need to ask for consent. On the other hand, if you're relying on contractual necessity, then the conditions for consent (Art. 7) do not apply.

This sums up EU laws in a nutshell.

there is an "other options" option.

Next level of irony: You just distributed advice for circumventing a technical content protection mechanism, which is illegal in many countries today.

It's not a content protection mechanism.

It amazes me how both the hearing at the US senate, and the one at the European Parliament, were marred by an absurdly ineffectual format of the Q&A session.

You'd think that having achieved the seemingly hardest part, which was to get Zuck to talk to these bodies at all, care will be taken to make the most of the opportunity. Rather, the complete opposite has taken place.

I found it laughable how many times I've heard, during the US Senate session, an injunction addressed to the speaker to wrap it up, as their allotted time was up. The entire thing was rushed as if they were in a hurry to catch a train.

Is the Cambridge Analytica fiasco alone not reason enough to keep Zuckerberg in the hot chair for 12 hours over 2 days, if need be, if that is what is ultimately required to get him to actually divulge meaningful information, rather than the sound bites that he happily served up?

It seems that these hearings were mostly carried out for show, and rather than actually protect the interests of their constituents, these legislative bodies are content to operate on a purely formalistic level, devoid of any actual meaning. This is global politicians v.2018 for you - fumbling, toothless, woefully out of their depth on crucial issues of our time.

As I recall, Zuckerberg didn't provide any answers to the important questions that were actually asked during the hearings, but just said "Sorry" over and over.

I think it's pretty clear he had no intention of admitting substantial error on Facebook's part, come what may, and I think it's not likely that the outcome would have changed substantially had the questioning been longer or more intense.

Simply put, you can approach being questioned honestly, evasively, or in rare cases switch approach due to what is said to you during the questioning. I think it is well demonstrated that Facebook has chosen to be evasive as a core strategy, so the mere manner of questioning will at best serve to make it more blatant.

Of course it was for show, that's why it was public. If the politicians wanted real answers to real questions they'd have done the whole thing behind closed doors, they have these little hearings as a group PR exercise. This is hardly unique to 2018, it's pretty much always been like this.

If worst comes to worst and EU tries to break up Facebook — and it seems likely they might — what would be Facebook’s best path forward?

Theoretically, would it send a stronger signal to US regulators if Facebook simply shut down all operation in the EU? A pop up message to all EU citizens along the lines of “You may no longer access Facebook from within the EU due to X Y and Z from your government. As such, all of your data is unavailable for download and no longer subject to GDPR privacy regulations.” Would that be safer for Facebook in protecting its child companies (which presumably make up a large part of its value) in the US as an effective way to grandstand? Eventually the EU would have to come up with a compromise solution then, too, right? I can’t imagine everyday citizens being happy with the EU if they perceive they’ve blocked them from Facebook.

I’m not saying I would be on Facebook’s side (I definitely wouldn’t), but the sheer scale of Facebook as a global company makes me question the effectiveness of current antitrust law.

I’ve never seen a trade war between a company and a government. And I don’t want to.

Just my impression: if this was Google, then yes. It is very hard to replace Google at this point in time.

Facebook is on its way out. Due to the network effect, Facebook will stay relevant for a long time. But if Facebook would leave the EU then it wouldn't take long for other social networks to take its place.

Facebook is relevant because everybody is on Facebook. Not because it is such a great service.

Personally, I am way more worried about Google.

That network effect can't be underestimated.

In the olden days of a new social network every other week the percentage of my friends and family on each social network (including Myspace, the most dominant) was relatively low, so the pain of switching was low.

Now the percentage on Facebook is extremely high and I don't even know what an alternative would be.

Lots of friends and family are on Whatsapp, quite a lot of people use Instagram but beyond that... there's very little uptake in any other heavily used social network. And of course, they're both owned by Facebook anyway.

So, for me at least, to say Facebook is on the way out, is something I cannot agree with.

Due to the network effect, you may end up with lots of people using Facebook, but actually disliking the service.

What you can see happening is that people treat Facebook more as a news feed then as a platform to communicate with friends.

Once personal communication moves away from Facebook, other communication is likely to move as well. It may take as while though. When that happens, Facebook will be more like a twitter feed.

I'm really curious what will happen to WhatsApp. Will it stay the way it currently is. Or will it become some sort of Facebook?

I wish people would stop taking their anecdata so seriously . . .

> What you can see happening is that people treat Facebook more as a news feed then as a platform to communicate with friends.

I see the opposite trend. People ignore worse-than-useless feed more and more, moving to messenger and especially group chats.

Until serious competitor appears (and I mean real one, not HN-ideal decentralized-blockchain-powered one), FB stays. Tons of people using it in spite of their dislike of the platform has not stopped FB's growth, and who knows if it brings any actual change any time soon.

Do the people you know actually engage with Facebook a lot, though?

I'm still on it and log in a few times a week but I engage far less. I recently used a Chrome extension to delete my old comments and I'm surprised at how much more I posted on it (and publicly, too). Although changing the newsfeed to be mostly memes and adverts was one cause of my disengagement, I think it's also just changing use. I haven't really noticed the recent changes Facebook touted because my friend network simply seems to engage with it less. Maybe a few people still insist on posting dozens of photographs of every trip they take, but I see so much less public discussion and so on.

What happens to a social network when the 'social' bit tails off?

anecdotal, but on my daily commute i see people "engaging" with facebook (and instagram) all the time.

Let's pretend facebook leaves and a EU competitor who follows the GDPR comes alive and Europeans start using it... And the other people outside the EU start using it to stay connected with their EU friends and family... and companies all around the world start using it to stay connected with their EU clientèle... and some major "celebs" start using it either as a political statement or because they don't like that facebook invades their privacy... and then other people outside the EU start using it to stay connected with the other outside-EU people, celebs and companies who already started using it...

We actually had a "facebook" in Germany once named StudiVZ. What killed it was low quality (i.e. many bugs), mismanagement, but more importantly facebook's network effect. If facebook leaves or gets pushed out of the EU, it's entirely possible it will suffer a lot or even go the MySpace route, being hit by hard by the network effect a new European player may create.

Unfortunately it is the nature of the internet social network sector to be monopolistic. Few (if any?) local social networks have survived because people typically - especially europeans - have friends outside EU. VK is a notable exception and i wonder how they made it - possibly anti-americanism played a role.

In a way, facebook should wish they have some competition, so they can avoid all the nosy anti-trust questions, but they don't.

vk is big in Russia (and some other parts) because they are proper Russian, in Russian and for Russians, and they are largely unmoderated, so you can easily find nice and nasty in the same place and also all the warez, porn (incl revenge and child) etc you will ever want. It's really the "wild east" there; I was pretty shocked when somebody started spamming child porn vk groups to one of the websites I moderate (and they were active weeks later still).

Then again, I was told by some Russian acquaintances that vk does not try to push American/European morals (like no nudity for America, no "hate speech"/gore for EU) and that really is how they explain it is so popular (then again, of course you wouldn't want to run an LGBT community on vk). Other folks from the West and Latin America found it useful too. E.g. I read that some German Nationalists/White Supremacist fringe groups moved to vk because it will not crack down on those groups, unlike Facebook.

But back to my point: if the EU really cracks down on facebook so that it is (forced to) stop(s) being available in the EU, then some new player from the EU might fill the gap and the network effect of friends and family may drive people to the EU version that anybody can use and away from the US version that EU cannot use and is a privacy nightmare anyway; so the effect may point in the opposite direction this time. I know the likelihood of this happening is pretty low, but a lot less low now with the GDPR and the EU politicians' new found interest in facebook's business model.

I'm sorry but what is your source of information exactly? "Hate speech" vkontakte is very dangerous in Russia and could put you in prison for a long time. Even upvotes and reposts could lead to very undesirable outcome. On the other hand I never heard of any problems for LGBT communities: despite western propaganda no one really cares about them. It didn't took me long to google them.

I don't remember any significant bugs in studivz. Also, in my opinion, the site's design was very clear and straightforward. I definitely preferred it over Facebook and would still.

I agree with that analysis. The main reason why Facebook is relevant in Europe is because everybody is still on it - but actual usage is steadily decreasing, especially in the younger generation. Most communications nowadays is done via WhatsApp, but that is trivial to replace. (Telegram is already quite popular, and then there is Signal, Threema, etc.)

Of course, it would be a blow for individuals if all their uploaded content was suddenly locked. But at least in Germany FB already has such a bad reputation that public indignation might center more on the company than on the EU regulators.

> least in Germany

Germany is draconian about privacy , but a lot of the rest of the EU is really not. I would even expect a backlash to GDPR from businesses or politicians or people who lose access to audiences.

Draconian? Just because we got laws in Germany saying you need permission to store personal data and you need to make available that data upon request and/or remove it upon request?

One thing I always found rather bizar is where ISPs break internet connections after 24 hours to force the customer to get a new IP address.

And then the next step was where the home routers would disconnect after less then 24 hours to make sure that the disruption happens in the middle of the night. Or something to that effect.

I wonder if in Germany people get new telephone numbers every 24 hours as well.

Ye, that's true... They started doing it so that you didn't just keep your IP for ages as a quasi static IP and then host things from there... because the "dedicated" lines with a static IP were/are different offers with a lot bigger price tag.

Yes, it's ridiculous, but has nothing to do with privacy laws.

GDPR is a whole other story. While I applaud the spirit, it is one nightmare of a regulation. (This is speaking from the small non-profit / volunteer organization sector - we neither have the know-how nor the manpower to deal with its requirements.)

> Personally, I am way more worried about Google.

The reason I'm not is that Google appears to be a /lot/ more willing to respect their user's privacy, and were ahead of the curve with allowing opt-outs of personalized advertising and the likes...

Have a look at the data they have on you.

I was really annoyed to see all my duckduck go searches via chrome got stored (there was a reason I was using duck duck go). Plus they know my email. Even if I used a different email address probably 50% of my emails would still go via google because that's what my contacts have.

Facebook is less transparent, but they get a fairly crappy subset of my data in my opinion. Plus I barely use it this days.

How so?

Pretty much everything that Google offers has good alternatives, and there are little or no network effects except for YouTube.

E.g. you can use Bing Search, OpenStreetMap/Bing Maps, Office365, Fastmail, LineageOS, AWS/Azure, Vimeo instead of the Google products.

In fact, the search engine is the only product that might be significantly better than alternatives.

Shut down the EU company entities, move all operations back to the US. There is no need to show a warning message to its users, EU laws do not apply to US firms. Also, despite what EU lawmakers may say, a purely US-based internet company is not required to comply in any way with EU laws even if they have customers/visitors/users in the EU.

If Facebook wants to have any customers (advertisers) in Europe (and they do), then they are subject to EU laws.

If that’s the case, why do any multinational tech companies have entities outside of their home country? There has to be something that allows them to access banking and finance in each country, no?

Convenience, processing payments in local currencies, making use of tax loopholes.

They do have to comply with EU laws if the EU says so. If nothing else, none of their management will be able to visit the EU anymore without risk of being prosecuted.

Around 25% of Facebook's worldwide revenue comes from EU.

Taking your ball and going home means leaving a lot of money on the table.

A purely US-based internet company is required to fully comply with EU laws if they want to see a single (euro)cent from customers in EU, otherwise all that money can and will be seized.

Facebook can trivially afford to end all business in the EU as needed. Very little of their business growth is in the EU, and that will go for future growth as well. Courtesy of the changes to US corporate tax law, Facebook also has no need to store large sums of foreign profit overseas eg in Ireland or similar (where the EU can reach it).

They're one of the most profitable large corporations in world history in terms of margins. Their net income margin last quarter was 41.6%. Facebook will generate at least $23b in profit this year (probably closer to $25b). Giving up $4 or $5 billion of that is not a dire problem.

It depends on what you mean by "can trivially afford".

If you take it as "will they survive if they do that", then yes, it's true for the reasons you describe.

If you take it as "will they consider that as a plausible option worth discussing" the answer is hell no, it would be laughed at in their board room and not even given a serious thought.

Giving up $4 or $5 billion (actually, FB European revenue was 10+ billion in 2017; giving up EU would lose all the revenue but not decrease the costs proportionally, but not that the number matters) of that is much more than a dire problem, it's a taboo situation - they'll survive if it magically happens, but nobody would even dare to be seen allowing it happen or not doing their utmost to prevent it. Even if there's absolutely no way around it, they'll go down screaming and do pretty much everything possible and impossible to avoid giving up that much money.

I imagine US regulators would be on Facebook's side there. The US can't really tolerate a world where the EU purports to reach inside American borders and forcibly reorganize American companies.

The US regulators didn't seem to mind when the EU complained about IE...

When you do business in a country or union be prepared that they will enact their law on you.

Absolutely. Facebook deliberately chooses to have a business presence in the EU, and nobody denies that this means the EU can levy fines against them or set rules on how they operate within the EU.

Normally I’d agree with you, but my personal opinion is that this current administration seems to only help those it personally approves of (extending an olive branch to China and ZTE, coal miners, steel mills, middle America...) and root for the demise of those it doesn’t (Amazon/Bezos, any major newspaper, net neutrality, tech in general...)

The US have no qualms about regulating European companies, so they shouldn't complain. Just recently they were trying to keep Europeans out of Iran to enforce their unilateral sanctions...

There's currently a well-funded activist campaign advocating for breaking up Facebook by separating Instagram, WhatsApp, etc into separate companies: http://freedomfromfb.com/

Compliance would be facebooks best bet. If they pull out they lose a lot of money and give their competitors a large breeding ground to develop in. The superior privacy of competitor platforms would make them enticing for US users as well.

> "As such, all of your data is unavailable for download and no longer subject to GDPR privacy regulations"

IANAL, but wouldn't this itself violate the GDPR?

Also not a lawyer (but skipping initialism of that), but I believe the GDPR covers any business servicing the region (EU), and this scenario indicates Facebook stop servicing EU.

However, they absolutely did business servicing the EU before and gathered an enormous amount of personal data of EU citizens by doing that.

As such I'd be surprised if they simply declare their service closed at one time and instantly lose all obligations for the data they collected in the past.

As an analogy, if you paid for some service in advance, the service took your money and then, instead of providing the service, spontaneously declared to end their relationship with you, you'd probably have good chances if you were to sue them.

On the other hand, I guess Facebook really does not want to do that, because it would create an opening to attack Facebook. Right now, you can't compete with the network effects of Facebook's size, however if 10% or so of all Facebook users are up for grabs, and they are also correlated by region, then you could build a European Facebook competition and capture a strong enough base to effectively compete with Facebook. (Initially at least in Europe, however pretty quickly many people in the rest of the world would also have a 'European Facebook' account and then Facebook can't just rely on everybody is on Facebook anymore.)

I would actually be quite interested how that one plays out, I really don't have a good intuition of how that would look like.

What would a break-up of Facebook actually look like? With MS the threat to break up OS and apps led to browser choice as compliance; with hypothetical Google the business units can be dis-integrated. I'm having trouble thinking where the Facebook lines would be drawn.

If anything, this kind of regulation helps companies like Facebook keep their "monopoly", because it raises the monetary cost of starting a competitor. A number of smaller services and games have shut down due to increased cost of compliance, even for companies that don't have any privacy issues.

What alternative do you propose? The free market obviously fails to address privacy issues, I don't see how anything besides stricter regulation can help the affected people here.

I'm not a policymaker, but GDPR seems overly-reactionary, over-reaching, and not well thought-out. I think the negative unintended consequences are likely much greater than however much it actually protects the privacy of individuals (which I don't think will be much at all).

GDPR is mostly a regulation that was a directive (DPD) before. If you handled data responsible before and didn't do shady stuff with it, there is little extra to do to be GDPR compliant.

Except if you had targeted advertising you now need to allow users to use the same service without targeting. (ie 'without detriment')

I don't think GDPR is flawless, but at some point if we don't do anything, privacy violations are going to become so common place and so entrenched in the online economy that we can't fix it anymore.

At that point, the discussion would be all about all the "jobs we would destroy" and "businesses opportunities we would shut down!", and heavy lobbying would make sure it gets nowhere.

Do you think that the GDPR has really changed anything for either Facebook or its users? Do you think that anything changed in the way data is being handled? All i see is a bunch of highly paid law firms writing up 200 additional pages in terms and conditions to shield the company, but nothing really changed as far as daily business is concerned.

Considering that GDPR is only in full effect after May 25th 2018, there is nothing to talk about in regards to its effect right now.

It seems most of their GDPR user facing changes have been made: https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/17/facebook-gdpr-changes/

Two hundred extra pages of new privacy info in the T&Cs would fail GDPR:

The information you provide to people must be concise, transparent, intelligible, easily accessible, and it must use clear and plain language.

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-da...

If a company has money to hire lawyers to make an extra 200 pages of T&Cs, I'm sure they will have the money to argue that those pages are "concise, transparent, intelligible, easily accessible, and it must use clear and plain language".

Not yet, it'll take a few lawsuits. See the work of Max Schrems:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Schrems

https://www.fbclaim.com

Apparently they are already GDPR compliant (FB). In their case it's actually easy to justify their legitimate interest because their entire business is the handling of private data. Ironically, even though GDPR is supposed to affect things like facebook more, it changes very little about the way they work.

Whether their business model is handling data is irrelevant; they must ask for consent to use that data for ads and such - and that's even if they already have collected the data to provide a service requested by the user.

They recently came out with a new screen asking users to consent to a bunch of things, so they weren't compliant until then, and I wouldn't bet they are now.

Not that I am advocating this approach, but regulations that are more about liability and transparency (towards journalists and shareholders) might help.

Liability means that mistakes are (hopefully) punished more proportionally to their effects, which allows one to scale measures as the business grows. Meanwhile, the transparency means that any potential issues are easier to spot, making it possible for suits to be brought. Note that transparency towards users has been shown to be rather ineffective, similar to how no-one reads the eula.

Thinking on the run here, but: the reason big companies have an advantage here is that they grew big before regulations, and their current size can deal with the regulations easily; while small companies don't have the resources to deal with the regulations. So how about a levy on these larger companies that goes straight to small companies to help with the regulatory burden of such regulations?

Decrease the cost of compliance by communicating super-clearly.

- The UK ICO's Guide to the GDPR is a good step. Kudos to those who got the budget passed to do that. https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-da...

- Produce clear example cases before things are litigated. That way, you don't run into the problem of "Well, nobody really knows how things are going to shake out and people are trying to stay in the middle of the pack in terms of compliance" (Which is what I heard from an entrepreneur at a panel at Slaughter & May)

- Hire someone to write The Manga Guide to GDPR Compliance, in the style of https://nostarch.com/mg_databases.htm Or in the style of http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1585.

- Post video courses with the same sort of content.

Part of the problem here is that law firms have a strong incentive to publish SEO-optimised content which proclaims that compliance is difficult and confusing and that you should hire an expert law firm.

>The free market obviously fails to address privacy issues,

No it doesn't. Everything was working completely fine before.

I propose allowing people to use their private data as a form of monetary exchange. Iow, GDPR disallows apps/sites to ask a user if they would allow targeted advertising or would like to pay for the app. There is no good reason for this in my eyes. Transparency is great but don't force people to not be allowed to use their personal data in an exchange.

It's a win-win politicians can make hey of continuing to hate Zuckerberg and "making good" on it by continuing to prop him up with such barriers to entry.

Someone who runs a club recently told me he was moving all comms to Facebook because of the GDPR. He says that means that he is not collecting user data only Facebook is and so he doesn't have to worry about GDPR things.

This is a bit awkward for me since I don't use Facebook.

He's going to find himself in for a shock. The platform he chooses to store data on is irrelevant, if he's processing that data then GDPR applies.

Nah, he would not be storing any data himself. He s not a processor or a controller.

Is Facebook monopoly any worse than having multiple actors in the data collection field? If anything, having more competitors would push each to be more cunning in their collection and retention of data, to appear more valuable to stakeholders.

One evil is better than two.

Or having more competitors would push them to ask for data portability and thus transparency.

Data portability (and careless, incentivised users) is what started the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Portability meaning here moving data, not copying or sharing data.

I’m not sure that I am grasping the distinction you are making.

The regulation, after all, did not have as a goal to break up monopolies, but to protect user data.

I think that's only a temporary thing.

If people actually start writing software from ground up where it's easy to handle GDPR requirements, such as user deletion, giving users access to their data, etc., then it shouldn't be hard to start compliant and stay compliant.

I think the right to access and delete are the easy parts. More people are complaining about the consent requirements and the added bureaucracy.

  ALTER TABLE users ADD COLUMN consents jsonb;

Easy enough.

In that case compliance and regulation should be run similar to the way the SEC runs it. There is a threshold and if you report AMU over say 5mn you are subject to tier 1 compliance, then tier 2 and so on. follow me?

It's a huge competitive advantage for privacy-oriented companies that were actually following the old Data Protection Directive. I've spoken to people who are in a blind panic about GDPR day, but I've also spoken to people who were completely unconcerned because they already had their ship in order.

If your business relies on re-selling user data or aggressively targeting ads through data mining, coming into compliance will be painful and expensive; it might completely break your business model. If your business just sells a useful service at a reasonable price while respecting user privacy, you've got very little to worry about.

> huge competitive advantage

I get the advantage of being more prepared to apply GDPR but that lasts 1-2 months max. The fact that people keep using facebook mindlessly in and out of EU over the last year makes one wonder: Does it really matter to users?

>I get the advantage of being more prepared to apply GDPR but that lasts 1-2 months max.

The advantage is in having a sustainable business model that isn't based on exploiting user data.

With GDPR-compliant privacy controls in place, it'll be a lot harder to target advertising or profit from user data by selling it to third parties. Companies that provide a "free" service based on these revenue streams will face a long battle of regulatory enforcement and dwindling ARPU. They might have no choice but to completely pivot their business model. If you just provide a service in exchange for money and take reasonable steps to protect your users' privacy, it's business as usual.

This applies doubly to startups. If a service like Snapchat or Instagram were to launch next week, potential investors will be asking a lot of questions about how their revenue model will hold up against GDPR. The old approach of "grab a ton of users, harvest a ton of data and figure out how to monetise it later" doesn't really stack up when your ability to financially exploit personal information is severely curtailed. If you decide to fence off EU users and exploit everyone else's data, you're playing a risky game - the regulators will not react sympathetically if it turns out your geofencing technology is imperfect and you've been illegally harvesting EU user data.

> The advantage is in having a sustainable business model that isn't based on exploiting user data.

facebook can do that too (it's just less profitable), so there isnt really an advantage here.

> If your business just sells a useful service at a reasonable price while respecting user privacy, you've got very little to worry about.

What about games/apps people would never pay for but they would be ok with getting targeted ads within? Is the EU ok with losing these services because they would not be profitable businesses if their only option were to ask users to pay?

>Is the EU ok with losing these services because they would not be profitable businesses if their only option were to ask users to pay?

Evidently, yes. If your business can't survive without infringing on the rights of users, then the EU doesn't want your business.

But what if those apps could survive if they were allowed to ask for your private data or a payment? That wouldn't infringe on anyone's rights as far as I can tell.

look , the EU has decided to change the ad-supported model of the web. doesn't matter what addicted users want

Not addicted (?) - just willing to be targeted by personalized ads.

Most press I’ve read so far in Europe is largely neutral or positive about Zuckerberg but very negative about the procedings, the parliament and conduct of the representatives. This is unusual but in my option justified.

Here is one particularly devastating article (Google Translate):

https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...

Looking at the Dutch media it's the complete opposite of what you say. It's mostly about Zuckerberg not saying much, to the frustration of the members of parliament.

Well, they also state how odd it was how the proceedings were conducted, what with Zuckerberg being able to pick which questions to answer.

Same here in the UK. Nothing positive about Zuckerberg so far, so I'm not sure what media the parent is reading.

> I'm not sure what media the parent is reading.

Um, Der Spiegel apparently.

SPON would be the only outlet that framed the story that way tbh.

https://www.zeit.de/digital/internet/2018-05/mark-zuckerberg...

https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2018/05/22/facebook-zu...

https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Kritik-an-Zuckerberg...

interesting cause i read it as 'zuckerberg didn't say much of any substance'

I don't know about that, French media at least seems to point out a lot how empty Zuckerberg answers were, and indeed criticizing the format of the session.

But deputies are painted as informed and not mincing their words, which is exactly what I would expect of my deputy.

Deutsche Welle is critical of Zuckerberg, so is the BBC (to a slightly lesser extent).

Well, he made one friend [0], poor lady.

[0] https://twitter.com/ceciliawikstrom/status/99898468946035916...

I feel much more sorry for the citizens of Sweden than I do for that "poor lady" who made a point of looking like Zuckerburg's tool. If Cecilia Wikström was my elected representative, I'd start investigating how to expatriate.

She is clearly pretty naive but that grilling is fairly harsh imho. At least on twitter she seems to have become the symbol of how the entire group of EU politicians messed up.

ZuckBot? "attention-sapping, app gobbling elephant"? What kind of poor excuse for journalism is this? Or is it an op-ed that's just not clearly labeled.

Normally I would be disappointed such a terrible article would be so regarded by the community, but no longer. The pitchforks are out, and the more anti-FB you can be in your reporting, the larger the audience. Critical thought had ceased and it's one sided now. What a sham these politicians are in their grandstanding and IMO along with mass media outlets have grossly over exaggerated the harms.

We should be pissed at Antonio Tajani (President of the European Parliament since January 2017) who set up the hearing such that Zuckerberg could cherry pick his favorite questions and answer only those.

>> So while Facebook’s contract change for international users looks largely intended to shrink its legal liabilities under GDPR, it’s possible the change will open up another front for individuals to pursue strategic litigation in the coming months.

Most definitely. Too much at stake.

He doesn't need friends, he has everyone's private chats...

And it didn't seem as he wanted to make any friends either. I'm pretty sure the EC is already drafting regulation or actions against facebook based on this hearing... but i m not sure what facebook plans to do. Perhaps they 'll spin off a separate EU facebook? Go back to US and wall off EU? The EU parliament seems to think that facebook's users are their users but Zucc has not said a word about this.

In every one of the interviews that I have seen, he is cherry picking answers. He never directly answers them and purposefully makes broad statements that cannot be actually proved. This man created the biggest social media to date, which I thankfully do not use, which spies on its own customers, censors anyone who does not agree with the company's political views and sells personal data to anyone who can make a high bid. I wouldn't be surprised if Putin asked him to compile a list of all of the Russian people who talk poorly of him and Zuck just gave that list to him for a quick buck.

EDIT: I also love how he orders the court to stop and then "[He] seemed most uncomfortable at not having his orders instantly carried out."

He is clearly asking for it.

Well, he seems to have made one friend:

https://twitter.com/CeciliaWikstrom/status/99898468946035916...

(Zuckerberg posing with a Swedish MEP, all smiles.)

How is TechCrunch still making the front page of HN? They are the masters of incendiary and polarizing "news" with the only goal to generate "outrage" and clicks and thus revenue. Hacker News audience still eats it up I guess.

Have we not learned anything by exposing the Russian mind-warfare ads that targeted US citizens? They played both-sides, with the goal of polarization, destabilization, and control. The same can be attributed to media such as TechCrunch, just with less lofty goals that of Russia.. Money.

TC is fine

FB is perfect example for monopoly abuse

How so?

Having a lot of customers isn't a monopoly.

Having the great majority of the customers IS a monopoly. And also trying to buy the rest is (e.g. instagram, whatsapp).

But then every firm that created a new product or new product category would be immediately illegal.

That's why monopolies aren't illegal, not even in the EU. They have to engage in abuse to create or maintain a monopoly.

But Facebook hasn't done that. Buying your competitors is not abuse of market position, they willingly joined forces.

Do explain. Also, unlike e.g. Intel who got a huge fine from the EU for price deals with OEMs, Facebook didn't use dirty tricks to gain market share.

Lying about their capabilities and intentions when buying WhatsApp doesn't count?

Facebook should be moving to a decentralized, blockchain powered solution as fast as possible.

Ethics aside, the regulators are looking to regulate and looks like ready to hammer facebook. I’m pretty sure they’re interested in the data and surveillance Facebook can provide for them.

A blockchain solution can give Facebook some time. They have the userbase and the money.

The EU and its officials are a joke. I cringe when these EU bureaucrats act like they are going to "get tough" on US businesses and the Trump administration.

They lack digital sovereignty and nation state sovereignty. Local and federal EU agencies continue to depend on Microsoft and other US tech giants. They didn't even manage to unveil the NSA wiretapping, to this day still not a single person or company has been charged with wiretapping Germanys biggest internet exchange hub (DeCIX).

They rage about US tax cuts and tech companies using tax loopholes while doing nothing about the greatest tax haven on earth located within their own borders: Luxembourg.

The EU is a joke and i sincerely hope it falls apart soon.

Other than being politics as usual (which are a joke because politicians are not equipped for dealing with complex issues other than public relations)...

If EU died, who do you think would take over and why do you think they'd be any better?

US has problems of its own with "digital sovereignty" as it allowed China to take over most of manufacturing. Russia is saddled with social debts and social warfare. EU nation states on their own can't do nothing - the business mostly goes to "where value is". (Just look at what is happening in Romania - the question is, how long can they keep it up.)

As for the tax haven, the new regulations in quite a few baton states of the EU now require paying tax in the country where business is done, not registered. Obviously companies try to dodge this as much as they can.

If EU died, who do you think would take over and why do you think they'd be any better?

Easy. Nation states would. And they'd do better, at least some of the time, because they're more accountable.

Just compare the Congress vs EUP performance. The USA is arguably too large and too centralised. But Congress, despite having many ancient politicians who clearly have never used the internet let alone Facebook, still managed to run rings around the EU "Parliament" (it's not really a parliament). The EU apparently allocated nearly all the hearing time to politicians speaking, leaving only minutes for Zuckerberg to reply, allowing him to pick and choose which questions he answered.

And yet there won't be any real impact on the EUP for this because it's not a real parliament, it can't actually change laws by itself. So the people who run can't have any real policies, and as a result it's stuffed with political nobodies with no ideas beyond rah-rah EU and sometimes boo-boo EU, so voters tune out and ignore it. There's little competition.

> And they'd do better

Not a chance. Not in Europe. Go and read about our history when there was no EU.

> US has problems of its own with "digital sovereignty" as it allowed China to take over most of manufacturing.

US manufacturing output is at an all-time high. Presently manufacturing in the US is booming, and the US is the #2 nation in manufacturing.

I'm guessing that you're referring to the myth that China stole away all US manufacturing. That didn't happen. What did happen is vast productivity gains in US manufacturing have eliminated millions of manufacturing jobs. Real manufacturing output per US manufacturing worker increased by 4x from just 1980 to 2010 for example.

Zuckerberg is a very rational and collected person, so if he didn't make friends then he didn't want to make friends. It also implies the actual significance of the EU.

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