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Comment by zaarn | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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...

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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

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))

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.

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