Zuckerberg and Sandberg will defy Canadian subpoena, risking contempt vote
cnn.com
cnn.com
On the other hand, a multinational company can't be expected to fly its CEO to a legislative hearing in every country where it operates... you could spend an entire year doing that instead of actually running your company. It's just straight-up logistically impossible, a legitimately unreasonable burden. And if a government legitimately just needs information as opposed to just optics, they don't need the CEO anyways.
Where do you draw the line? It seems pretty reasonable for the CEO to show up to hearings for the country where your company is headquartered... but to send lieutenants everywhere else, no?
They're sending multiple people, just not the CEO. It's logistically impossible for a CEO to be in every country at every government's whim, and also run their company. Shouldn't a company be allowed to choose who represents it legally?
If they've got enough people to send in their place, then they also have enough people to run the company while they do the things like this.
It's not like it's just any country's whim, it's a group of G7 countries conveniently meeting next door.
If every single little country was calling on them all the time, then yeah maybe, but this seems like one of those "pick and choose" situation where you should send the CEO and Founder.
Zuckerberg makes great fodder for Bad Lip Reading. :) [0]
So legal authority is determined by the size of the nation? Or the number? They either can or cannot compel him to do so, regardless of size or number.
If there's anyone who will simply not be disrupted AT ALL by this kind of visit, it's the CEO of a $500bn company who has the resources of a small nation at his disposal. Hell, it's even practically the same time zone.
It's not about any of their hierarchical importance, it's about how useless that idea is.
The CEO sure has the last word on everything (and even that isn't true), but he isn't the actual expert on its platform.
Having the head of state would make no sense there, they have better things to do and sending countries representatives that actually have time to learn and understands the actual matters make much more sense.
Just like sending CEO doesn't make sense, sending actual experts that can answers theses questions much better make much more sense.
[1] sure, in practice they’d rank 80/186 by GDP (IMF 2018) if they were a nation, but they aren’t that kind of entity.
At the point in which you have 1B+ users, access to mind-boggling quantities of information about them, and unprecedented power over elections.
I do not like Facebook at all, but I can recognize a sustained media smear campaign when it's smacking me in the eyeballs every day.
It is impossible for even the smartest voter to do better by the power of reason alone. Reason isn’t magic.
Because everything at some level is propaganda. Even facts can be presented in such a way that they support any argument.
The only way to fight misinformation is with more, better information. Filter bubbles preventing this type of content from reaching users is the real problem.
I consider the two biggest problems with FB et al is that they are a paperclip optimiser for human attention, and that they are systematically exploitable by hostile actors. Filter bubbles are merely an emergent feature of that optimisation, not the cause.
I’m saying gin=gout. No matter how smart you are, if you see only one side you can’t possibly tell if it’s a good argument as you have nothing to compare it against. Following on from that, thanks to all our human cognitive biases and limitations, the information doesn’t even need to be totally one sided. 20th century democracy worked acceptably well because vested interests controlling newspapers etc. couldn’t dominate every aspect of political discourse everywhere all the time — although there are a few interesting examples of them dominating specific demographics, and as a result a whole bunch of people have been needlessly demonised, which is literally how I know this is a problem that can happen.
Let's assume that every voter is 99% responsible for their own vote, and there is a 1% FB component. So every voter, individually, is responsible for their own vote.
But facebook has influence over, let's say, 200M voters. Multiply that by 1% and you get 2M votes. And of course the selective targeting means that FB doesn't need to apply their influence with a sledgehammer like that. They can target people that they have a very good sense are at the tipping point for the message.
Add to that the electoral college system, so you only have to target a very small set of people in order to tip the election (ignore anyone in CA, for example).
So FB having power and voters being responsible are not mutually exclusive.
https://origin.computerworld.com/article/2491420/facebook-em...
I do agree that we should give up on democracy altogether but that’s a different topic, yeah.
If it’s logistically impossible for a large multinational operating in many countries to comply, then maybe its unreasonable for a single company to operate in so many countries.
There’s such a weird sense of entitlement here, that companies should be able to do what they want and countries need to accommodate them. There’s nothing that says it must be easy or even possible to operate a company in every country in the world simultaneously.
I see no need to draw any lines. If you don’t want to be subject to a particular country’s rules, there is a really easy solution: don’t operate there.
If the purpose of the meeting were more than a show trial, I might feel different. But, that is universally not the case. FWIW I would not be offended if Zuckerberg declined invitations from the US congress either, although it's difficult for him to do so considering they could actually arrest him.
But, the Canadian government thinks it.
They don't just call up folks on whim. Cost of doing business for FB. CEO gotta do CEO things, which includes the occasional inconvenience of answering a few questions from the Government.
Apparently he doesn't, though. What the Canadian government thinks matters only to the degree that they have the power to compel their desired behavior, and the will to use that power.
Also, I contend the Canadian government doesn't think there's a just purpose in him showing up. Whether any of the politicians will admit it, I'm sure they are aware that no productive purpose will be served by Zuckerberg's attendance, besides their own political self-aggrandizement. They do not need his input on any proposed policy. They don't need information from him that cannot equally well be acquired from a lieutenant or through a letter. To be clear, I'm not saying these politicians are corrupt or anything. They are doing what is rational from their perspectives. Scoring points against Zuckerberg is a win, since a few constituents would really like it and anyone else won't care either way. But rational, goal-seeking behavior and just behavior are often different things.
On the other hand, Zuckerberg is also doing what is rational from his perspective. To give in to this request would probably cost him dearly in time going forward as every politician in the world looking for a distraction would be knocking at his door. Like us all, he has a limited amount of time on this Earth. I doubt he has much desire to spend it as a whipping boy for foreign governments, and so he cannot accede to the request unless Canada ups the ante.
I'm pretty sure the legislature and judiciary of each country considers obeying their laws to be necessary, with or without your blessing.
National governments don't summon the leaders of major businesses without a good reason, and many national governments don't all end up doing so at almost the same time without a good reason that spans lots of countries. If there is an issue that big, maybe it should be the CEO's top priority anyway?
What you call a show trial, others might call demanding the person at the top because that way there is no deniability or passing the buck. The US might have run the Zuckerberg hearing as a show trial and had mostly token incompetent and ignorant representatives asking the questions in a format designed to be kind. That doesn't mean that other countries who want real answers to serious questions about Facebook's conduct under Zuckerberg's leadership need to do the same.
I fully understand that Canada does not need my approval. Surely that's obvious. Why bring it up?
The question is whether what they're doing is good. Good governance, good policy, good economics, good ethics, etc. Them having the power or authority to do it is almost totally irrelevant to that.
I'll tell you what would convince me that there's some good reason, and if you know of an instance, you can let me know and I'll admit some modicum of wrong. If Canada's legislature has interrogated a famous CEO or similar figure about a popular issue, and the contents of that interrogation have led to substantially unanticipated outcomes, I would be willing to admit that I'm at least partially wrong. My priors are that that sort of thing does not happen. At least, I've never seen it happen in my own country.
>the contents of that interrogation have led to substantially unanticipated outcomes
How would one prove something like that? I think some more specificity would be necessary to be able to answer that question. Do you mean unanticipated by the mainstream of commentators, unanticipated by the legislature itself, by the corporate officer in question, by literally anyone on the Earth, or by yourself?
Calling this a “show trial” is silly. They’re not going to toss him in prison afterwards.
This is literally the person who they would hall away in cuffs and send off to jail if they charged the corporation with a criminal act in the country, etc.
Requiring that, and then not letting them send those people, is definitely stupid.
Saying you have a model where someone else is accountable, and then not accepting that person as a stand-in, makes no sense.
Well, except for the "we want our political theater so we can look like we care to our constituents", which this kind of thing almost always is, it makes no sense.
For countries that don't, yeah, sure.
Canada allows both branches and wholly owned subsidiaries. (I'm too lazy to discover which facebook is using).
In the subsidiary model, the subsidiary would, in a lot of cases, have its own CEO.
So if Facebook Canada is a subsidiary and has a CEO, Canada should be okay with that person testifying.
If they aren't, they shouldn't be allowing this model, and only allow the branch model.
(In the branch office model, i'm fine with requiring the parent CEO to testify)
The article says that Facebook is sending subordinates:
>Facebook said is it [sic] sending Kevin Chan, its head of public policy for Facebook Canada, and Neil Potts, its director of public policy, to the meeting instead.
Facebook is already subject to Canada's laws, and they should continue following them if they want to continue being subject to those laws.
The question of whether a company should be subject to legislative summons like this when that company is only incidentally involved with the country is an interesting one, but it’s also completely irrelevant to this discussion.
And then in the very next sentence you appear to answer this:
> I no longer need any kind of physical presence to do business there
Doing business is doing business.
Also, there is a serious risk flying to some countries. I would expect quite a few of them to arrest for some "crime" and demand a "fine" to be released.
These thugs should be held accountable. Giving BS excuses about "oh we dropped the ball on the last 10 elections" doesn't cut it. Maybe some citizens are to meek or irresponsible or ignorant; this doesn't mean that these thugs should get a pass.
You don't get called out for a legislative hearing for running a company. You get called out for a legislative hearing when you are running your company poorly, and in opposition to public welfare.
If he doesn't want to meet the legal obligations for operating in Canada, Mark is more then welcome to close up shop.
Still, he might need to pay fines.
* closes all canadian offices
* shuts down all canadian datacenters
* moves everything back to America
What will canadians do? Easy, keep using Facebook with slightly higher latency. He'll put up a bunch of servers right across the border; done. Unless canada wants to pull a China and start censoring the traffic of her citizens, she'd be out of options.
His board will destroy him.
Letting 'jobmakers' hold jobs hostage over their incompliance with the law is like negotiating with a terrorist. It opens the door for others to extort you, and the only correct move is to not do it.
Aside from that if any company should be able to have it's CEO work remotely Facebook should, so year he will spend some hours in a hearing, and then answer his email.
If companies want to be treated as citizens they must, periodically, offer up a pair of wrists to be cuffed.
> Both executives received formal requests from the Canadian Parliament earlier this month tied to a gathering of an international committee examining Silicon Valley's impact on privacy and democracy....Lawmakers from at least ten countries, including the United Kingdom and Australia, are expected to attend the meeting, which is the second of its kind.
The meeting of an international committee of lawmakers, without any specific tie to an international body, has to be an informational one, and such a meeting does not need a CEO. In fact, you actually don't want the CEO but the actual experts. So by calling out Zuckerberg, those lawmakers are implicitly declaring that they want this meeting to be a dog-and-pony show of political theater, not an actually useful meeting.
This sounds like some Canadian politician is huffing and puffing about Zuck not helping them look good when they are hosting some event. I'm not at all surprised Facebook doesn't want any of it, and I wouldn't be surprised that the threat of contempt vote is a complete bluff and won't go anywhere.
>Their presence is important, he said, because, "Knowing the structure of Facebook and how it is micro-managed right from the top, any change on the platform is done through Mr. Zuckerberg or through Ms. Sandberg."
Probably just the bitter American in me speaking, but if Canada is anything like the US, the hearing will be 100% optics, 0% substance. All the politicians will want to be seen asking tough questions and then–once the public flogging is over–will return to their regularly scheduled program of doing fuck all.
As cathartic as it would be to see another grilling of Zuckerberg, it's hard to get too worked up that he's sending his understudy. Same song and dance either way.
What is the precedent in this case? I assume Facebook is not the only multinational corporation to ever exist or be called to testify to foreign congresses. What have other corporations done?
Yes, yes it should be expected to do that.
Corporations and their executives should not be exempt from governments, especially democratically elected ones.
yes, Facebook should probably get sued daily seeing the way it is acting so that they can suffer the consequences of its actions... If that isn't possible, maybe jail is the only option.
I hope they get held in contempt and banned from the country, maybe others will follow suit. It feels like an insult, it's not like it's that far, and there will be many countries there. I know they don't give a shit unless it's the US and that makes it even worse.
Frustrating to see them untouchable and with no shits given. No accountability, no responsibility.
Rupert Murdoch was obliged to front up to the UK Parliament. Zuckerberg is no less obliged here.
And they probably mostly lack the jurisdiction to coerced him to appear, while having the jurisdiction to impose whatever penalties they see fit for his non-appearance.
Personally, I think it would be amusing if all the major countries had outstanding warrants for Mark Zuckerberg’s arrest, and imposed strict privacy regulations upon Facebook et al.
I'd have more sympathy if it was a small company where the loss of time from a CEO being involved meant something and could harm the company, however when you are that big, the job of CEO becomes being a spokesperson, sales person, and face of the company, and when you get really big, it becomes dealing with this kind of shit. Even in a 10 person company the CEO can be never in the office, constantly selling this or that or doing PR and things still run. Even if they never did anything else, I don't think Facebook would die anytime soon.
When you get yourself into a mess like this, you can expect it to become more busy that you'd like, but that's called reaping what you sow. If you didn't want to deal with it, get local executives that can go to jail on your behalf.
If they aren't willing to speak to this grand committee, when would they speak to anyone outside the US? It sounds like they won't.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/facebook-contempt-parliamen...
Any country _where Facebook operates_.
If you're operating a business in a country then expect to be beholden to that country's laws.
The internet isn't a get-out-of-jurisdictional-rules-free card.
This is the same economic modeling behind the incidence of land-value taxes falling on landlords, not renters. When you're taxing a product of fixed size that is priced at whatever the market will bear, taxes get taken out of the owners' economic rents.
The government donating to specific non-profits is sketchy as hell, too. Both of your solutions sounds like considerably more serious problems than Zuckerberg refusing to appear.
[0]: https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/judicial/305055-refo...
However, I don't know that Canada has any large social media companies, so they can just make it a normal tax and possibly get away with it.
This has got to be the most vacuous piece of bullshit I've read in a long time. They're just taking the piss at this point.
Here's a tip: If you don't want to appear before dozens of government investigations, don't conduct dodgy business practices in hundreds of jurisdictions.
I would totally support putting various restrictions on Facebooks operations until Zuckerberg shows. Barring Facebook from storing any personal data on any Canadian citizen until it is in compliance with Canadian law.
You see my point?
It should be consumers and NOT government who decides what products and services are allowed to be used, especially with regards to information. Transparency regulations I can get behind but mass blocking is fundamentally wrong - it takes power out of the hands of regular people.
The government shouldn't have that power to begin with in my opinion.
You just compared a website to heroin. Next you'll be comparing Pokémon Go to organised crime.
I completely refuse to believe people lack so much agency that they aren't responsible for the content they consume.
They can't handle it? It's a website dude. Say what you want about privacy issues but this is a nonsensical argument.
So worst case, they can't enter canada anymore? I find it unlikely that they'd get cut out of the canadian market because of it.
However, I humbly disagree, you hinted at the answer. Yes, worse case is Canada and other markets begin blocking Facebook.
What value does Facebook add to Canada or any market. Advertising? Advertising is a zero sum game. If Facebook disappears there's no advertising loss in the market, other agencies will take over.
Considering how large a political and security risk Facebook is, I don't understand why any country would allow this sort of service to operate outside its borders without oversight.
We’re blocking JavaScript as a security precaution when normal people often still use 123456 as their password.
I still think banning Facebook would be a net win, but it’s not zero cost.
I think you underestimate the average user. Most do know how e-mail, forums and instant messengers work. Those that don't will learn.
Sure. What’s the cost of learning?
I have many examples of even smart people not knowing what tech can do. I’m still regularly blowing people’s minds with the AR mode in Google Translate, and the tech behind that is 8.5 years old now.
This isn’t even a new phenomena — back when I was a kid all the adults joked about needing someone under the age of 14 to work the VCR and stop digital clocks flashing 12:00 forever. The jokes didn’t stop until VCRs stopped being a thing.
How did you arrive at that conclusion?
Even if it were true: Banning Facebook would still be worth it. It's a net negative for society. In a way, that's an impressive achievement.
I think this goes beyond the logistics of "is it reasonable for a CEO to bother meeting with legislators in every country in which it does business" and is a matter of whether Facebook is going to be answerable at all internationally, and what the optics look like of an American company doing business in other nations where it will not make top level executives available to answer important questions.
Does this mean that Facebook simply won't make its top level executives available to any other country? Is there a population threshold? Will Zuckerberg or Sandberg only meet with Presidents/Vice-Presidents, etc?
I can't help but feel like Facebook is held to a hugely different standard in these cases. I don't think people would think twice about expecting Mary Barra, for example, to travel to Canada to be answerable about GM vehicles being sold into Canadian territory if Canadian officials had concerns.
It also seems plain as day to me that Facebook's top brass simply do not want to answer these questions. They would rather send representatives to face the tough questions on their behalf, which are problematic on their own, leading to troubling and unsatisfying public exchanges [1].
From a personal perspective, and as a Canadian, I know the shit FB is pulling and the damages it is creating and can create and I feel powerless to stop it or make a difference. The best I could really hope to achieve as just some person is to petition my government to do something about it, and it would probably at best lead to something like a meeting with the most accountable people. I'm lucky in that they are already trying to do this, in conjunction with 9 other countries, so hooray!
Do I know that this may be useless or go nowhere, yes, could I really hope to get much more than this on my own, no. So it feels to me like this is our first step to making a difference or at least trying, and they still have the audacity to say "nah dawg, talk to these nobodies instead, but we are totally committed". As a person I'm really pissed and insulted. It says my best efforts real or imagined, are pointless and useless. It says I don't give a fuck about you or anyone in your Country/ies. It says you can work as hard as you want to rally people, 450M angry I's who just want answers and to see someone held accountable and at least show up to defend their actions, and you still don't care and will just deny them. It says nobody matters but us, get used to it you pleebs. It says that even when your COUNTRY is trying to stand up for you, even with all their power and clout can't get you to show up for a fucking meeting next door with 10 other countries, it says WOW, who do these people think they are, how dare you defy my highest body's request? How do you think I am going to feel about you after that?
If there was an oil spill or something like that, you'd see the CEO talking about it in front of the government on every news station, it's the job of the most accountable person to own up or at least show up and lie through their teeth or avoid questions like the plague, but they aren't even willing. I hope they get in deep shit and we take much harsher measures faster because of their non-cooperation.
Maybe that seems like a bit of a rant and it's more about feelings, but they are still valid and probably represent how a lot of people also feel. A lot of us have businesses, and we can see from both lenses, but we still have no power compared to them and we still have to live with them, and while we don't want to say things that could turn around and fuck us over if we ever get in that situation, but I guess shame on you if you do, so it doesn't really matter anyway.
* apologies to the "nobodies", you aren't nobody, but you aren't who we want.
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/news/facebook-canada-data...