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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

On the one hand, yes companies should be held accountable to governments everywhere they operate, of course.

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?

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I don’t see what's unreasonable about a legislature compelling the appearance of a CEO that operates in their country.

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.

A large number of these countries require country-level directors that are supposed to be accountable, or locally owned subsidiaries, etc.

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)

only if the subsidiary or branch has enough independence should the delegate be allowed; can the local exec stop the spying on Canadians? if not, the top guy must be grilled.

If the subsidiary doesn't have enough autonomy, then their status as a local subsidiary should be revoked immediately. If the subsidiary is complicit in criminal activity, then they are now investigating a crime, potentially an international conspiracy, and there's already mechanisms to handle that.

It is possible that it is Facebook that won’t allow subordinates to step in, in place of Zuck and Sandberg. I’m not saying that is what is happening. But it could be. Facebook may see the risk to be too high for anyone but Zuck and Sandberg to attend these theatres given the billion+ fines that could come from them.

>It is possible that it is Facebook that won’t allow subordinates to step in

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.

Given that the article is about how Facebook has decided not to send them, your hypothesis seems unlikely; they would be saying in effect that they prefer contempt charges to letting their local director talk. Or, to put another spin on it, that having their director talk is worse than doing nothing.

The difference is that I don't have to have an "operation" (i.e. office) in a nation for my website to be accessible in that nation. Looking at a map of facebook offices [0], I don't see any in Kazakhstan (just to pick an arbitrary nation with a tinpot dictator), but Facebook still has a substantial presence there.

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.

[0] https://www.facebook.com/careers/locations

We’re talking about Canada here, where Facebook does have offices.

On principle, a country shouldn't be able to compel a non-resident non-citizen to enter the country and become subject to it's laws. Except in the case of some sort of criminal extradition.

Does it count as “compelling” if it’s a requirement for doing business in that country?

Depends. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Facebook runs servers in America (not canada). A canadian accesses their site and uses it. Is Facebook now "doing business" in canada? The problem with internet companies is that the rules are different: I no longer need any kind of physical presence to do business there (though servers are often necessary, but that's buying something not selling from a physical location).

Let’s talk about the real Facebook, which has physical offices in Canada and sells products in Canada.

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.

> Is Facebook now "doing business" in canada?

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.

What principle? Facebook is in Canada. They have offices in Canada. They hire citizens. They sell products to citizens, and they are selling citizens as products.

Facebook is already subject to Canada's laws, and they should continue following them if they want to continue being subject to those laws.

So? Maybe canada's laws say they can compel Zuck to show up, but America's certainly don't. Those are the ones that matter, as Facebook is based in America and Zuck is currently in America.

Of course. Facebook should feel free to ignore this subpoena. In exchange, Canada should feel free to bar Facebook from doing business in their country.

IMO, it depends whether the law is just and reasonable. I do not think any just or reasonable purpose is served better by having Zuckerberg or Sandberg attend this meeting, as opposed to their lieutenants. No questions will be asked that the lieutenants would not be equally or better equipped to answer. If such questions need to be asked, a letter and response would be fine.

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.

> I do not think

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.

> But, the Canadian government thinks it. ... CEO gotta do CEO things ...

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.

It seems perfectly just and reasonable that the legislature is able to compel testimony.

Calling this a “show trial” is silly. They’re not going to toss him in prison afterwards.

IMO, it depends whether the law is just and reasonable.

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'm pretty sure the legislature and judiciary of each country considers obeying their laws to be necessary, with or without your blessing.

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.

Why only Canada's legislature? The parliamentary committee that summoned Zuckerberg and Sandberg represents more than just the Canadian Parliament. If one were to expand the conditions under which you feel this could be good "governance, policy, economics and ethics", you could find many cases of executive officers of publicly listed companies being summoned to testify before parliament. Philip Green comes to mind, but I'm sure there are many more - requesting testimony from corporate offices it not as unusual as you may think; I don't recall the names now, but I'm pretty sure I've seen the CEOs of some major American corporations in front of the House and Senate on numerous occasions, such as after the Great Financial Crisis.

>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?

From the article:

> 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.

Also from the article:

>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."

You hit the nail on the head here. The canadians are doing the same thing the American Congress did recently: pulling in the big bad zuck for a stern talking-to. Notice that they passed no laws. It's televised political theater of the kind we have seen ever since C-Span showed up.

All good points.

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.

I tend to agree, but in this case it's a meeting of 10 countries representing 450 million people.

Did they send the leaders of those 10 countries, or just the representatives?

Are you seriously trying to equate the CEO of Facebook to 10 heads of state? Just how high of a pedestal do you put FB on?

> Just how high of a pedestal do you put FB on?

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.

I’m sure if Heads of State were in attendance Zuckerberg would be delighted to attend. As it is he has nothing to gain from attending a civil servants ego stroking summit. It’s not about what other people think of Zuckerberg, it’s what he thinks because he can do it. The Canadian government is not going to try and prosecute him or shut down Facebook.

Do civil servants frequently serve in parliament where you're from? In my country, you're proscribed from running in any significant elections (state legislature/national legislature) if you're a serving civil servant. I may be wrong, but I presumed that was the case more places than not. I know that it is the case in Britain, which may be relevant to Canada. (An office of profit under the crown disqualifies one from parliament).

It depends, are you trying to say a head of state is better than an American citizen? Does not every man have equal intrinsic worth? Are you trying to imply that some foreign underling ought to have power to summon a sovereign American at his beck and call?

Your sovereignty ends at your border. If you want to operate a business in someone else’s country, you have to be prepared to answer to their government. If that government doesn’t like you — even if the reason is dumb — their sovereignty allows them to stop your business from doing business in their country.

Do they need to? On paper [1] a country is sovereign and a company is subservient to every nation it operates in.

[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.

Facebook has money but countries have police.

Since the biggest democracy whose leader fits into a stadium is St. Vincent and the Grenadines, representatives will have to do.

And they had no issue fronting in the US. Clearly the opinions from representatives to those countries are worth less in their eyes.

It seems equally reasonable to withdraw from doing business in countries where you can't bother to show up for a hearing. Where do you draw the line?

> Facebook said is it sending Kevin Chan, its head of public policy for Facebook Canada, and Neil Potts, its director of public policy, to the meeting instead.

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 you had to make a list of things that you'd think a CEO would be responsible for, this sure seems like one of them.

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.

Is there any chance that Zuckerberg (or his subordinate) will say anything that everyone doesn't already know? What is the point of him appearing exactly?

Yeah like when Zuckerberg told senator Leahy, he'd get back to him about the issue he was being asked about. It'd be the perfect chance to finally answer that question.

> What is the point of him appearing exactly?

Zuckerberg makes great fodder for Bad Lip Reading. :) [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zCDvOsdL9Q

Politicians are looking for a soundbite and to humiliate him.

He should already be humiliated, the fact that he isn't is very disturbing.

The potential, albeit unlikely, that questioning Zuck causes him to feel the smallest iota of shame for his actions in destabilizing democracy.

> 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.

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.

A CEO who flies a private jet with great connectivity can't take a day to make a 4 hour flight (where he can continue to work and take calls) to show up? What are you worried about? He's going to be stuck in lines all day and won't be able to work on the plane because he didn't want to buy airplane wifi?

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.

Facebook famously answers in scenarios like this “I’m not sure” in order to avoid answering questions. It is not sufficient for a lackey to go considering this.

This is not some small business making minim salaries for the owners. Not your typical corner store who's owners cannot afford the tickets. How fun it would be if all 10 countries block Facebook for a couple of years, now THAT would be fun!! That would teach these thugs a lesson or two about 'corporate responsibility'.

Not sure that this would be legal in many countries. Not showing up is not a crime. Besides, were I Facebook, I would put my best men to work on anti-censorship technology posthaste. Airlift in slips of paper with tor bridges written on them; I don't care. They would figure something out.

No it is not. So the law-makers should pass a law that says: " when you do business in this country, we pay for your ticket and your time and you bring your a$$ over when we ring the bell, or else you a) better be in a hospital sick as hell so we justify the absence, or b) we shut your business down until you show your face".

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.

If Facebook operates in Canada it must: 1) either have there a subsidiary and a CEO of that subsidiary would represent a company in this case or 2) the CEO of a multinational company needs to go there and represent a company.

One of the roles of the CEO is to be the "public face" of the company. This is literally "the public" requiring Facebook to explain themselves. Demanding that a CEO face up to public scrutiny of a company's operations is well on this side of the line.

If companies want to be treated as citizens they must, periodically, offer up a pair of wrists to be cuffed.

> 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.

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.

Let's say he takes you up on that:

* 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.

He will do all that and give up billions in sunk costs and revenue because he can't be bothered to show up to a parliamentary hearing?

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.

>Mark is more then welcome to close up shop.

Still, he might need to pay fines.

> 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?

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?

If every country you operate in is subpoenaing you, then maybe it’s time to reevaluate how you run your company?

> It's just straight-up logistically impossible

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.

>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...

Yes, yes it should be expected to do that.

Then Facebook shouldn’t do business in that country. It’s really simple.

Corporations and their executives should not be exempt from governments, especially democratically elected ones.

how many days of this last year has Zuckerberg been appearing at hearings, I'm sure it sounds like a lot but I bet if we count up the amount it wouldn't seem like near an unreasonable burden yet.

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.

I think Zuckerberg has both the financial means and the time to fly to every country where he operates. Not all the countries requested hearings so the number of countries he needs to show up is probably less than the number of countries he visits on pleasure trips.

Do they operate in Canada though?

Do they accept money from Canadian customers and show ads to Canadian users?

Where do you draw the line?

At the point in which you have 1B+ users, access to mind-boggling quantities of information about them, and unprecedented power over elections.

If we think Facebook has "power" over elections, let's just give up on democracy, honestly. That's abdicating any responsibility voters have for their own votes.

I do think big media have a lot of power to influence elections, but I'm not ready to give up on democracy yet. Also, it's only possible for me to abdicate the responsibility of one voter, not all of us.

Big media has always had a lot of power to influence election. This is mostly about FB being the new kid on this block, and traditional big media not liking it, and firing at FB from all barrels.

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.

Exactly. It feels like Facebook's other issues like Cambridge Analytica would've been basically ignored by the general public if the media wasn't angry with FB for dominating the attention of its audience.

This is not a boolean, but has degrees, and the matter is the sheer scale of it.

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.

Having 1% influence over all individuals does not mean you have 1% control over the entire population. It is entirely possible for every single person to ignore your influence.

Possible but not probable. Facebook's emotional manipulation study showed that.

https://origin.computerworld.com/article/2491420/facebook-em...

All voters can only make decisions based on the information they can find. If the information comes overwhelmingly from one source (and in this case “Facebook” counts as such for the average voter), then it is imperative that said source represents reality, not propaganda.

It is impossible for even the smartest voter to do better by the power of reason alone. Reason isn’t magic.

It's impossible for the smartest voter to identify what is and isn't a credible source when posted to Facebook, but average voters possess the ability to listen to arguments about foreign policy and decide who should control the big red nuke button? Or listen to arguments about economics and decide who should control the big money printer? lol ok.

My apologies for being unclear.

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.

Define propaganda.

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 define propaganda as deliberately attempting to mislead a significant population for political purposes.

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.

Propaganda has always had an effect on democracy, especially power over elections.

I do agree that we should give up on democracy altogether but that’s a different topic, yeah.

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