> I’m pleasantly surprised to hear Zuckerberg articulate this thought.
I'm pleasantly surprised that people are waking up to this problem, but disappointed as hell that what they are waking up to is not the problem - but rather, the disruption of the status quo.
To the rest of the world, American values, media, culture, etc, being the dominant shaping force on the internet (And before that, through literature, television, film, etc) was cultural imperialism, that has shifted discourse, starved local culture, and, in short, was Americanizing the world. [1]
Americans now feel threatened by China's cultural weight being thrown around in this space. Okay. You don't like China using the same mechanisms that you used in the past, to broadcast and spread your mono-culture.
But instead of taking a moment to self-reflect, about whether it is good for the world to have an 800-pound cultural gorilla warping discourse, culture, and media around the world...
... We are upset that we stopped being that gorilla! It's more than a little hypocritical and peevish.
[1] Talk to a Canadian sometime, and ask them about Canadian culture, versus American culture - in the media sense. You'll find there to be very little of the former left, despite the government's best efforts to promote, and develop it.