Zuckerberg faces heat in Congress: “It’s almost like you think this is a joke”
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If I'm frank here I'd wish that this level of pressure wasn't reserved for companies in the tech sector like Facebook only. This level of all out grilling is sorely needed for shitshows like the US Telecom industry, big pharma and the very politicians on both sides that enable the mess we currently have.
Off the top of my head here are the people who are more than due for this level of grilling:
Donal Trump and his enablers
Ajit Pai
AT&T's CEO
Verizon's CEO
The Sackler's (for their hand in the opioid crisis.)
FOX's CEO
Off the top of my head here are the people who are more than due for this level of grilling:
Donal Trump and his enablers
Ajit Pai
AT&T's CEO
Verizon's CEO
The Sackler's (for their hand in the opioid crisis.)
FOX's CEO
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interesting. i don't think there's a way to downvote a facebook post. you can trash a sponsored post directly, but if someone shares it, then you can remove it from your feed, and maybe you can comment within their feed, but you can't "vote down" anything.
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It absolutely is
It absolutely is.
That doesn't mean that we should work toward making things worse.
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Wrong. They're the goddamned CEO. They're the one paid the big bucks. They're the ones that are paid that much to be responsible for what the company is doing.
The libertarian bullshit "My actions don't have an effect on others!" claim hasn't been true for quite some time.
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I'll note first that Rep. Pressley's conversation with Zuckerberg is a bit different than how it was characterized by you. It's almost as if you didn't listen to the very video you posted.
Second, I'll just quote the Calibra FAQ, which can be found at calibra.com:
"Will Calibra charge fees?
Transaction fees will be low-cost and transparent, especially if you're sending money internationally. Calibra will cut fees to help people keep more of their money."
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You know “Democrat” isn’t an adjective, right?
The article has a point of view about Congress attacking Zuckerberg snd im guessing only DEMOCRATIC Reps were at odds with a billionaire.
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danielravennest
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
The work of Congress doesn't happen in open hearings with famous witnesses. That's when you grandstand for the voters back home or your pet project. The real work happens in non-witness committee sessions, caucus meetings, and back room lobbying - not just from paid lobbyists, but members of congress lobbying each other to get votes and co-sponsors for bills.
They mostly don't even sit in session in the big House and Senate chambers. If you ever watch the C-SPAN channels, the chambers are mostly empty unless something big is being voted on.
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Pretty sure Zuck's use of the word "vote" in this context is referring to the ballot box, not a Facebook post.
In other words, he's saying "let the world see politicians lie to them, discover they're lying to them, get mad at those politicians for lying to them, and punish that politician by voting against them in the next election."
It's a nice little naive world view, and in a vacuum/not the real world we live in might be a nice ideal, but I think we've clearly seen, mainly with Trump (but there's plenty of other examples,) that a lot of potential voters will believe anything their favorite politician tells them, will do zero fact-checking, and when they discover they've been lied to will deny they ever lied, or rationalize some reason why the lie was OK.
Personally, I completely disagree with his contention: I think it's news organizations' jobs to report exactly what politicians say, even or especially if it's a lie.
Political ads, though, need to be held to a higher standard. They need to be clear on their funding and who paid for and approved of it, and if they're flat-out falsehoods they need to be rejected.
I also think any political funding that can't be tracked and audited to determine exactly who funded it, i.e. super PACS and other dark money sources, should be outright banned, but that would likely require a new Constitutional amendment, so that likely won't happen anytime soon. But transparency goes a long way to mitigating most of the worst abuses.
It's not like "don't outright lie" is a high standard - political ads on TV still can distort the truth pretty effectively, as long as they stop just short of flat-out lying.
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You seem to be under the impression that Facebook recognizes the same problems that the rest of society does. Their actions, policies, and testimony say otherwise.
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danielravennest
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
They don't have to because there are consumer protection laws that make it a crime for businesses to lie in their ads, and federal and state agencies tasked with enforcing them. Financial ads are even more tightly regulated, but "political speech" is the least regulated.
The reason for that is the First Amendment. There are exceptions to freedom of speech, but most political speech doesn't fall into any of them.
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XSportSeeker
Ars Scholae Palatinae
I'm all for grinding up Zuck with this barrage of condemnations, but honestly, I'm starting to see a problem with all this circus.
It seems this is getting a lot of attention and reaching the overall mainstream consensus, but the one thing I am not seeing is putting all other tech giants under the same ammount of scrutiny, as if Facebook was the only one doing these things.
At some point it becomes just another witch hunt. The government, and the public by proxy, cannot afford to focus all their attention on a single company when a whole lot of those practices are spread all throughout Silicon Valley.
The shady deals with advertising networks and political campaigns? Look up Twitter and Google to see if they are not doing similar stuff.
Prejudice and lack of representation? Same.
Bad work practices, steamrolling fair job markets, and swerving away from legislation? Practically all businesses that see themselves in the sharing economy.
Not that this will really result in anything, but if it at the very least serves the purpose of bringing more awareness to what's happening with these tech giants and how they are making money, focusing on Facebook alone simply isn't enough. It's an easy target, but just a piece of the entire puzzle.
It seems this is getting a lot of attention and reaching the overall mainstream consensus, but the one thing I am not seeing is putting all other tech giants under the same ammount of scrutiny, as if Facebook was the only one doing these things.
At some point it becomes just another witch hunt. The government, and the public by proxy, cannot afford to focus all their attention on a single company when a whole lot of those practices are spread all throughout Silicon Valley.
The shady deals with advertising networks and political campaigns? Look up Twitter and Google to see if they are not doing similar stuff.
Prejudice and lack of representation? Same.
Bad work practices, steamrolling fair job markets, and swerving away from legislation? Practically all businesses that see themselves in the sharing economy.
Not that this will really result in anything, but if it at the very least serves the purpose of bringing more awareness to what's happening with these tech giants and how they are making money, focusing on Facebook alone simply isn't enough. It's an easy target, but just a piece of the entire puzzle.
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Two things:
1) This reply wouldn't necessarily happen in Congress on national TV. While true, the backlash on national TV in Congress would instantly undo the truth of the statement by its lonesome. He has a staff to email politicians this privately.
2) The OP of this fantasy quote is pointedly ignoring the fact that the wealthiest individuals that unleashed or were complicit in empowering the portion of the voting electorate least capable of critical thinking to cause all these problems the past few decades are slowly beginning to realize they have no power to actually fix the pandora's box they opened. They're strapped in and along for the ride just as surely as all their informed-but-disunited political opposition. (progressive voters can be absolutely correct on a level of logic or justice and still absolutely refuse to entertain the possibility that their policy matters are some form of economic suicide even before addressing the more basic problem that they have extremely detailed and highly experimental methods of implementation for policy that depend on a China-level iron fist of political power over entrenched conservative state level interests)
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You say "become so easy to hate", like it is perhaps unwarranted.
I say "proven time and again completely and utterly untrustworthy, with a flagrant disregard for law and morality".
There's a difference.
Facebook have earned this level of mistrust and revolt.
Even when Zuck isn't actually (technically) lying about things, he is twisting the truth almost to breaking point to make the egregious behaviour sound either accidental or incidental.
edit:
We may laugh at how some of the politicians stumble with the technical details, or have a misunderstanding of just what capabilities Facebook have, but they're beginning to realise that something smells seriously bad, and given the disclosed capabilities of the NSA and others, perhaps their seemingly stupid and overly paranoid queries aren't so stupid in that context.
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Quote: "The original pitch for the Libra project said the currency would improve financial services for unbanked, lower-income populations" Exactly the people who would have no time, energy, or resources to dispute any issues that may/will arise in said financial system! Exactly the right NUMBER of people to milk/bilk/swindle/cheat/minor accounting error that costs them a place to live/breaks their spirit, out of their hard earned analog cash - BILLIONS!... Seems it is a global, digital, virtual, "title" or "payday" loan kinda venture... and I thought Mr. Jones and Mr. Limbaugh were scary folks...
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i think a business only existing because of the environment produced by the US, to date, should take better care of the democratic ideals in which it thrives. as such, i agree with you, that a business (not a government actor) should take the initiative and actively police and remove political ads that are lies. no question. it's incredibly short sighted and probably self-destructive for them to do otherwise.
they've already addressed "fake" news posts. to distinguish lying political ads from those, and allow the lying political ads, is bad on many levels. primarily, it sounds like they're trying to adhere to caselaw on the 1st amendment and political speech... and if they do that too often, they risk being treated as a government actor, and they also risk losing their 230 protections. secondarily, it makes them look not particularly partisan, but political, and maybe more like an actual publisher. third, it makes them look like they're supporting lying to the voting public. fourth, it encourages more spending in campaigns, which is bad for everyone.
there's probably more, but suffice to say it's just a horrible look. i would like to look at their bottom line compared to twitter, and how that's changed as the zuck has testified before congress.
also - Libra coin or whatever it is, is ass.
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This is where Facebook is getting treated unfairly. Unfair is probably not the word because if you have that much money all's fair. But it's because Facebook is shiny and new and doesn't have the entrenched interests that all of the above (and more) do, that this hearing was possible. It's easier to grill them with sound bits as you don't have to worry about your shadow reelection money disappearing.
All in all I'm more disappointed that the hearing seemed to be about making an example with minimal discussion focused on solving or mitigating the actual issues.
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I appreciate your big-picture approach, but here's a few things:
- All authority relies on deterrence and signalling. Resources are finite.
- Facebook is the end result of a particular network effect, and presents specific problems. Lumping it in with other tech companies abstracts away essential features.
- Poor corporate behavior is not restricted to Silicon Valley. Drawing the line there is arbitrary.
A bonus general thing: A $malicious_entity hunt is ok if there's an actual $malicious_entity poisoning the village well.
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I didnt say facebook was guilty of libel. However with some legislation and time... They might be eventually. Or the law could go the other way and the content owner may get sued.
But dont kid yourself that new legislation to handle social media wont happen eventually. That Facebook is relatively new only argues this point for me. I dont claim to know whether it will be facebook or the content originator that will be held responsible... But eventually a precedent will be set and SOMEONE will.
Newspapers existed for a little while before they got regulated too.
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If you are rich enough you become the proverbial lighthouse and the aircraft carrier diverts around you or suffers the consequences.
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- Completely out of touch on the actual problems facing low-income individuals yet claiming that his crypto gig "assists the un- and underbanked community"
- Admits to moderating content at discretion - including removing fraudulent advertisement - but does not want to fact-check political ads.
- Denies collecting race data while being called out on FHA violations and not knowing basic facts about Facebook's racial policy.
Which part of these responses was handled "very well"?
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I've decided that there should be two requirements on political advertising on Facebook.
A) All Facebook political ads should be designated as political ads when they are purchased, and clearly identified when displayed, displaying only with a bright red, white and blue border.
B) There should be NO TARGETING for Facebook political ads. The buyer has only two choices - ALL VOTERS or ALL VOTERS who are eligible to vote for that particular candidate or political race (the correct district or state for that race). No targeting by age group, gender, income, race, political affiliation, profession, whatever. They go to ALL VOTERS (and only voters, no minors), and since you pay for eyeballs, they should be very damned expensive.
A) All Facebook political ads should be designated as political ads when they are purchased, and clearly identified when displayed, displaying only with a bright red, white and blue border.
B) There should be NO TARGETING for Facebook political ads. The buyer has only two choices - ALL VOTERS or ALL VOTERS who are eligible to vote for that particular candidate or political race (the correct district or state for that race). No targeting by age group, gender, income, race, political affiliation, profession, whatever. They go to ALL VOTERS (and only voters, no minors), and since you pay for eyeballs, they should be very damned expensive.
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I would suggest that for transparency, any company of facebook's size, and in facebook's position should be barred from running political ads of any form, and should be entirely un-moderated, outside of the legal requirements for illegal material.
Anything else is a slippery slope to being paid to push a political agenda.
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Fuzzypiggy
Ars Scholae Palatinae
I'll say it again for the hundredth time, Zuckerberg is a little boy trapped in a man's body. He's a frat boy who made it big on a borrowed idea and he still acts like a child. "Zucky wanna make his own money!", "Zucky wanna collect all the faces of everyone in tha world!". FB needs an adult in charge, someone who's grown up and knows how to run a mega-huge(tm) corporation. MZ might have been a fine CEO when the company was relatively small with a few million users but now it's simply too big and he is too immature to be able to run it.
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This is literally every congressional hearing on any subject with even a modest media profile. It’s beyond dumb.
I will concede that AOC is halfway decent at asking questions with at least some policy substance, but I find most of the reps (Katie Porter in particular) to be mind numbingly awful.
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Since it's a Congressional Dog and Pony show, how can it not be treated as a joke? Didn't Ars run an article a year or two ago stating how the reps showed they knew squat about IT?
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