
Sheryl Sandberg Misled Congress About Facebook’s Conscience - grej
https://theintercept.com/2018/09/05/facebook-senate-hearing-sheryl-sandberg/
======
nkurz
This is good article about a complex topic. The question is something like
"How can a multinational company purport to uphold a universal set of values
in a world that has incompatible values?" The obvious answer is that it can't
do so everywhere, unless those values are reduced to a trivial null-set like
"make more money".

 _Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., questioned Sandberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey
about the fact that they are both ostensibly American companies, but also
firms with users around the world — including in countries with legal systems
and values that differ drastically from the United States. Rubio cited various
governments that crack down on, say, pro-democracy activism and that
criminalize such speech. How can a company like Facebook claim that it’s
committed to free expression as a global value while maintaining its adherence
to rule of law on a local level? When it comes to democratic values, Rubio
asked, “Do you support them only in the United States or are these principles
that you feel obligated to support around the world?”_

Cheryl Sandberg answers for Facebook by saying that there is not really a
conflict, and that "Facebook simply would not do business in a country where
these values couldn’t be maintained." As the article points out, given that
Facebook does business in a number of countries with very anti-democratic
rules, these must not be very expansive values.

Jack Dorsey gives a more nuanced version for Twitter: "We would like to fight
for every single person being able to speak freely and see everything, but we
have to realize that it’s going to take some bridges to get there." Perhaps
disappointing, but at least a more realistic answer.

A bigger question, not brought up in the article, might be "Do we think that
official statements to the US Congress actually provide useful information
about corporate values?" While it might be legalistically interesting to point
out the contradictions between individual executives' prepared statements and
actual corporate behavior, it's hard to see what actual insights can be gained
from differences in PR strategy, unless we presume that the corporations'
choice of PR is indicative of the real underlying values.

~~~
jtr_47
This is not a complex topic. It's very simple. Facebook and the various other
messaging platforms sole purpose is to make money. End of story. They have no
values no morals or ethics. They do what is necessary and within a legal
framework (region dependent) that allows them to make money.

IF our USA government decides to designate Facebook, twitter etc. News Media
outlets, then they will have to confirm to a different set of laws within our
country and maybe others.

These companies are merely a 2.0 of USENET NEWS. and nothing more. They've
monetize the users' of the system.

Peace

~~~
dboreham
>They have no values no morals or ethics.

This is really not quite true because the companies are not run by some
faceless AI -- they're run by actual people who have to interact with other
humans such as their friends and family, are concerned about being allowed
into the country club and so on. So there is some back-pressure against total
amorality, albeit not codified.

~~~
eximius
If I have 10 people and 5 moral dilemmas but only 2 or 3 people care about
each dilemma, then it is very likely the group will fail on all 5 dilemmas due
to lack of collective action. This problem scales well to more people and
problems.

Corporations generally do not act morally because the number of people willing
to halt the company to maintain them is well below the majority. However, they
are generally all aligned to further the bottom line of the business.

~~~
true_religion
If ten people cannot even get majority agree on any one of five different
moral issues, then those issues are not universal. At worst, they are not evem
issues but someones pet peeve.

~~~
eximius
I did not say that they couldn't agree, but they they aren't motivated to
provoke action uniformly.

If your manager says 'Do X.', where X is a mild violation of some one's
privacy or some such, can you get the majority of your coworkers to
collaborate and refuse your manager? Or will most go on with their lives
because they don't care enough about that particular pet cause or 'it isn't
that bad'.

~~~
pas
There's no need for the majority to do something. Look at Google and military
AI. A vocal minority with the implicit backing of the majority was quite
effective.

Even if that's a very non clear cut issue. Now the DoD will contract someone
else, and the resulting system will be probably worse, leading to loss of more
human lives. (Though that could help with the lower utilization of these
systems, which might help scale back military action. Or not...)

------
gnarbarian
>Facebook “restricted access to items in the UAE, all reported by the
Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, a federal UAE government entity
responsible for [information technology] sector in the UAE. The content was
reported for hate speech and was attacking members of the royal family, which
is against local laws.”

Great example of why things like hate speech legislation are a terrible idea.
Although intended to provide additional protection for marginalized groups
they are inevitably wielded by the people with legal or political power
against the less politically connected and marginalized.

~~~
lumisota
UAE is an absolute monarchy; using this as an argument against hate speech
legislation seems.. overreaching.

~~~
vtail
Grandparent’s is a universal argument, that applies to other countries /
situations as well. Russia, which is _technically_ not a monarchy, have the
same problem with hate speech law.

For obvious reasons, it’s harder to give an example from a more liberal
country, but his/her point still stands.

~~~
JBReefer
England has hate speech laws that produce _ridiculous_ outcomes, like a guy
getting fined because he made a dumb gif of his dog Sig Heiling.

~~~
pjc50
[http://www.scotland-judiciary.org.uk/8/1962/PF-v-Mark-
Meecha...](http://www.scotland-judiciary.org.uk/8/1962/PF-v-Mark-Meechan)

"Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 makes it an offence to use a
public communications network to send certain types of messages including
those that are grossly offensive or threatening. The prosecution argued that
by posting your video entitled “M8 Yer dug’s a Naazi” on to the Internet, you
committed that offence.

“The centrepiece of your video consists of you repeating the phrase “Gas the
Jews” over and over again as a command to a dog which then reacts. Sometimes
the phrase is “You want to Gas the Jews”. You recite “Gas the Jews” in a
variety of dramatic ways. “Gas the Jews” in one form or another is repeated by
you 23 times within a few minutes.

“On the whole evidence, including your own, applying the law as made by
Parliament and interpreted by the most senior courts in this land, I found it
proved that the video you posted, using a public communications network, was
grossly offensive and contained menacing, anti-Semitic and racist material.

“You deliberately chose the Holocaust as the theme of the video. You purposely
used the command “Gas the Jews” as the centrepiece of what you called the
entire joke, surrounding the “Gas the Jews” centrepiece with Nazi imagery and
the Sieg Heil command so there could be no doubt what historical events you
were referring to."

~~~
praneshp
Thanks for the link, as well as the quote!

Now watch people fall over each other to defend Nazi-themed dog gifs.

~~~
pathseeker
Defending free speech is not the same as defending or supporting the content
itself.

Free speech wouldn't need to be a right in the US constitution if it only
applied to stuff that wasn't offensive to someone.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to
say it"

~~~
s73v3r_
That is a grossly overused quote, that usually ends up used to defend
harassment.

~~~
reversecs
"That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent
Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved."

I think this applies here. Freedom of speech is the right above all rights and
limits to that right need to be extremely precise and generally agreed upon.

The western world is drunk on politics. Concepts of racism, harassment,
violence, fascism and the like are creeping into inappropriate territories.
This is not a time to start making decisions about what people are or aren't
allowed to say.

~~~
s73v3r_
"Freedom of speech is the right above all rights"

Then Twitter has the right to choose who's speech they want to amplify.

"Concepts of racism, harassment, violence, fascism and the like are creeping
into inappropriate territories. This is not a time to start making decisions
about what people are or aren't allowed to say."

On the contrary, this move by Twitter is a step toward fending off some of
those concepts.

------
godelmachine
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWGGNJaD46c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWGGNJaD46c)

At 2:30

>> This activity didn't come from Russia. It came from Iran.

Shocking!

------
mgaffneyny
The company is called "Facebook".

Business ethics apply and how it is regulated globally is a challenge for any
globally used socially media platform. Time for people to wake up and start
acting rather than inane hearings in Congress. The federal government needs to
catch up and these hearings could be more constructive if representative of
'we the people'. Take a look at how the US internet is being regulated now
which is a larger issue.

~~~
TAForObvReasons
"Move fast and break things" applies to business ethics as well. That was the
great business innovation of Facebook.

------
newnewpdro
I don't understand why they're even talking about "locally legal censorship".

These are privately owned and operated websites, any form of censorship they
wish to perform is legal on any scale in any place. These are not government
entities. If they don't like what you're doing on their web site, they have
every right to shut you up and/or remove your content.

------
kazinator
What are the odds that a Facebook would have more than one face?

------
lean_in2019
So it’s now public record from court documents & has been alluded to in the
presss than fb got paid sometimes in Rubles... did anyone there have a chance
to lean in & own that one? VP of Ads was popping off on Twitter (not on fb for
some insane reason) & pontificating on Robert Mueler’s first round of
indictments.

That VP ads earned himself a place in history with a supportive retweet from
@realdonaldtrump

Fb gets a lot of guff but I truly want them to get back to their kickass days
with less suits. Not to mention, all the tech research they incubate &
subsidize are insanely useful for little guy operations too. I’m rooting for
them but they really dropped the ball w/ this crude Russia influence campaign

------
cityzen
Is lying to a room full of liars still a lie? No one gives a shit about this
stuff. If anyone cared about being honest we wouldn't allow companies like
Facebook to lobby congress. But it's ok, they've only spent around $7 million
this year on lobbyists if the data at opensecrets.org is correct:
[https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D00003356...](https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000033563)

~~~
mtgx
Buying votes in Congress seems to be quite cheap. I think the average is less
than $10,000 per vote. So that would buy them quite a few votes.

There have been multiple stories in the past few years about this company or
that company making something like 1,500% "ROI" on their lobbying (bribing)
money.

~~~
cityzen
#MAGA

~~~
sctb
Please don't do this.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

