
Of course Zuckerberg wants to bow to Chinese censorship - mVach0n
https://m.signalvnoise.com/of-course-zuckerberg-wants-to-bow-to-chinese-censorship-de5e7a5fa6c1#.cnsseo5yc
======
s_kilk
"We can't stop fake news, it's a really hard problem."

"Look at this thing we built to stop real news."

~~~
Navarr
To be fair, do you want a Facebook censorship board?

~~~
JimmyAustin
The Facebook editorial board already existed, and got decried as a liberal
conspiracy.

I really don't see how Facebook wins here.

~~~
veidr
Facebook doesn't win.

Which is good. Because it would be sad if collaborators in human oppression on
the largest scale still happening in the modern era were the winners.

------
irq-1
> It’s difficult to get an entrepreneur to understand something, when their
> valuation depends on them not understanding it.

Interesting (and unsurprising) that the comments here all focus on Facebook
rather than the general problem. Cisco did the same thing by building the
great firewall. Dubai has no shortage of western companies selling solutions
to censor the Internet. When Wikileaks was raising money on Amazon it only
took an angry statement from a Senator to get them banned.

Companies are happy to dump principles and take the money. The solution won't
be complaining about Facebook. Trying to legislate companies bad actions is
how we got here, so that might work with some issues in the past, but it isn't
the solution we need now. Protesting and boycotting can get Apple to stop
using child labor and suicide nets, but as a solution it's slow and
reactionary.

------
brilliantcode
I wrote this yesterday:

> Zuckerberg came to a compromise to be chums with the Communist party in
> China. I wonder if that will ever pay off especially when you are so
> invested now and the relationship is dictated completely on the conditions
> of the foreign government. If this is the beginning then I shudder to think
> what the next compromise will be that affects their end user. It sets an
> uneasy precedent for future prospects eager to capture the enormous market
> in China.

I'm really proud of Google that they just got up and left China once they
realized it was a one way relationship with a lot of giving and giving.

I think this is a huge blunder from Zuckerberg and it definitely hurts
Facebook's brand.

It also shows a more underlying urgency from Zuck, the stock price is tied to
user base growth and without it, the perceived future value evaporates with
it. That in turn shows how elusive this "zero-interest rate capital funded
growth at all cost" is and it's starting to show cracks.

Recall the Porsche story during the 70s when access to capital was really
great. The problem was they assumed capital would always be there but what
happened was when they most needed it the market conditions have changed and
Volkswagen swallowed it up.

Facebook's revenue models are coming under scrutiny as advertisers can't
justify the ambiguous metrics and ROI.

I wonder who will buy Facebook, perhaps News Corp?

~~~
sdm
> I'm really proud of Google that they just got up and left China once they
> realized it was a one way relationship with a lot of giving and giving.

Google has essentially the same relationship with the US government. It's
departure from China had more to do with this than any high mindedness.

~~~
brilliantcode
apples & oranges my friend....

------
christophilus
The best quote was in one of the comments: "If Zuckerberg was an action
figure, his spine would be sold separately."

~~~
uremog
_his spine would be sold separately_

Sorry, that item is out of stock.

------
erokar
Zuckerberg created Facebook in bad faith (as a hateful hot-or-not site) and it
has been run in the same vein ever since. We can criticize him till we're blue
in the face, but the only thing that will make a difference is if each and
every one of us log off and delete our accounts.

~~~
christophilus
I did that roughly a year ago. My happiness level increased immediately.

~~~
libraryatnight
Isn't this amazing? My wife still uses Facebook, and I think she thinks I'm
just trying to be like a pushy vegan when I say life's better with no
Facebook.

In general I have tried to remove myself from things that keep my attention on
my phone rather than what's going on around me. Now I sort of get frustrated
when people ask me what they missed or what just happened in the real world
while they were glancing down.

I have friends and family who I think have completely forgotten what's it like
to just be a passenger in a car watching the world go by, because if they're
not driving they're looking at Facebook or Instagram.

------
otaviokz
\- I can understand Facebook's action here, it's either give in or be out of
the biggest market of tomorrow.

\- I can understand western media trying to stir polemic about it, it's how
they make their money.

\- I can't understand people buying media crap and getting "shocked". Didn't
Facebook do similar things for US Gov in the past? Did they think Zuck was a
people's champion?

~~~
gutnor
> Did they think Zuck was a people's champion?

You say that as if it was obvious. But actually he is successful, he is young,
he is rich, he is known as tech-genius that changed the alone with his 2 bare
hands, he is everything that we are supposed to aspire to be in the Western
world.

As such, he is continuously spin as a good natured fellow tirelessly working
for the good of mankind. So yes that will surprise a lot of people to learn he
is not the White Knight they thought he was.

~~~
noir_lord
If you know Zuckerbergs history it's pretty apparent he was never a white
knight of any description, he's talented but there is a lot of right
place/right time as well.

Still that doesn't feed the narrative beast so we conveniently forget that.

You see the same with other tech CEO's all the time, I rather like Larry
Ellison for that reason, he rarely pretends to be anything he isn't.

~~~
thewhitetulip
I remember Zuck's chat screenshots from many years ago where he called his
collegemats as "dumb fucks" because they "trust me"

~~~
Lordarminius
The screenshots are still floating around. I saw them on Quora a couple of
days ago

~~~
thewhitetulip
Yep, saw it on Quora too.

------
Teapot
Facebook makes more money. NSA gets another tap in China. China gets to tap
and censor Facebook data. They all win, at the people's expense.

~~~
Mieaou
People get more ads. A 4 way win-win-win-win situation.

~~~
sceadu
I think I'm getting tired of winning.

------
Lordarminius
> " The easiest way to be disappointed is to expect others to act contrary to
> their self-interest."

This opening summarizes the entire sentiment. FB and Zukerberg are not on your
side and do not uphold any banner of morality.

I am going to have this quote framed and put up on a wall somewhere. For some
reason, I suspect life and business will be easier if I remember it.

------
netcan
I think our expectation of idealism from companies is to broad. I mean, it's
great if companies take idealistic stances. But ultimately, I'm not even sure
that it's FB's place to promote democratic ideals.

Freedom of expression, association, conscience & press are _political_
freedoms at the centre of liberal-democratic ideologies and governing systems.
China is not a liberal democracy, in theory or practice. There are treaties
which define these freedoms as "human rights" but I think China is a
nonsignator to them.

I do believe these freedoms should be protected for everyone. But in calling
for them in non-democracies, one is pretty much calling for revolution. It's
reasonable for us as individual democrats (or adherents to other ideologies
which believe in these freedoms) to call for these rights to be honoured in
china. It's kind of wierd expecting Facebook to.

The actual lib-dem regimes (US, EU, Japan etc.) are not refusing to do
business in China until they honour these freedoms.

TLDR: Expecting FB to champion the cause of liberal democratic reform in China
is too much to expect.

~~~
schoen
> There are treaties which define these freedoms as "human rights" but I think
> China is a nonsignator to them.

The ROC drafted and signed the UDHR (not a treaty), but the PRC was then at
war with the ROC and doesn't view itself as a successor state to it.

The ICCPR, which is an actual treaty related to UDHR rights, was signed but
not ratified by the PRC.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Covenant_on_Civi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Covenant_on_Civil_and_Political_Rights)

The Constitution of the PRC protects a broad range of political rights (!)

[https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_People%27...](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China#Chapter_II._The_Fundamental_Rights_And_Duties_Of_Citizens)

Perhaps the government's view is that articles 51-54 (on limitations of
political rights) justify the very extensive restrictions that the government
has put on these rights in practice.

------
samuelbrin
"At the very least it seems that several Facebook employees decided that their
conscience was worth more and quit over having to work on this. Kudos to
them." Source on this?

------
bitL
I think the bet is that over time China will become more-less a Western
society, as the old guards slowly die off, and it's better for FB to have
their foot in the door. I believe that is based on the progress theory, that
all societies progress in time towards similar structure, and assumption the
Western one is more progressive than the Chinese one. We will see if this
works out; we can see there was a recent divergence in quite a few countries
like Russia, Turkey etc. as well as internal strain in Western societies
themselves. We can easily end up in an unstable chaos theory mode too.

~~~
a3n
> as the old guards slowly die off, and it's better for FB to have their foot
> in the door. I believe that is based on the progress theory, that all
> societies progress in time towards similar structure,

Yes, but in which direction? Is Facebook, and especially its self-aware pile
of billion$, pulling China west, or is it pulling the west to
authoritarianism? Somewhere there's a line whose crossing will be fatal, and
it's an open question which side of that line we're on right now.

Trump, Putin, Brexit, LePen make me doubt a lot of my assumptions about
progress.

~~~
bitL
That's exactly the question. I guess we will see... Anyway, it looks like
interesting times in the Chinese sense of the word are coming.

------
chiefalchemist
Suck isn't bowing to censorship. He's bowing to profits. That is, ultimately,
if he didn't need profits, he wouldn't have to deal with censorship.

Put another way, stop blaming censorship for what is really a fault of
Capitalism.

~~~
drdeca
s/profit/incentives/

s/capitalism/incentives/

s/need/have/

?

------
MichaelBurge
The Chinese market isn't going to be as lucrative in a few months when they
get labeled as a currency manipulator. I've heard the free market value of
Yuan to USD is about 24.8:1, while the current official exchange rate is
6.91:1. And of course the Chinese are willing to invest that money at a
loss(in Bitcoin, property, etc.) as long as it gets outside of the country
before the currency implodes; not even the Chinese want to invest in China.

Obviously capturing another billion people is a big deal either way, but I
think they're going to be disappointed in their Chinese revenue in a year if
they expected it to continue like it is now. I'm sure Zuckerberg has some
financial advisors, but I can't see why anyone would want to invest there
knowing the currency inflation that's coming over the next 2 years. I guess
software isn't that much of a capital investment, comparatively speaking.
Depending on how Zuckerberg structures this and how much USD he's putting in
and at what rates, it might be worth buying some options against Facebook.

Though, if Facebook can get in now, I'm predicting riots in a year or two, and
'accidentally' having some problems with the anti-censorship systems could end
up helping the protesters at a particularly important time. Who knows.

~~~
ddeck
_> The Chinese market isn't going to be as lucrative in a few months when they
get labeled as a currency manipulator. I've heard the free market value of
Yuan to USD is about 24.8:1, while the current official exchange rate is
6.91:1_

This seems a bit backwards. The currency manipulation argument is that they
are artificially weakening their currency to make manufacturing and exported
products more competitive, not strengthening it.

And while I would tend to agree that the the reality at this point is in fact
the reverse, your argument on the basis of _" I've heard that the free market
value..."_ is not particularly robust.

The NDF futures market, which is free to trade wherever the free market sees
the pair going, is perhaps a better place to look. For reference, the current
Dec 2019 future is 7.44:1 [1]

[1] [http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/fx/emerging-
market/chinese-r...](http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/fx/emerging-
market/chinese-renminbi.html)

~~~
MichaelBurge
> your argument on the basis of "I've heard that the free market value..." is
> not particularly robust.

I heard that from some former Chinese daytraders. I agree that it would be a
bad idea to trade assuming my ratio without a better source.

> which is free to trade wherever the free market sees the pair going,

I don't know how to interpret those numbers. I'm not sure exactly how the
futures market interacts with currency controls.

I've read that Venezuela also has currency controls, and while the official
exchange rate of VEF:USD seems to be 10:1 from a quick Google search, I also
see a Bloomberg article mentioning that the black market has it at 1000:1.

It could be that you get 25 Yuan by illegally shipping USD across the Chinese
border to scared Chinese citizens, while the government only approves its
citizens to trade at the smaller rate.

~~~
em500
No sensible person, Chinese citizen or otherwise, is going to offer you 25 CNY
per 1 USD, unless it comes attached with a US green card or something.

If you can find one, have them contact me, I'm more that happy to trade with
them :). Seriously, that's is just some really bad misinformation here.

~~~
MichaelBurge
I'll ask the daytraders how they would convert $10 million USD into 250
million CNY(either cash, or assets like property) assuming you could either
smuggle the USD into China or the Yuan out of China past the currency
controls, and let you know.

------
juhanima
As easy as it is to hate Zuckerberg here, it's not all black and white. I
think his "it's better to have a restricted conversation than no conversation
at all" may have a deeper meaning.

I have worked with a Chinese company for a couple of years and been to China
too. I'm not claiming to be an expert, but I think he might be on to something
here.

It seems to me that China is on the verge of a major unrest upon freedom. So
far most of the people are quite happy with the fact that their material well-
being has literally multiplied in a very short time. That more than covers the
limited freedom they currently have. After all, they haven't had a chance to
get used to a great degree of freedom at any point in their history sofar.

However, increased wealth only carries so far. At some point the newly
appointed members of the upper middle class are bound to start wondering, why
theír offspring regularly gets bypassed by the offspring of the party
officials in entering the top universities. That's going to be a big deal.

At that point attempts to suppress free speech will have an inflammatory
effect. I believe this will happen in the next ten or twenty years and it
cannot be avoided. What happened in Thailand a few years ago will happen in
China, scaled up to two levels of magnitude.

I don't care much about Facebook or whether Zuck's motives here are entirely
self-served or not. I do assume free speech in China will be a hot issue
sooner or later and that Facebook may play a big part in connecting their
Chinese users to the rest of the world.

I wish all the best to China, the Chinese people and my Chinese friends. Such
spontaneous friendliness I have not met anywhere else. May your road in
joining the domain of freedom be as smooth as possible.

------
omouse
This is why it's important for alternative companies to be started, ones that
have ethics built in that won't bow to censorship.

------
fma
How much censorship is there on WeChat? My parents came flew in for
Thanksgiving...the amount of fake news on WeChat shocked me - all they showed
me were pro Trump and none of which passed the sniff test...parents believed
every one of them. It made for a pleasant Thanksgiving dinner conversation...

Maybe China can start there. (I know, they won't...sarcasm).

------
asitdhal
The purpose of a private corporation to make the share holders wealthy, even
if you have to appease a foreign government.

Many companies cooperate with NSA, rouge governments all over the world.
Everybody does that. It's not new.

At the end of the day, people have to be paid and investment needs to be
multiplied.

~~~
badsock
Just because something makes money for someone doesn't mean it magically
becomes ethical. Neither does it become ethical if other people do it too.

~~~
asitdhal
Ethics does not exist in reality. At the end of the day, you try to live a
better life.

Facebook sells ads and to live longer, it needs to sell more ad. Invention is
a growing vertically, which is very difficult and if you stop, you die.
Expansion is growing horizontally, which is easy. You live longer, if you
spread quickly.

~~~
badsock
No, it's not just about whatever you happen to feel like doing to live a
better life. There's also what society will collectively do to you if you
violate its ethical standards - the consequences of which are very much real.

------
zdw
Weird, I posted this yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13030881](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13030881)

I assume medium's #random at the end of the URL makes every HN post unique?

------
mankash666
How is Facebook employees quitting over the China decision something worthy of
applause? Millions are in queue for their high paying jobs. Staying inside and
influencing policy is the more heroic thing to do

------
moolcool
The people who want Facebook to take action against "Fake News" are advocating
the same type action they're taking in China now. Be very careful what you
wish for

------
aerique
Aww, he even put on a suit and tie.

------
crimsonalucard
It's not like these corporations ever had any leverage for the Chinese heads
of state to listen to them anyway.. If you want people to act against their
own self interest you need leverage..

This is just wild speculation but perhaps Facebook market penetration into
china reperesents the first step in achieving this leverage.

------
misiti3780
I didnt read where FB employees quit over having to work on the project?
Anyone have a source ?

------
aq3cn
Indian govt said no to "Free Basics" plan, his satellite launch project
failed, fake news scam and now he is forced to give control of Facebook to
Chinese govt against his company's motto. It has been a bad year for Facebook.

------
kristoff_it
Given his latest statements, he's also about to bow to occidental censorship
:)

------
spaceman77
An American (Freedom! Democracy!) helps a totalitarian government with
censorship.

Now with Trump at the top I expect more freedoms in America to be lost.

Do we all need to lose our freedoms to remember how important they are?

------
Raed667
I'm curious to see the "Facebook vs WeChat" battle..

