
Why Mark Zuckerberg’s ’empty chair’ policy is backfiring - howard941
https://www.politico.eu/article/facebook-privacy-mark-zuckerberg-facebook-britain-hearing-fake-news-damian-collins-misinformation-london/
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stupidcar
I remember listening to a UK Parliamentary Committee that had invited the head
of a popular grassroots anti-TTIP campaign to give evidence. There wasn't even
a pretence of trying to be even-handed or gain a better understanding of
popular objections to TTIP. Instead, all the MPs present took turns to berate
him in an imperious manner. He was simply a prop for them to lecture at.

I suspect many of the forums Zuckerberg is invited to participate in are
similarly vehicles for politicians to gain exposure by being seen as attacking
a popular bogeymen. I can't really blame him for not wanting to spend his life
traipsing around world capitals helping these politicians get TV coverage by
acting as a rhetorical piñata.

~~~
slededit
These nations feel their sovereignty is threatened by Facebook. Him ignoring
them isn’t exactly helping, nor is the fact that he did submit to Congress
which does the same pointless lecturing.

These nations are all losing face from being snubbed. They are going to take
increasingly drastic measures to assert their authority - this is not
something that will go away. You already saw this with the UK parliament
seizing documents which is unprecedented in recent times.

~~~
talltimtom
> feel their sovereignty is threatened by Facebook

That’s kind of like saying that coka-cola feels threatened if the CEO reports
an illegal lemonade stand that’s blocking his driveway.

The scales are not just different, they are absurdly different. UK is NOT
afraid that they will lose sovereignty because of Facebook. Thats just
ridicules.

~~~
bitwize
Social media were the future of democracy up until Trump and Brexit happened,
now they are the world's greatest threat to democracy.

~~~
chillacy
A populist beat the incumbent and started taking America in a direction in
which the majority of the voters represented by the electoral college approve
of, is that not a success of American democracy? Or should are we deciding
what’s right and wrong based on a different yardstick now?

You can bet both parties are going to use similar tactics next election.

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woah
There are a lot of reasons to dislike Facebook, and I myself have almost
entirely stopped using it. However, most of these politicians are yelling at
Facebook for only one reason: they want to bully it into implementing whatever
censorship they desire.

You don’t see politicians hauling the inventor of email onto TV and demanding
that someone do a better job of censoring email. They know that email is a
decentralized system, and for this reason it is respected as a neutral medium
of communication (at least in countries who don’t censor the entire internet).

Facebook having an easy to dislike figurehead and centralized company behind
it makes it much easier to turn into a bogeyman. This can get citizens in
liberal countries who would never agree to a great firewall to agree to some
kind of censorship of Facebook.

Hopefully someone can make a decentralized social network/messaging platform
catch on sooner rather than later, so that we can return to a world where
blanket censorship is considered wrong, instead of something for politicians
to aspire to.

~~~
curo
Sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit are starting to make editorial
decisions of what counts as hate speech, what accounts and pages should be
banned/removed, what affect do algo changes have on the content surfaced, what
suggestions should show up in auto-suggest or the front page, etc.

I don't see the same choices being made in regards to Gmail spam filters for
instance. I'd say we're at a time when this conversation is necessary. And I'm
not one to trust the politicians with this decision, but it'd be nice if he
showed up to some open forum on the topic.

~~~
nitwit005
They're doing that largely because governments have forced them to:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/business/germany-
facebook...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/business/germany-facebook-
google-twitter.html)

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finnthehuman
By refusing to take an L, Zuck is just making legislators more interested in
regulating speach and fucking up a good thing for all of us.

