On the one hand, yes companies should be held accountable to
governments everywhere they operate, of course.
On the other hand, a multinational company can't be expected to fly its CEO to a legislative hearing in every country where it operates... you could spend an entire year doing that instead of actually running your company. It's just straight-up logistically impossible, a legitimately unreasonable burden. And if a government legitimately just needs information as opposed to just optics, they don't need the CEO anyways.
Where do you draw the line? It seems pretty reasonable for the CEO to show up to hearings for the country where your company is headquartered... but to send lieutenants everywhere else, no?
I don’t see what's unreasonable about a legislature compelling the appearance of a CEO that operates in their country.
If it’s logistically impossible for a large multinational operating in many countries to comply, then maybe its unreasonable for a single company to operate in so many countries.
There’s such a weird sense of entitlement here, that companies should be able to do what they want and countries need to accommodate them. There’s nothing that says it must be easy or even possible to operate a company in every country in the world simultaneously.
I see no need to draw any lines. If you don’t want to be subject to a particular country’s rules, there is a really easy solution: don’t operate there.
A large number of these countries require country-level directors that are supposed to be accountable, or locally owned subsidiaries, etc.
This is literally the person who they would hall away in cuffs and send off to jail if they charged the corporation with a criminal act in the country, etc.
Requiring that, and then not letting them send those people, is definitely stupid.
Saying you have a model where someone else is accountable, and then not accepting that person as a stand-in, makes no sense.
Well, except for the "we want our political theater so we can look like we care to our constituents", which this kind of thing almost always is, it makes no sense.
For countries that don't, yeah, sure.
Canada allows both branches and wholly owned subsidiaries.
(I'm too lazy to discover which facebook is using).
In the subsidiary model, the subsidiary would, in a lot of cases, have its own CEO.
So if Facebook Canada is a subsidiary and has a CEO, Canada should be okay with that person testifying.
If they aren't, they shouldn't be allowing this model, and only allow the branch model.
(In the branch office model, i'm fine with requiring the parent CEO to testify)
only if the subsidiary or branch has enough independence should the delegate be allowed;
can the local exec stop the spying on Canadians? if not, the top guy must be grilled.
If the subsidiary doesn't have enough autonomy, then their status as a local subsidiary should be revoked immediately. If the subsidiary is complicit in criminal activity, then they are now investigating a crime, potentially an international conspiracy, and there's already mechanisms to handle that.
It is possible that it is Facebook that won’t allow subordinates to step in, in place of Zuck and Sandberg. I’m not saying that is what is happening. But it could be. Facebook may see the risk to be too high for anyone but Zuck and Sandberg to attend these theatres given the billion+ fines that could come from them.
>It is possible that it is Facebook that won’t allow subordinates to step in
The article says that Facebook is sending subordinates:
>Facebook said is it [sic] sending Kevin Chan, its head of public policy for Facebook Canada, and Neil Potts, its director of public policy, to the meeting instead.
Given that the article is about how Facebook has decided not to send them, your hypothesis seems unlikely; they would be saying in effect that they prefer contempt charges to letting their local director talk. Or, to put another spin on it, that having their director talk is worse than doing nothing.
The difference is that I don't have to have an "operation" (i.e. office) in a nation for my website to be accessible in that nation. Looking at a map of facebook offices [0], I don't see any in Kazakhstan (just to pick an arbitrary nation with a tinpot dictator), but Facebook still has a substantial presence there.
Also, there is a serious risk flying to some countries. I would expect quite a few of them to arrest for some "crime" and demand a "fine" to be released.
On principle, a country shouldn't be able to compel a non-resident non-citizen to enter the country and become subject to it's laws. Except in the case of some sort of criminal extradition.
Depends. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Facebook runs servers in America (not canada). A canadian accesses their site and uses it. Is Facebook now "doing business" in canada? The problem with internet companies is that the rules are different: I no longer need any kind of physical presence to do business there (though servers are often necessary, but that's buying something not selling from a physical location).
Let’s talk about the real Facebook, which has physical offices in Canada and sells products in Canada.
The question of whether a company should be subject to legislative summons like this when that company is only incidentally involved with the country is an interesting one, but it’s also completely irrelevant to this discussion.
What principle? Facebook is in Canada. They have offices in Canada. They hire citizens. They sell products to citizens, and they are selling citizens as products.
Facebook is already subject to Canada's laws, and they should continue following them if they want to continue being subject to those laws.
So? Maybe canada's laws say they can compel Zuck to show up, but America's certainly don't. Those are the ones that matter, as Facebook is based in America and Zuck is currently in America.
Of course. Facebook should feel free to ignore this subpoena. In exchange, Canada should feel free to bar Facebook from doing business in their country.
IMO, it depends whether the law is just and reasonable. I do not think any just or reasonable purpose is served better by having Zuckerberg or Sandberg attend this meeting, as opposed to their lieutenants. No questions will be asked that the lieutenants would not be equally or better equipped to answer. If such questions need to be asked, a letter and response would be fine.
If the purpose of the meeting were more than a show trial, I might feel different. But, that is universally not the case. FWIW I would not be offended if Zuckerberg declined invitations from the US congress either, although it's difficult for him to do so considering they could actually arrest him.
They don't just call up folks on whim. Cost of doing business for FB. CEO gotta do CEO things, which includes the occasional inconvenience of answering a few questions from the Government.
> But, the Canadian government thinks it. ... CEO gotta do CEO things ...
Apparently he doesn't, though. What the Canadian government thinks matters only to the degree that they have the power to compel their desired behavior, and the will to use that power.
Also, I contend the Canadian government doesn't think there's a just purpose in him showing up. Whether any of the politicians will admit it, I'm sure they are aware that no productive purpose will be served by Zuckerberg's attendance, besides their own political self-aggrandizement. They do not need his input on any proposed policy. They don't need information from him that cannot equally well be acquired from a lieutenant or through a letter. To be clear, I'm not saying these politicians are corrupt or anything. They are doing what is rational from their perspectives. Scoring points against Zuckerberg is a win, since a few constituents would really like it and anyone else won't care either way. But rational, goal-seeking behavior and just behavior are often different things.
On the other hand, Zuckerberg is also doing what is rational from his perspective. To give in to this request would probably cost him dearly in time going forward as every politician in the world looking for a distraction would be knocking at his door. Like us all, he has a limited amount of time on this Earth. I doubt he has much desire to spend it as a whipping boy for foreign governments, and so he cannot accede to the request unless Canada ups the ante.
IMO, it depends whether the law is just and reasonable.
I'm pretty sure the legislature and judiciary of each country considers obeying their laws to be necessary, with or without your blessing.
National governments don't summon the leaders of major businesses without a good reason, and many national governments don't all end up doing so at almost the same time without a good reason that spans lots of countries. If there is an issue that big, maybe it should be the CEO's top priority anyway?
What you call a show trial, others might call demanding the person at the top because that way there is no deniability or passing the buck. The US might have run the Zuckerberg hearing as a show trial and had mostly token incompetent and ignorant representatives asking the questions in a format designed to be kind. That doesn't mean that other countries who want real answers to serious questions about Facebook's conduct under Zuckerberg's leadership need to do the same.
I'm pretty sure the legislature and judiciary of each country considers obeying their laws to be necessary, with or without your blessing.
I fully understand that Canada does not need my approval. Surely that's obvious. Why bring it up?
The question is whether what they're doing is good. Good governance, good policy, good economics, good ethics, etc. Them having the power or authority to do it is almost totally irrelevant to that.
I'll tell you what would convince me that there's some good reason, and if you know of an instance, you can let me know and I'll admit some modicum of wrong. If Canada's legislature has interrogated a famous CEO or similar figure about a popular issue, and the contents of that interrogation have led to substantially unanticipated outcomes, I would be willing to admit that I'm at least partially wrong. My priors are that that sort of thing does not happen. At least, I've never seen it happen in my own country.
Why only Canada's legislature? The parliamentary committee that summoned Zuckerberg and Sandberg represents more than just the Canadian Parliament. If one were to expand the conditions under which you feel this could be good "governance, policy, economics and ethics", you could find many cases of executive officers of publicly listed companies being summoned to testify before parliament. Philip Green comes to mind, but I'm sure there are many more - requesting testimony from corporate offices it not as unusual as you may think; I don't recall the names now, but I'm pretty sure I've seen the CEOs of some major American corporations in front of the House and Senate on numerous occasions, such as after the Great Financial Crisis.
>the contents of that interrogation have led to substantially unanticipated outcomes
How would one prove something like that? I think some more specificity would be necessary to be able to answer that question. Do you mean unanticipated by the mainstream of commentators, unanticipated by the legislature itself, by the corporate officer in question, by literally anyone on the Earth, or by yourself?
> Both executives received formal requests from the Canadian Parliament earlier this month tied to a gathering of an international committee examining Silicon Valley's impact on privacy and democracy....Lawmakers from at least ten countries, including the United Kingdom and Australia, are expected to attend the meeting, which is the second of its kind.
The meeting of an international committee of lawmakers, without any specific tie to an international body, has to be an informational one, and such a meeting does not need a CEO. In fact, you actually don't want the CEO but the actual experts. So by calling out Zuckerberg, those lawmakers are implicitly declaring that they want this meeting to be a dog-and-pony show of political theater, not an actually useful meeting.
This sounds like some Canadian politician is huffing and puffing about Zuck not helping them look good when they are hosting some event. I'm not at all surprised Facebook doesn't want any of it, and I wouldn't be surprised that the threat of contempt vote is a complete bluff and won't go anywhere.
>Their presence is important, he said, because, "Knowing the structure of Facebook and how it is micro-managed right from the top, any change on the platform is done through Mr. Zuckerberg or through Ms. Sandberg."
You hit the nail on the head here. The canadians are doing the same thing the American Congress did recently: pulling in the big bad zuck for a stern talking-to. Notice that they passed no laws. It's televised political theater of the kind we have seen ever since C-Span showed up.
Probably just the bitter American in me speaking, but if Canada is anything like the US, the hearing will be 100% optics, 0% substance. All the politicians will want to be seen asking tough questions and then–once the public flogging is over–will return to their regularly scheduled program of doing fuck all.
As cathartic as it would be to see another grilling of Zuckerberg, it's hard to get too worked up that he's sending his understudy. Same song and dance either way.
It's not about any of their hierarchical importance, it's about how useless that idea is.
The CEO sure has the last word on everything (and even that isn't true), but he isn't the actual expert on its platform.
Having the head of state would make no sense there, they have better things to do and sending countries representatives that actually have time to learn and understands the actual matters make much more sense.
Just like sending CEO doesn't make sense, sending actual experts that can answers theses questions much better make much more sense.
I’m sure if Heads of State were in attendance Zuckerberg would be delighted to attend. As it is he has nothing to gain from attending a civil servants ego stroking summit. It’s not about what other people think of Zuckerberg, it’s what he thinks because he can do it. The Canadian government is not going to try and prosecute him or shut down Facebook.
Do civil servants frequently serve in parliament where you're from? In my country, you're proscribed from running in any significant elections (state legislature/national legislature) if you're a serving civil servant. I may be wrong, but I presumed that was the case more places than not. I know that it is the case in Britain, which may be relevant to Canada. (An office of profit under the crown disqualifies one from parliament).
It depends, are you trying to say a head of state is better than an American citizen? Does not every man have equal intrinsic worth? Are you trying to imply that some foreign underling ought to have power to summon a sovereign American at his beck and call?
Your sovereignty ends at your border. If you want to operate a business in someone else’s country, you have to be prepared to answer to their government. If that government doesn’t like you — even if the reason is dumb — their sovereignty allows them to stop your business from doing business in their country.
> Facebook said is it sending Kevin Chan, its head of public policy for Facebook Canada, and Neil Potts, its director of public policy, to the meeting instead.
They're sending multiple people, just not the CEO. It's logistically impossible for a CEO to be in every country at every government's whim, and also run their company. Shouldn't a company be allowed to choose who represents it legally?
If you had to make a list of things that you'd think a CEO would be responsible for, this sure seems like one of them.
If they've got enough people to send in their place, then they also have enough people to run the company while they do the things like this.
It's not like it's just any country's whim, it's a group of G7 countries conveniently meeting next door.
If every single little country was calling on them all the time, then yeah maybe, but this seems like one of those "pick and choose" situation where you should send the CEO and Founder.
Is there any chance that Zuckerberg (or his subordinate) will say anything that everyone doesn't already know? What is the point of him appearing exactly?
Yeah like when Zuckerberg told senator Leahy, he'd get back to him about the issue he was being asked about. It'd be the perfect chance to finally answer that question.
> If every single little country was calling on them all the time, then yeah maybe, but this seems like one of those "pick and choose" situation where you should send the CEO and Founder.
So legal authority is determined by the size of the nation? Or the number? They either can or cannot compel him to do so, regardless of size or number.
A CEO who flies a private jet with great connectivity can't take a day to make a 4 hour flight (where he can continue to work and take calls) to show up? What are you worried about? He's going to be stuck in lines all day and won't be able to work on the plane because he didn't want to buy airplane wifi?
If there's anyone who will simply not be disrupted AT ALL by this kind of visit, it's the CEO of a $500bn company who has the resources of a small nation at his disposal. Hell, it's even practically the same time zone.
Facebook famously answers in scenarios like this “I’m not sure” in order to avoid answering questions. It is not sufficient for a lackey to go considering this.
This is not some small business making minim salaries for the owners. Not your typical corner store who's owners cannot afford the tickets. How fun it would be if all 10 countries block Facebook for a couple of years, now THAT would be fun!! That would teach these thugs a lesson or two about 'corporate responsibility'.
Not sure that this would be legal in many countries. Not showing up is not a crime. Besides, were I Facebook, I would put my best men to work on anti-censorship technology posthaste. Airlift in slips of paper with tor bridges written on them; I don't care. They would figure something out.
No it is not. So the law-makers should pass a law that says: " when you do business in this country, we pay for your ticket and your time and you bring your a$$ over when we ring the bell, or else you a) better be in a hospital sick as hell so we justify the absence, or b) we shut your business down until you show your face".
These thugs should be held accountable. Giving BS excuses about "oh we dropped the ball on the last 10 elections" doesn't cut it. Maybe some citizens are to meek or irresponsible or ignorant; this doesn't mean that these thugs should get a pass.
If Facebook operates in Canada it must: 1) either have there a subsidiary and a CEO of that subsidiary would represent a company in this case or 2) the CEO of a multinational company needs to go there and represent a company.
One of the roles of the CEO is to be the "public face" of the company. This is literally "the public" requiring Facebook to explain themselves. Demanding that a CEO face up to public scrutiny of a company's operations is well on this side of the line.
If companies want to be treated as citizens they must, periodically, offer up a pair of wrists to be cuffed.
> On the other hand, a multinational company can't be expected to fly its CEO to a legislative hearing in every country where it operates... you could spend an entire year doing that instead of actually running your company.
You don't get called out for a legislative hearing for running a company. You get called out for a legislative hearing when you are running your company poorly, and in opposition to public welfare.
If he doesn't want to meet the legal obligations for operating in Canada, Mark is more then welcome to close up shop.
What will canadians do? Easy, keep using Facebook with slightly higher latency. He'll put up a bunch of servers right across the border; done. Unless canada wants to pull a China and start censoring the traffic of her citizens, she'd be out of options.
He will do all that and give up billions in sunk costs and revenue because he can't be bothered to show up to a parliamentary hearing?
His board will destroy him.
Letting 'jobmakers' hold jobs hostage over their incompliance with the law is like negotiating with a terrorist. It opens the door for others to extort you, and the only correct move is to not do it.
> Where do you draw the line? It seems pretty reasonable for the CEO to show up to hearings for the country where your company is headquartered... but to send lieutenants everywhere else, no?
What is the precedent in this case? I assume Facebook is not the only multinational corporation to ever exist or be called to testify to foreign congresses. What have other corporations done?
yes, Facebook should probably get sued daily seeing the way it is acting so that they can suffer the consequences of its actions... If that isn't possible, maybe jail is the only option.
how many days of this last year has Zuckerberg been appearing at hearings, I'm sure it sounds like a lot but I bet if we count up the amount it wouldn't seem like near an unreasonable burden yet.
Aside from that if any company should be able to have it's CEO work remotely Facebook should, so year he will spend some hours in a hearing, and then answer his email.
I think Zuckerberg has both the financial means and the time to fly to every country where he operates. Not all the countries requested hearings so the number of countries he needs to show up is probably less than the number of countries he visits on pleasure trips.
If we think Facebook has "power" over elections, let's just give up on democracy, honestly. That's abdicating any responsibility voters have for their own votes.
I do think big media have a lot of power to influence elections, but I'm not ready to give up on democracy yet. Also, it's only possible for me to abdicate the responsibility of one voter, not all of us.
Big media has always had a lot of power to influence election. This is mostly about FB being the new kid on this block, and traditional big media not liking it, and firing at FB from all barrels.
I do not like Facebook at all, but I can recognize a sustained media smear campaign when it's smacking me in the eyeballs every day.
Exactly. It feels like Facebook's other issues like Cambridge Analytica would've been basically ignored by the general public if the media wasn't angry with FB for dominating the attention of its audience.
This is not a boolean, but has degrees, and the matter is the sheer scale of it.
Let's assume that every voter is 99% responsible for their own vote, and there is a 1% FB component. So every voter, individually, is responsible for their own vote.
But facebook has influence over, let's say, 200M voters. Multiply that by 1% and you get 2M votes. And of course the selective targeting means that FB doesn't need to apply their influence with a sledgehammer like that. They can target people that they have a very good sense are at the tipping point for the message.
Add to that the electoral college system, so you only have to target a very small set of people in order to tip the election (ignore anyone in CA, for example).
So FB having power and voters being responsible are not mutually exclusive.
Having 1% influence over all individuals does not mean you have 1% control over the entire population. It is entirely possible for every single person to ignore your influence.
All voters can only make decisions based on the information they can find. If the information comes overwhelmingly from one source (and in this case “Facebook” counts as such for the average voter), then it is imperative that said source represents reality, not propaganda.
It is impossible for even the smartest voter to do better by the power of reason alone. Reason isn’t magic.
It's impossible for the smartest voter to identify what is and isn't a credible source when posted to Facebook, but average voters possess the ability to listen to arguments about foreign policy and decide who should control the big red nuke button? Or listen to arguments about economics and decide who should control the big money printer? lol ok.
I’m saying gin=gout. No matter how smart you are, if you see only one side you can’t possibly tell if it’s a good argument as you have nothing to compare it against. Following on from that, thanks to all our human cognitive biases and limitations, the information doesn’t even need to be totally one sided. 20th century democracy worked acceptably well because vested interests controlling newspapers etc. couldn’t dominate every aspect of political discourse everywhere all the time — although there are a few interesting examples of them dominating specific demographics, and as a result a whole bunch of people have been needlessly demonised, which is literally how I know this is a problem that can happen.
Because everything at some level is propaganda. Even facts can be presented in such a way that they support any argument.
The only way to fight misinformation is with more, better information. Filter bubbles preventing this type of content from reaching users is the real problem.
I define propaganda as deliberately attempting to mislead a significant population for political purposes.
I consider the two biggest problems with FB et al is that they are a paperclip optimiser for human attention, and that they are systematically exploitable by hostile actors. Filter bubbles are merely an emergent feature of that optimisation, not the cause.
"Right now we're focused on engaging in meaningful dialogue with the committee and look forward to answering their questions." ...but we aren't going to send over the people you asked for and the only ones that really matter for this kind of thing...
I hope they get held in contempt and banned from the country, maybe others will follow suit. It feels like an insult, it's not like it's that far, and there will be many countries there. I know they don't give a shit unless it's the US and that makes it even worse.
Frustrating to see them untouchable and with no shits given. No accountability, no responsibility.
I'm on Zuck's side here. Complying will set a precedent that any country in the world can summon him for any or no reason just to score some political points (which is exactly what the US and EU hearings were). It is completely within any country's power to make and enforce laws that companies operating in their jurisdiction have to follow, so they should really start there.
I would agree with you if Facebook were only passively present in other countries by virtue of the internet being inherently global. But Facebook is a massive company with a physical presence, an enormous financial presence, and is a political presence in Canada, UK, Australia, and probably all of the G7 countries.
Rupert Murdoch was obliged to front up to the UK Parliament. Zuckerberg is no less obliged here.
Sure, but you can say the same for most other countries outside the G7 as well. After Canada it would be India summoning him, then Brazil, then Israel, Turkey, Japan, Mexico and countless others. Where do you draw the line? Should flying around the world answering to politicians be his full-time job, or should he be able to actually run his company and let local executives handle such problems?
All of those governments have the sovereignty to order him to appear.
And they probably mostly lack the jurisdiction to coerced him to appear, while having the jurisdiction to impose whatever penalties they see fit for his non-appearance.
Personally, I think it would be amusing if all the major countries had outstanding warrants for Mark Zuckerberg’s arrest, and imposed strict privacy regulations upon Facebook et al.
I guess if he had local "executives", it'd be their jobs, but at least in Canada it doesn't sound like there is one.
I'd have more sympathy if it was a small company where the loss of time from a CEO being involved meant something and could harm the company, however when you are that big, the job of CEO becomes being a spokesperson, sales person, and face of the company, and when you get really big, it becomes dealing with this kind of shit. Even in a 10 person company the CEO can be never in the office, constantly selling this or that or doing PR and things still run. Even if they never did anything else, I don't think Facebook would die anytime soon.
When you get yourself into a mess like this, you can expect it to become more busy that you'd like, but that's called reaping what you sow. If you didn't want to deal with it, get local executives that can go to jail on your behalf.
Did you not read the article? This committee session was attended by parliamentarians from over 10 countries. According to [1], this grand committee includes politicians from the United Kingdom, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, France, Ireland, Latvia, Singapore. Ecuador, Mexico, Morocco and Trinidad and Tobago.
If they aren't willing to speak to this grand committee, when would they speak to anyone outside the US? It sounds like they won't.
God forbid he answer questions from the Indian parliament, he might have to explain why WhatsApp has been so slow to invest in stopping the spread of fake news in a country where it has literally led to lynchings.
If Zuckerberg doesn't appear, Canada should retaliate financially by putting a tariff on Facebook ad sales from Canadian advertisers. (And they could donate 100% of the tariff revenues to some non-profit that invests in local journalism.)
Just like how China doesn’t pay the tariff, it’s US importers who do, in this case Facebook doesn’t pay the tariff, it’s Canadian advertisers that would, on top of whatever Facebook is asking for. It would only hurt Facebook if you applied a fine or tax directly to their Canadian profits or prevented them from doing business in Canada, and even then... with other countries, the sway is, “you’re a citizen of our country, you have to follow the law, it’s easier that way” but if you’re not actually a citizen, have legal defense and possible substitutions in place, and ultimately, the only penalty is likely a slap on the wrist and a request you somehow further can’t ignore, well... it comes back to other countries on their own don’t have sway if the US or host nation doesn’t make the same request and you don’t have immediate travel plans to that country (and, of course, the country follows rule of law and/or you’re protected by your host country’s legal system...) That said, anyone in the country making such a request that works for an affected company would have to follow the laws of that host country over company dictates, or face legal consequences...
Many taxes can get passed onto the buyer of the taxed good, but I'm not convinced that digital advertising is one of them. Roughly speaking, digital advertisers like Facebook and Google end up selling 100% of their inventory of views at a price set by the value of the conversions driven to the ad buyers. Adding a tax in this model forces advertisers to lower bids in order to remain profitable, which then forces the advertising platform to lower prices to continue selling 100% of their inventory.
This is the same economic modeling behind the incidence of land-value taxes falling on landlords, not renters. When you're taxing a product of fixed size that is priced at whatever the market will bear, taxes get taken out of the owners' economic rents.
This logic assumes transparent pricing and that bids from international companies not subject to the tax won’t take over Canadian bids forcing prices back up to where they were... and I bet multinational organizations would avoid the tax by having US services bid for them. If the tax is on ads shown to Canadians rather than ads paid by Canadian companies, I don’t see how the government can force it short of banning Facebook altogether.
Is Canada allowed to do that? The United States wouldn't be: it's a bill of attainder.
The government donating to specific non-profits is sketchy as hell, too. Both of your solutions sounds like considerably more serious problems than Zuckerberg refusing to appear.
Even in America there has been a recent troubling trend towards Department of Justice settlements being used to direct money to specific non-profits [0]. There was an effort to outlaw these settlements but it seems to have gone nowhere.
As philwelch said elsewhere, it could be implemented as a normal tax and have much the same effect—as long as the legislation could be sufficiently narrowed to social media e.g. “sites where the content is predominantly generated by its customers.”
I think there's a free trade agreement (formerly NAFTA but they rebranded it) that gets in the way of Canada being able to arbitrarily set tariffs on the United States (let alone on one particular US company).
However, I don't know that Canada has any large social media companies, so they can just make it a normal tax and possibly get away with it.
People seem to be freaking out at the idea that companies can be subpoena'd by the governments of countries they operate in. What do you expect? That you can just sell your products in another country and not be answerable to their government? Do people realise this is basically an imperialist attitude?
Here's a tip: If you don't want to appear before dozens of government investigations, don't conduct dodgy business practices in hundreds of jurisdictions.
I would totally support putting various restrictions on Facebooks operations until Zuckerberg shows. Barring Facebook from storing any personal data on any Canadian citizen until it is in compliance with Canadian law.
Well I think the governments are not doing enough to stop Facebook. EU just passed GDPR last year but still, based on recent developments (like the Crossfit case) it should be obvious to everybody that FB is damaging to society on many levels. I would go even further with government actions and start to block their IP ranges on the national level.
Why do you think that blocking Facebook is censorship? You are not blocking a particular book or post, you are blocking a company that disregards privacy many ways, filtering the internet according their internal policy that is not accessible to the outside world while selling user data to the highest bidder.
Why do you think blocking [Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc..] is censorship? Filtering the internet according China's internal policy that is not accessible to the outside world..
You see my point?
It should be consumers and NOT government who decides what products and services are allowed to be used, especially with regards to information. Transparency regulations I can get behind but mass blocking is fundamentally wrong - it takes power out of the hands of regular people.
The government shouldn't have that power to begin with in my opinion.
No, I was talking about blocking Facebook. I do not support blocking Amazon, there is no reason for it. China rightfully blocked Facebook, I think the 2016 US election made this clear for everybody. Unless you like Russian interference with election of course. Heroin is banned for the same reason as Facebook should be, people cannot handle it and it has very damaging implications for society as a whole. I think the rule of law should govern a society that is accessible for everybody, unlike Facebook internal policies.
China bans those companies to 'protect social unity', a valid moral argument from a certain point of view. They don't block these things to benefit citizens.
You just compared a website to heroin. Next you'll be comparing Pokémon Go to organised crime.
I completely refuse to believe people lack so much agency that they aren't responsible for the content they consume.
They can't handle it? It's a website dude. Say what you want about privacy issues but this is a nonsensical argument.
Okay, I never have used Facebook so perhaps I am missing something. Quite probable.
However, I humbly disagree, you hinted at the answer. Yes, worse case is Canada and other markets begin blocking Facebook.
What value does Facebook add to Canada or any market. Advertising? Advertising is a zero sum game. If Facebook disappears there's no advertising loss in the market, other agencies will take over.
If facebook disappeared from those 10 countries what difference would it make to the citizens of those countries? Not very much. Other local services would pop up to take its place and replicate its functionality. I don't think Facebook pays much tax to these countries either, so a local replacement would create greater amounts of tax revenue as well as jobs for their citizens.
Considering how large a political and security risk Facebook is, I don't understand why any country would allow this sort of service to operate outside its borders without oversight.
You underestimate the disruption the banning of Facebook would have. It really isn't easy to replace a service where the main attraction is the people using the service. It'll take years for anything considerable to pop up even if the alternative is ready the moment Facebook closes.
I don't understand what vital function facbeook serves that people could not use other fallback tools like e-mail to deal with their issues in its absence until something else pops up. Ad dollars would go to other local media sources that facebook is essentially killing.
Everyone here knows how those alternatives work, but we’re unusual. I think (I’m not a chemist) it’s like being on a chemistry forum expressing surprise about a ban on <generic drug example> when it’s “easy” to make the stuff at home.
We’re blocking JavaScript as a security precaution when normal people often still use 123456 as their password.
I still think banning Facebook would be a net win, but it’s not zero cost.
I have many examples of even smart people not knowing what tech can do. I’m still regularly blowing people’s minds with the AR mode in Google Translate, and the tech behind that is 8.5 years old now.
This isn’t even a new phenomena — back when I was a kid all the adults joked about needing someone under the age of 14 to work the VCR and stop digital clocks flashing 12:00 forever. The jokes didn’t stop until VCRs stopped being a thing.
Not that high. People may not know what tech can do but they do know that tech can do the things Facebook does. Using separate services may be less convenient than something like Facebook (or would be if Facebook's UX wasn't horrible) but it isn't really harder. If Facebook gets replaced by another monolith, using it won't even be more inconvenient.
I agree with you that other sites and tools would eventually pick up the slack but if you honestly can't see the disruption it would cause both citizens, businesses, event organizers, etc then you're not qualified to be in the discussion.
So Facebook is essentially holding Canada hostage. A sovereign country shouldn't give in to the demands of a company blackmailing it. Even if that has a cost.
Just a reminder that this isn't just Canada, it's an international committee representing countries totalling half a billion citizens. There's no question that Facebook does business in Canada or any of the other countries in question. Facebook is international and has set up satellite offices around the globe in order to have a presence in these countries. It was my understanding that their growth in these regions and others was hugely important to them.
I think this goes beyond the logistics of "is it reasonable for a CEO to bother meeting with legislators in every country in which it does business" and is a matter of whether Facebook is going to be answerable at all internationally, and what the optics look like of an American company doing business in other nations where it will not make top level executives available to answer important questions.
Does this mean that Facebook simply won't make its top level executives available to any other country? Is there a population threshold? Will Zuckerberg or Sandberg only meet with Presidents/Vice-Presidents, etc?
I can't help but feel like Facebook is held to a hugely different standard in these cases. I don't think people would think twice about expecting Mary Barra, for example, to travel to Canada to be answerable about GM vehicles being sold into Canadian territory if Canadian officials had concerns.
It also seems plain as day to me that Facebook's top brass simply do not want to answer these questions. They would rather send representatives to face the tough questions on their behalf, which are problematic on their own, leading to troubling and unsatisfying public exchanges [1].
Canada wants to defer totalitarian speech control as the responsibility of companies, but as long as Canadians can connect to servers outside of Canada, the government will not get their wish. If they were serious about censoring the internet they would go full China and build a great maple firewall.
I can understand from a business perspective why FB would not want to bother sending their top 2 folks, and the doors it would open up and how they can just get away with it to deal with more "important" things. This is discussed in many comments.
From a personal perspective, and as a Canadian, I know the shit FB is pulling and the damages it is creating and can create and I feel powerless to stop it or make a difference. The best I could really hope to achieve as just some person is to petition my government to do something about it, and it would probably at best lead to something like a meeting with the most accountable people. I'm lucky in that they are already trying to do this, in conjunction with 9 other countries, so hooray!
Do I know that this may be useless or go nowhere, yes, could I really hope to get much more than this on my own, no. So it feels to me like this is our first step to making a difference or at least trying, and they still have the audacity to say "nah dawg, talk to these nobodies instead, but we are totally committed". As a person I'm really pissed and insulted. It says my best efforts real or imagined, are pointless and useless. It says I don't give a fuck about you or anyone in your Country/ies. It says you can work as hard as you want to rally people, 450M angry I's who just want answers and to see someone held accountable and at least show up to defend their actions, and you still don't care and will just deny them. It says nobody matters but us, get used to it you pleebs. It says that even when your COUNTRY is trying to stand up for you, even with all their power and clout can't get you to show up for a fucking meeting next door with 10 other countries, it says WOW, who do these people think they are, how dare you defy my highest body's request? How do you think I am going to feel about you after that?
If there was an oil spill or something like that, you'd see the CEO talking about it in front of the government on every news station, it's the job of the most accountable person to own up or at least show up and lie through their teeth or avoid questions like the plague, but they aren't even willing. I hope they get in deep shit and we take much harsher measures faster because of their non-cooperation.
Maybe that seems like a bit of a rant and it's more about feelings, but they are still valid and probably represent how a lot of people also feel. A lot of us have businesses, and we can see from both lenses, but we still have no power compared to them and we still have to live with them, and while we don't want to say things that could turn around and fuck us over if we ever get in that situation, but I guess shame on you if you do, so it doesn't really matter anyway.
* apologies to the "nobodies", you aren't nobody, but you aren't who we want.
Surely they could only hold their own citizens in contempt of parliament for those who work for Facebook Canada? It seems overreaching to expect a foreign CEO of a parent company not incorporated in that parliament's jurisdiction to make such a demand of Zuck.
Of course Canada has the legal authority over Facebook's activities in Canada. Facebook not having any datacenters there just makes enforcement slightly harder.
On the other hand, a multinational company can't be expected to fly its CEO to a legislative hearing in every country where it operates... you could spend an entire year doing that instead of actually running your company. It's just straight-up logistically impossible, a legitimately unreasonable burden. And if a government legitimately just needs information as opposed to just optics, they don't need the CEO anyways.
Where do you draw the line? It seems pretty reasonable for the CEO to show up to hearings for the country where your company is headquartered... but to send lieutenants everywhere else, no?