[sekasi]

I have to say, as someone who's been somewhat critical of Facebook's dealings for the past years, I read the entire thing and I can't pick up on anything that doesn't seem like a reasonable thing to say to your team.

Is anyone able to educate me on why there seem to be some air of hawks swooping on Zuckerberg because of this?

[mrtksn]

I think it plays into "corporations control the government, there's no democracy" narrative.

Essentially means, it doesn't matter what's your position on immigration or gun laws or healthcare, what will determine the administration is the candidate's relationship with Facebook.

I think it feeds from the distrust towards the political system more than the distrust towards Zuckerberg.

If you think about it, the concerns are not entirely baseless. Facebook can analyze the public interest towards the candidates, analyze the candidates campaign and tweak Instagram, Facebook, Whatsapp to boost the campaign of the friendly candidate when penalizing the other candidate's campaign. They can do this through tweaking colours, changing the mood of the public(they experimented with that), slowing down interactions that channels where the unfavoured candidates flourish, detect behaviour differences between the candidate supporters(maybe republican share more videos and democrats more written documents? facebook would know) and boost those, affecting the virality of the information flow. What are the users gonna do? Go use Friendster?

I mean, I don't say that FB does these but I can see how some people would want to sharpen their pitchforks when a corporation weights in a political debate.

[basch]

I'd argue the press has always chosen the political winners (sometimes by accident by always talking negatively about them) and facebook as the new kingmaker is not much different than hearst, gannett, murdoch or soros anointing someone. the main difference is facebook actually abandoning any cohesively human choice in who they pick, shifting blame/responsibility towards an algorithm they write and control but want to remain sentientish in its own ways. i do see some reckless abandon in letting mathematical output get a nearly final say vs just admitting to and owning the existence of editorial discretion.

>changing the mood of the public

its the same type of thing the press has been doing since forever, just more targeted. the change is in scale (both more macro AND more micro) not kind.

[CharlesColeman]

> I'd argue the press has always chosen the political winners (sometimes by accident by always talking negatively about them) and facebook as the new kingmaker is not much different than hearst, gannett, murdoch or soros anointing someone.

There's an important difference you're missing: The press isn't monolithic and it's also self-consciously part of the American democratic political order. Facebook is monolithic and it seems to want to shirk its democratic responsibilities much of the time.

[basch]

I'm not sure I see it as monolithic in its press displaying reach. Facebook, Twitter, GoogleSearch/GoogleNews/Android/Youtube, Apple each have their own way of controlling peoples attention and driving what sites people view, what apps people open. Facebook may or may not be the biggest of those four, but Facebook does not have a monopoly on peoples attention. One could argue Twitter is much smaller than Facebook, but its concentration of celebrities and journalists brings into question its overall utilitarian influence and impact, as opposed to just its raw MAU. The attention of one influential person may change way more in the world than 1000 nonfluencial people.

[sekasi]

Correct or incorrect, good answer. Appreciate you taking time writing it!

[nindalf]

Because taking a single line out of context is great clickbait. The entire transcript on the verge was posted on HN yesterday and died with 10 upvotes and no comments. This story is much less interesting with context.

[mirimir]

Yes. Reportedly he said:

> "I don't want to have a major lawsuit against our own government... But look, at the end of the day, if someone's going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and you fight," he said in the recording.

> "It doesn't make election interference less likely. It makes it more likely because now the companies can't co-ordinate and work together," he added.

Microsoft fought releasing data subpoenaed from its Irish data center. Apple fought backdooring iOS for the FBI. AT&T fought against being broken up in the 70s. So why is it surprising that Facebook would fight against it?

And his second statement is in no way a threat.

[Fnoord]

Do you have a link?

[jansan]

There isn't anything. Zuckerberg is only saying what you would expect from a sane business leader.

This is pure political journalism.

[Fnoord]

> There isn't anything. Zuckerberg is only saying what you would expect from a sane business leader.

Given the recent negative news about Facebook I can see how such is news.

> This is pure political journalism.

Everything is political.

[PavlovsCat]

I read it as Zuckerberg considering democracy an existential threat to FB, more so than FB a threat to democracy, and thinking that might is right.

Sure, FB is nowhere near special in that, but just because it metastasized all over the place doesn't mean it's not cancer. It's reasonable, just like it was reasonable for Exxon to keep what they knew about fossil fuels and the climate on the down low, reasonable within what I would consider a pathological framework of values.

[cjhopman]

> I read it as Zuckerberg considering democracy an existential threat to FB

I don't understand how a reasonable person can read it that way.

Here's the full quote:

> That doesn’t mean that, even if there’s anger and that you have someone like Elizabeth Warren who thinks that the right answer is to break up the companies ... I mean, if she gets elected president, then I would bet that we will have a legal challenge, and I would bet that we will win the legal challenge. And does that still suck for us? Yeah. I mean, I don’t want to have a major lawsuit against our own government. I mean, that’s not the position that you want to be in when you’re, you know, I mean … it’s like, we care about our country and want to work with our government and do good things. But look, at the end of the day, if someone’s going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and you fight.

I do not understand how you can interpret that to mean anything other than that the "existential threat" is "to break up the companies". And it would be a far stretch to somehow move the goalposts to say that breaking up the companies is somehow fundamentally an aspect of democracy.

Unless you are willing to tie opposition to anything that any elected official has ever proposed as opposition to democracy itself, I guess.

[PavlovsCat]

I read the whole thing, but thanks. And if you misrepresent my position without even asking for clarification, you not understanding it hardly comes as a surprise.

> other than that the "existential threat" is "to break up the companies"

The government derives its legitimacy from the people, and running a corporation is a privilege granted by said government. If it wants to split companies up because they became too powerful, that's perfectly fine. To get all "let's fight" about that is like a dog thinking it actually should sit on the couch because it has teeth.

> Unless you are willing to tie opposition to anything that any elected official has ever proposed as opposition to democracy itself, I guess.

It's not general "opposition" based on reasons that respect the reasons the other side has, it's pure self-interest. I, very much reasonably so, think that that meeting is the tip of an iceberg, and that when Zuck says "go to the mat", he means go to the mat.

> And it would be a far stretch to somehow move the goalposts to say that breaking up the companies is somehow fundamentally an aspect of democracy.

No, but the ability to do so very much is, and should be in no way dependant on the legal prowess or pocket depth of the company subject to that operation.

If you can't put a muzzle and a leash on companies that have the ability to fuck with democracy in a very real and serious way, especially if they show no sign of having any moral compunctions about doing so, you don't have a democracy, you have a theater group in a mall.

[cjhopman]

Sure, and if you believe that the ACLU and edward snowden are fighting against democracy, then I'll admit that your position is quite possibly logically consistent.

[rollingdeep]

This comment doesn’t make any sense.

[rollingdeep]

Because Zuckerberg already testified that election influence and interference was not a serious threat, it is newsworthy that he turns around here and says the opposite, that companies would not be able to control interference threats in the face of a breakup.

Also newsworthy is the existential nature of the legal battle he openly talks about, whether or not there is legitimate reason to be broken up as regulations do have a purpose. Especially since in the same audio he admits there are election influence threats to worry about, it seems to pit facebook directly opposed to the democratic system and regulations meant to uphold democracies. Saying we will use our deep pockets which are deeper than the U.S. regulators—to fight any regulatory action (which seems reasonable now) is like saying we will fight against democracy and being fairly regulated because we have more money and power than the people and government do in any legal battle. The rules, it seems, will not apply to FB or any company of similar size and power.

[dbtqgoat]

Because there isn’t

>There's no bombshell revelation in this leak but we get some good insights into Mark Zuckerberg's major preoccupations - regulation and new competitors.

It’s just a unique opportunity to be a fly on the wall in a high profile meeting.