[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.