Zuckerberg's Political Theater (Filed #003)
Facebook's CEO pitches free expression over enforcement and that Congress has nothing to fear from Libra.
The Big Picture
He called it his most “comprehensive” take on free speech and for the past week, Facebook’s chief executive took his talking points on the road, starting with an address before students at Georgetown University to media interviews with Fox News and NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt, and then the main event last Wednesday: a hearing before the House Financial Services Committee over Facebook’s Libra crypto project. Though he was dinged over his speech about free expression and was battered by lawmakers over various Facebook issues, Zuckerberg may want to call it a push—it was neither a win or a loss.
He maintained the status quo…for now.
If you took anything away, it’s likely that Zuckerberg is trying to tightrope walk his way through this seemingly endless crisis caused by his own company. He claims to be giving power to the voiceless with Facebook but is it given to the right people, those that deserve to have their voice heard versus the conspiracy theorists and those using it with malicious intent? It appears Zuckerberg hoped a compromise solution would assuage everyone, that by offering a warning or arguments against the lie, it would make things better instead of removing the content outright which would likely be called out as censorship by the creator.
This reasoning carried over to his testimony before Congress. He acknowledged trust issues remained and Democratic lawmakers called him out on it, especially when relating to Facebook’s Libra crypto project. Though much of the six-hour hearing centered around Libra, Democrats weren’t shy about attacking Zuckerberg on other issues such as civil rights including how Libra would impact those underbanked, Facebook’s $5 billion FTC settlement and data privacy scandals, his private meetings with President Trump, and whether he’d be willing to face similar conditions as the company’s contracted content moderators (spoiler alert: Zuckerberg refused, saying it wouldn’t be a good use of his time).
Contrary to previous hearings, Republican lawmakers were more sympathetic to Zuckerberg, expressing profound appreciation for his innovations, similarities with Trump, and that he was a capitalist. It seemed their anger over perceived conservative censorship had been tempered as a result of Zuckerberg’s Georgetown speech, and their main argument was about Libra’s base being in Switzerland versus the U.S. and worries about China outpacing the nation in tech development.
In the end, did we learn anything from the House committee hearing? Nothing significant about Facebook’s ambitions. But we were reminded that the federal government doesn’t know technology so we’ll be having more of these debates in the foreseeable future.
So where do we go from here? Expect more of the same, is my guess. Facebook will continue to iterate on its policies and warn us of bad actors on its platform while also facing charges of facilitating misinformation and not doing enough to stem users from using its technology to incite violence and more. If anything, everyone scored political points, but no one moved the needle.
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In this week’s episode, we talk about Mark Zuckerberg’s congressional hearing over Facebook’s Libra, his company’s news push, and Tesla’s surprising third-quarter profit announcement.
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