I wrote a column recently fact-checking
some of the claims that Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg,
made in a recent speech at Georgetown University
and some subsequent testimony on Capitol Hill, in which he was
trying to defend the social media giant against accusations
of incorrect political advertising, election
manipulation, monopoly power, et cetera.
We at another crossroads.
We can either continue to stand for free expression,
understanding its messiness but believing
that the long journey towards greater progress
requires confronting ideas that challenge us.
Or we can decide that the cost is simply too great.
And I'm here today because I believe that we must continue
to stand for free expression.
Zuckerberg claimed that Facebook is part of the fifth estate.
That's a term that's generally used in the US
to explain members of the counterculture
- bloggers, journalists, who are outsiders.
It's also associated with a Detroit magazine,
an anarchist magazine that actually
was protesting, amongst other things, capitalism.
This is quite an irony for a man who
has become a billionaire by the industrial-level monetisation
of personal data.
That's another issue in Zuckerberg's speech
that I took exception to.
Facebook's business model - the targeted advertising business
model - has always been incredibly powerful.
In fact, if you go back to the original paper
that the inventors of surveillance capitalism,
Google, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin,
did in 1998 on search.
They actually talked about potential ways
that search and targeted advertising
could be misused by both companies,
but also potentially, public actors.
So it's very interesting that Sheryl Sandberg, Mark
Zuckerberg are claiming that they
didn't know how big and powerful Facebook could get.
The other thing that I take exception
to in Zuckerberg's speech is the idea
that Facebook is, in some way, a national champion for the US.
This is a line that you're hearing
a lot more of in Washington.
Big tech executives like to say that if they're broken up,
then China will move ahead of the US.
But the idea of a large multinational company
like Facebook being some kind of patriotic champion of America's
national interests is just patently false.
Facebook, like many other companies,
would love to be in China, but can't
be because of the ring-fenced digital ecosystem there.
So that's my fact check of Mark Zuckerberg.