Drama of a 26-year-old: she watched 12 hours of Zuckerberg testimony and still knows nothing [SPECIAL REPORT]

Kasia Chojecka
Nov 4 · 6 min read
source: thevariety.com

Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony before the US Congress has caused a massive stir in a digital community . No wonder — we hoped that we would learn something new about Libra — still a very mysterious stablecoin project that gives regulators and financial institutions some really sleepless nights.
However, we have forgotten that memes picturing Mark Zuckerberg as a programmed robot, didn’t come out of nowhere — he keeps repeating rhetorical tricks and gets lost in his own shenanigans. Only exceptionally does he reply with a firm yes or no — everything else is just: Congresswoman, it’s a very important question, my team will follow up on this.

I decided to watch two separate hearings for comparative purposes — the 2018 one from Senate, during which Zuckerberg was testifying about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and the latest one, concerning the potential threats posed by Facebook’s digital currency, Libra. Paradoxically, the most important thing in both interrogations was not the explanations provided by Zuckerberg, but the questions asked by politicians. Questions that we still haven’t found the answer to.

Far-right dinner parties

What hits me the most about the hearing on data leakage as well as about the latter testimony, is that the support for Mark Zuckerberg depends primarily on the party affiliation of interrogators. Nothing surprising about that — Zuckerberg’s participation in meetings and dinners with far-right politicians and activists is a widely known fact. Republicans didn’t even hide their favor during the hearing: apart from vague and unspecified questions they asked, the conservatists kept flattering Zuckerberg and congratulated him on creating the US national treasure — the greatest social media platform known to humanity. We shouldn’t be surprised — it was the Republican Party that gained the most on the Cambridge Analytica scandal. There were some exceptions of course — and sorry for not elaborating on them this time.
In turn, during both hearings, Democrats used the opportunity to grill the Facebook CEO for PR purposes. Zuckerberg took the hit for everything: from the Cambridge Analytica leakage, through profiling ads and redlining, to discrimination based on sex in the company’s management and employee’s rights violation of content reviewers in Tampa, FL. What also interested congressmen and congresswomen was Libra’s impact on a possible financial crisis and further prosperity of the banking sector.

However, I was surprised the most by the fact that the main concern of US Congress is neither the threat posed to financial stability by Facebook digital currency, nor the potential exposure of users’ data to fraud and illegal transfers. Congressmen and congresswomen worried that Libra Association’s headquarters will be based in Geneva, not in the United States. So everything can be allowed as long as it stays in the family. A means to an end — if the ultimate goal is to conquer the rest of the world in a digital arms race.

Pandora’s wallet

source: boredpanda

Facebook’s digital currency was announced a couple of months ago, but it still raises some serious concerns about its influence on the global financial sector. However, Zuckerberg claims that Libra shouldn’t be treated as a currency itself but rather as a payment system based on digital tokens whose main goal is to revolutionize traditional banking payments. Libra is supposed to be the first stablecoin available to one-third of the world’s population registered on Facebook. Thus, it will reach the number of users about which the most famous stablecoins — Tether or DAI — have never dreamt of. However, the authors of this project continue to emphasize that Libra’s main target are not the users from developed countries but the citizens of the Global South who have limited access to traditional banking and are therefore excluded from its services.

Congressman Brad Sherman (Democrats) didn’t believe this. He told Zuckerberg:

The poor and unbanked need pesos. They need dollars that they can buy something at a local store. You’ve done no effort to help the unbanked anywhere else and any other time and you should.

The variety of problems

I’ve been following Libra’s development as a legal scientist since its first presentation and despite the attention I devote to it, I still see more question marks than dots. Even the latest report on stablecoins prepared by G7 does not give any unambiguous answers although it indicates some possible directions the currencies can take and holistically approaches the problems regulators will probably have to face. What we now know for sure is that Libra will be something different than the well-known decentralized cryptocurrencies based on permissionless blockchain. On the contrary, Libra’s blockchain will be permissioned and the fiat money backing the coin will be, obviously, the US dollar. Last but not least, Libra is a stablecoin created by the huge social media platform used by 2.6 billion people all over the world. Few questions here:
- should we tax Libra? Is it a commercial service or a brand-new monetary system?
- should we regulate Libra in the same way we regulate derivatives?
- can we treat the coin’s user as a consumer? If so, how do we protect them?
- is life a dream?

source: flickr, Anthony Quintano via fastcompany.com

12 hours of Zuckerberg auditions make a shocking impression. The list of negligent events related to users’ data in the case of Cambridge Analytica juxtaposed with the oncoming giant financial project leads to the sad conclusion — Facebook may not have the tools to ensure the safety of our data. Let’s recall what the election scandal was about: the platform allowed selling the users’ personal data by ad developers to consulting companies (Cambridge Analytica) which significantly influenced the political preferences during elections. In addition, the algorithms were not able to fact-check fake news which affected subsequent voters’ decisions. Apart from this — redlining, lack of control over the hate speech, no AI tools detecting terrorist propaganda and content related to violation of human rights.

Let’s get back to the memo from 2016 sent by Andrew Bosworth (VP) to other Facebook employees:

So we connect more people. That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. And still we connect people.

Wow, and you guys want to deal with our money?

Le Roi Soleil

During interrogation from 2018, Senator Graham asked Zuckerberg to clarify whether, in the CEO’s opinion, Facebook possessed a monopoly in its field. Zuckerberg strongly denied and pointed out that company’s main competitors — Google, Amazon, or Twitter — offer similar services. Graham kept dwelling on it: do these platforms provide identical services as Facebook? Will the user who doesn’t have a Facebook account find another similar platform on which they will be able to use the same options?

No matter what Zuckerberg says, the answer is no. There is no alternative to Facebook, which means that we are now dealing with a unique omnipotence in digital marketing, data transfers, and monetization of attention. Now, Facebook is also trying to access our preferences regarding the money we spend.

Let me forestall the Libra apologists’ argument — no, this is not the same situation as with commercial banks which have access to the history of our electronic transactions. Banks have never disposed of such a large volume of data as Facebook and probably never will. Moreover, banks don’t have appropriate AI tools to profile ads by themselves. Finally, the banking sector is based on — at least to some (small) extent — free competition shaped by regulation developed over the years. Which of course doesn’t mean that banks don’t sink in procyclicality and very often fuck the economy up.

source: knowyourmeme

Congressman , I would definitely consider myself a capitalist.

— said Zuckerberg said during the testimony before Congress. Mark, it’s good to know you’re not a socialist. As if we have ever had any doubts. You pushed all of us into a luxurious gold-dripping cage built of imperishable iron rods. None of us will delete the account, that’s for sure — FOMO turns out to be much stronger than the need to protect the privacy, and Libra remains another proof that everything in the world has its price — so everything can be bought by those who can afford it.

Kasia Chojecka

Written by

Digital economy analyst (Foundation for Strategic Initiatives), Ph.D. candidate in banking law, researcher, academic teacher.

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