Leaked Zuckerberg audio: 'You go to the mat and you fight'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49893913

by sjcsjc • 7 years ago

67 62 7 years ago

bbc.co.uk

rollingdeep7• 7 years ago

BBC coverage on this is a bit minimal and lazy.

Posted already here with more coverage on Zuckerberg's comments about suing the government and election interference.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21133244

rr-geil-j• 7 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21133244

It's already deleted.

dang• 7 years ago

It was flagged by users—correctly so, because this seems like just back-and-forth political ephemera, of the sort that the HN guidelines explain is off topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

The test on HN for whether a new development in an ongoing story counts as on topic is whether the new article adds significant new information: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.... When that happens, it will surely be fully discussed on HN.

patd• 7 years ago

I don't think there anything in there that is unexpected.

The most interesting part is probably how Facebook will compete with TikTok in the coming months and years.

disillusioned• 7 years ago

>>There's no bombshell revelation in this leak

Oh boy is that an understatement. Of course Zuck's strategy if the government attempts to break up Facebook for antitrust or whatever else they can spin together is to fight it legally. Of course his preference is going to be for a presidential candidate who hasn't made an overt commitment to force that break up.

There's really no there, there.

rollingdeep7• 7 years ago

When you are FB or Google or Amazon or you know... Microsoft... there are issues with how the government could ever effectively regulate such an industry with outsized funds (much larger than the fixed regulatory budgets) and power (influencing people and elections). The legal process was never designed to work effectively or efficiently at such a level. The legal process becomes such a war of attrition that you can weather any investigation as Microsoft did.

nradov• 7 years ago

Microsoft was forced to pay a large fine and significantly change their business practices. The goal was never to destroy Microsoft, and even if the government could have somehow done so that wouldn't have benefited consumers.

roland002• 7 years ago

The bigger thing is a mismatch between the employees of facebook and the management. These weekly meetings happen all the time, what is different is now the employees are recording them and releasing them to the press. This means at least one employee no longer thinks the interest of upper management and the workers align and she or he spent forethought in order to record the conversation and then spent time afterwards figuring out a way to contact the press.

This is a there there, even if the actual conversation transcript is banal and what you would expect from Zuck.

dmurray• 7 years ago

The big news is that one of Facebook's 40,000 employees is disgruntled, idealistic or just likes to feel important?

cjhopman5• 7 years ago

This means at least one employee no longer thinks the interest of upper management and the workers align ...

That's strange. I interpreted it to mean that there was a worker that thought that the media was greatly misrepresenting facebook and facebook management's position and they released these extensive transcripts to show just how banal the reality was.

Iv• 7 years ago

Yeah, when I first saw the headlines yesterday, I plunged, happy to have more fodder against a guy as consider really nefarious to the whole internet ecosystem.

But the actual quotes are underwhelming. "Warren wants to break our company. Well, we will go to the courts if she tries." is not exactly a shocking reaction. You don't exactly expect him to agree with Warren's position there.

dijit• 7 years ago

I agree completely. If you ignore the subttext that Facebook appears somewhat responsible for sniping elections/referendums with targeted (mis)information campaigns entirely; then this really shouldn’t shock anyone.

But I guess the issue is that the subtext is there.

JMTQp8lwXL2• 7 years ago

The idea that Zuckerberg would have ever said anything in a company all hands meetings, that would be shocking if publicly revealed, would suggest a poor lack of planning. Though I suppose he likely speaks rather candidly at these weekly all hands, he has probably always considered this a possibility. That's why he had no issue taking ownership of it, when it leaked. It isn't that damning to say you'll go to bat for the company you founded, if necessary.

the_duke• 7 years ago

Seems like it doesn't contain anything surprising or terribly noteworthy.

Also, while FB, Instagram and Whats App being under the same umbrella is very questionable (and the Whats App acquisition should have been blocked by regulators), I'd argue breaking up Google or Amazon would be more important.

chillacy• 7 years ago

The full transcript is on the verge https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/1/20892354/mark-zuckerberg-...

nindalf2• 7 years ago

That was submitted yesterday, but failed to gain traction. It appears that the clickbait headline used by BBC got more attention from HN.

modeless• 7 years ago

I'm sad about this. It appears to me that the original was buried, despite being interesting and extremely relevant for HN, because it doesn't fit the popular narrative of Zuckerberg being an uncaring evil robot. This BBC article appears to fit that narrative better, labeling him "combative" and "paranoid" despite his comments being perfectly reasonable IMO.

subroutine2• 7 years ago

Is there any concern about the implications of breaking up big tech in an attempt to make US markets more competitive, but in so doing allow a foreign competitor to swoop in and become the de facto choice in some market? I imagine the US benefits substantially from the likes of Google and fb dominating competitors in foreign markets.

apatters• 7 years ago

This concern does get expressed from time to time, but I think it is sacrificing the long-term for the short-term. Sure, you can prop up bad businesses through government intervention in the short term, and we do it all the time.

But in the long term, they're still bad businesses, and you end up with entire industries that are dysfunctional. Eventually, someone else eats your lunch.

In fact you can argue that's happening now, as the article hints: Zuck was able to assimilate Whatsapp and IG into his bloated empire, but he can't buy TikTok and its 500M users because it's from China. Maybe if FB has been forced to actually compete with its biggest American competitors instead of getting the greenlight from regulators to just buy them, it would be in a better position now.

cjhopman5• 7 years ago

Rarely are anti-trust measures needed to break up bad businesses. It's the good (well, good in the sense of effective, profitable, etc) businesses that tend to be the focus of those.

sschueller• 7 years ago

Can we hear the audio or was this recorded in a two party consent state?

sifex• 7 years ago

https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/1/20756701/mark-zuckerberg-...

sekasi2• 7 years ago

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?

nindalf2• 7 years ago

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• 7 years ago

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.

Fnoord2• 7 years ago

Do you have a link?

jansan2• 7 years ago

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

This is pure political journalism.

Fnoord2• 7 years ago

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.

PavlovsCat2• 7 years ago

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.

cjhopman5• 7 years ago

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.

mrtksn• 7 years ago

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.

basch2• 7 years ago

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.

sekasi2• 7 years ago

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

rollingdeep7• 7 years ago

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• 7 years ago

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.

siscia2• 7 years ago

"It just doesn't really make sense for me to go to hearings in every single country that wants to have me show up and, frankly, doesn't have jurisdiction to demand that."

While this is technically true, I am not quite sure that it is the way to manage this kind of relationship.

As European I am pretty pissed off just by this affirmation.

2rsf• 7 years ago

doesn't have jurisdiction to demand that."

I think the EU showed how powerful it is, not it might not have jurisdiction over Facebook's headquarters but they certainly do have over their local businesses

scarejunba2• 7 years ago

Why? He went to Europe. Obviously he's not going to Leichtenstein and Azerbaijan.

siscia2• 7 years ago

Did he go to England?

Azerbaijan

This is a very wide definition of Europe...

JMTQp8lwXL2• 7 years ago

As Chief Executive, it's his responsibility to prevent the dismantling of the company. Why would anyone expect him to roll over and accept it? It wouldn't be want shareholders would want.

tannhaeuser• 7 years ago

That's actually the first time where Zuck officially acknowledges breaking up Fb and Google is a possibility, placing this onto the agenda for future (or even current) US administration and campaigns apart from Elizabeth Warrens plans. Fb should never have been allowed to buy WhatsApp, nor should've Google's DoubleClick and YouTube acquisition been allowed.

mxscho• 7 years ago

He repeatedly refused to attend meetings with politicians in the UK, sending other Facebook representatives in his place. "I did hearings in the US. I did hearings in the EU," he said. "It just doesn't really make sense for me to go to hearings in every single country that wants to have me show up [...]"

Not sure how Brexit supporters feel about that.

random42• 7 years ago

Not sure how Brexit supporters feel about that.

Zuckerberg does not care.

jansan2• 7 years ago

They should simply ask once Brexit has happened. It really does not make any sense before that.

trhway• 7 years ago

i'm not sure what a breakup can accomplish beside populist political goals. I meant to avoid losing the great societal benefits of the large networks the resulting post-breakup components/parts would have to be interoperational. Then why not enforce interoperability upon the too big players right now? Why not enforce that any client can be used for Twitter, that any player can federate/aggregate Twitter, and that any user can firehose its own data and the data of any users who gave permission? Why not enforce Facebook to allow firehose the data in similar manner and to accept posts/updates/etc. from other social networks, like posting Snaps into IG feed? Or Lyft (or some small unknown operator) ride requests routed through Uber. Any "platform" should come with API gateway with legally enforced generous performance guarantees and providing read/write access to all the user data and user visible services of the "platform". That would increase competition, give small and innovative players a chance, decrease the "winner takes all" with associated excesses and distortions and provide even greater societal benefit of making those networks even larger without the networks controlled by any one "platform". Instead of costly and obsolete breakup approach, the enforcing of interoperability and data access must become the battle cry of progressives. That would be the infrastructure of the 21st century which would even allow to efficiently approach even the super-issues like healthcare.

hos234• 7 years ago

It will naturally break apart just as news media broke apart along liberal and conservative, national and regional lines. There have been and continue to be attempts to consolidate news into as few orgs as possible. But beyond a 'tipping point' consolidation fails even though it's technically and economically more efficient. Because it's socially inefficient. (Same is true of religions and nations btw as population grows differences grow too and then things break). Even in democracies you can constantly see this breakage going as districts and counties across the world keep having their boundaries redrawn.

Many newspapers have died out because the more inter networked we get it's more efficient to consolidate. Info flows around gatekeepers as the network gets more and more connected. Yet notice how we have so many news sources divided along social differences. They resist merging with each other.

Those same forces resist consolidation of 6 billion people onto a single network.

This has already happened with China, Russia, Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, North Korea etc where the differences are stark. Many countries are already demanding local data centers. As soon as that happens it's guaranteed some political entity will misuse the data to hold onto power and further pressure builds.

Give it time and few more elections where one side has to loose (we will see many more Obama/Trump/Brexit type event where one group goes viral and beats another) and the pressure on the consolidated network will keep growing from the disappointed parties. This is still early days in the history of a social network.

Niall Ferguson's book The Square and the Tower is full of examples from history of how networks of people grown, merge and break apart. Highly recommended for anyone interested in this stuff.

Leaked Zuckerberg audio: 'You go to the mat and you fight'

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