Facebook Is a Hostile Foreign Power

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/facebook-authoritarian-hostile-foreign-power/620168/

by zwieback • 5 years ago

73 21 5 years ago

theatlantic.com

ENOTTY• 5 years ago

One has to wonder how a company like Facebook would be treated under a regime like China's.

eigengrau51504• 5 years ago

It would be nationalized after Zuckerberg was disappeared.

SwSwinger• 5 years ago

renren.com

cratermoon3• 5 years ago

Weibo

AlbertCory4• 5 years ago

The author uses a powerful metaphor ("hostile foreign power") and then wimps out on following through with it.

If you really believe that, then a Congressional declaration of war with Facebook is in order. That would mean, among other things, charging all executives and Board members with treason.

Since that word gets thrown around loosely these days, let's see its actual definition (Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution):

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

Sounds like a hostile foreign power to me. An open-and-shut case; after all, we're at war with them.

OK, maybe that sounds ridiculous to you (or maybe not)? If so, then magazines shouldn't use clickbait headlines like "hostile foreign power."

aaron-santos3• 5 years ago

Why would you conflate hostile foreign power and being at war? There is a difference here between necessary and sufficient conditions. The presence of hostile foreign powers with whom we are not at war is evidence enough.

shukantpal• 5 years ago

The board of Facebook consists of Americans. They are helping a hostile foreign power ( Facebook).

eigengrau51504• 5 years ago

The United States nuked Japan twice for doing less actual harm to the Republic than Facebook has done.

AlbertCory4• 5 years ago

Wait, just hold on a sec! I'm close enough to Menlo Park that the wind would blow some fallout over on me, too.

(on the plus side, it would hit Apple and Google, too.)

eigengrau51504• 5 years ago

We could try out "rods from God" instead, but I was thinking more along the lines of dissolving the corporation, letting the FBI trash their data centers, and treating Mark Zuckerberg and his cronies to taxpayer-funded rebar suppositories. :)

cafard• 5 years ago

Over? Was it over when Facebook bombed Pearl Harbor?

YossarianFrPrez• 5 years ago

This article asks us to think: what if all advertisers around the globe formed a united, transnational organization capable of reaching billions of people per day? In other words, the framing of Facebook as nation-state-like is useful for understanding the size and scope of both the company itself, and the harms it does.

Some other multinationals may be just as "big" in one sense or another. But few (possibly none) have the combination of a) the influence over as many people on a day to day basis, and b) the disregard for society that Facebook possesses.

What makes the article / this framing interesting is that it calls into question some basic assumptions of political theory. For example, it's been assumed that for a state-like power to have influence, there must be a corresponding geographic region. But if you reach billions of people per day, wherever they are... what was previously a black and white distinction is now a grey area.

supercanuck• 5 years ago

The Catholic Church?

cratermoon3• 5 years ago

Hmm, back in its day the Catholic Church certainly acted as a state and had vast powers during the medieval period. That lasted more or less until the Reformation and ended in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, although the church technically had a military until about 1870.

cratermoon3• 5 years ago

Libertarians: Governments should be as small as possible and not have any way to exercise coercive power on citizens.

Mega-multinational corporations: exist

Libertarians: No, not like that!

Facebook Is a Hostile Foreign Power

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