Original to:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/20/mark-zuckerberg-four-days-on-your-silence-on-christchurch-is-deafening
Mark Zuckerberg, four days on, your silence on Christchurch is deafening
by Toby Manhire, The Guardian, Opinion, Wed 20 Mar 2019
In New Zealand we’re waiting to see if the all-powerful Facebook boss
means what he says about ‘moral responsibility’
More than four days have passed since the world’s weakest man launched
an assault that took the lives of 50 people at prayer in Christchurch.
He did it with a camera stuck to his head, live-streaming it on
Facebook, the world’s most powerful media company. It was taken down
after police sounded the alarm. But already it had spread through
Twitter – where links to the video sit untroubled still despite repeated
reports. Already it had spread across Google’s YouTube platform, where
the most ghoulish appetites on the planet are daily sated for profit.
But it was Facebook that broadcast it live. And for all that the world’s
first genuinely megalithic media company might protest that it worked
hard to scrub out this tech-dystopian freak show, the video continues to
be shared on the platform today.
More than four days on, then, the $64bn question (that’s how much Mr
Zuckerberg is reportedly worth) is this: what do you have to say for
yourself, Mark? Seems you’re busy, and instead have dispatched an
underling to do the thoughts-and-prayers and “committed to countering
hate speech and the threat of terrorism online”. Sitting here in New
Zealand, that’s nowhere near good enough.
You’ve been silent, just as you were when you snubbed representatives of
nine countries seeking answers on Facebook’s hazardous impact on
democracy. They empty-chaired you. I hope, Mark, that you’re called to
answer to the impending inquiry into what happened in Christchurch, to
account for Facebook’s role as a propaganda conduit and distribution
mechanism for terrorism in New Zealand. Will we have to empty-chair you,
too?
Meanwhile the great Silicon Valley ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ scrolls on. Hey, come on,
they say, we’re doing everything we can to tune the machines to cut out
the evil stuff! The AI is nearly there! Keep the faith! Thanks all the
same, but nah. Until you can sort out a system to forestall the
livestreaming of mass murder, switch it off. Yes, any solution may
involve employing a lot of actual human beings to make judgments. And
that would be very expensive, it’s true. Also true: for the final three
months of 2018 – that’s one quarter of a year – Facebook posted a profit
of US $6.9bn.
Maybe it will take a real and present threat to those billions to get
your full attention. It’s beginning, and it’s fired by a visceral anger.
The bosses of New Zealand’s big telecoms companies have taken you and
Twitter and Google to task today. Businesses across the country, and
beyond, are pulling their advertising. A groundswell of users have begun
closing their accounts in disgust. The world is watching. Something is
happening.
For Facebook, Google, Twitter and the rest, the Ted-talk techbro
“disruptive” bullshit looks every day more like cynical camouflage for
lawlessness and avarice. Facebook is not some plucky upstart, but the
most powerful publisher the world has ever known, wielding an
unprecedented power and influence around the world. You might like to
masquerade in a hoodie and jeans, but we know who you are: you’re
stupidly powerful. You’re the chair and CEO of this giant. It’s absurd.
Your chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, has repeatedly gushed over
our prime minister. Jacinda Ardern is a shining example to women, a
“prodigy”. “She’s not just leading a country,” said Sandberg. “She’s
changing the game.” There was little doubt about that then; Ardern’s
response to the catastrophe that has befallen New Zealand’s Muslim
community, the city of Christchurch, and New Zealand as a whole, has
left no doubt. Up to and including Ardern’s remarks about the role of
social media delivered in parliament on Tuesday – game-changing remarks
which surely chilled the air, even at Facebook’s adolescently named
address, 1 Hacker Way.
“There is no question that ideas and language of division and hate have
existed for decades, but their form of distribution, the tools of
organisation, they are new,” she said.
“We cannot simply sit back and accept that these platforms just exist
and that what is said on them is not the responsibility of the place
where they are published. They are the publisher. Not just the postman.
There cannot be a case of all-profit, no-responsibility.”
Something is definitely happening.
You’ve acknowledged before, Mark Zuckerberg, such as in your emotional
letter to your newborn daughter, that you have a “moral responsibility”.
Right now you’ve said nothing. Four days on and counting, in New Zealand
we’re waiting to see if you have any meaningful sense of moral
responsibility at all.
Opinion was first published in The Spinoff:
https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/19-03-2019/mark-zuckerberg-four-days-on-your-silence-on-christchurch-is-deafening/
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