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Issue 102

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REAL MEDIA 2017 / ISSUE 102 9 WHY ZUCKERBERG IS A BAD CHOICE FOR PRESIDENT Kevin Currie in the New York Observer last month claimed that without the Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg as Democratic nominee, Trump will once again win in 2020. This follows months of increasing support for the candidacy since the 2016 election. Even going as far back as April 2016, we saw Jim Vandehei, former CEO of Politico, arguing for Zuckerberg and Facebook board member Sheryl Sandberg, also a billionaire and tech executive, to lead a third party. While Zuckerberg himself denies he has Presidential ambition, much like the covert tactics of his social media platform, his actions seem to point to other intentions. Facebook's board has already agreed ways in which Zuck's shares could be distributed 'in the event he takes office.' But Zuckerberg would be a bad choice for President and we need to face up to why. Facebook carries out data scoping of its 'community' (a favoured Zuck term) on a scale unrivalled. John Lanchester explained this business model in the London Review of Books last month: 'Facebook is in the surveillance business. Facebook, in fact, is the biggest surveillance-based enterprise in the history of mankind. It knows far, far more about you than the most intrusive government has ever known about its citizens. It's amazing that people haven't really understood this about the company. I've spent time thinking about Facebook, and the thing I keep coming back to is that its users don't realise what it is the company does.' And it's not just the public which Facebook deceives, the company has repeatedly been untruthful about its capabilities and the extent of it's data mining to various governments. Still, the Internet Giant often evades consequences, as Sociologist Beverley Skeggs explained to Real Media earlier this year; 'When we began our project in 2013 Facebook denied [tracking you offline] but the Belgian government took them to court and revealed through computer science departments that they were doing it. They said 'yes okay we are tracking people when they are not on the platform' but then [the Belgian government] lost on appeal the court case to stop them tracking people, because [Facebook] operate from Ireland and the Brussels government has no jurisdiction over Ireland. So again, outside regulation and accountability.' So that's mis-leading both state and public before mentioning the level of tax avoidance the company pursues globally, given it's 'commitment to community.' Is this really Presidential material?

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