Facebook Helps Any Government Violate The Rights Of Citizens and Spy On Them For Cash
Facebook seeks ad profits as it ruins democracy around the world
Facebook Navigates an Internet Fractured by Governmental Controls
By PAUL MOZUR, MARK SCOTT and MIKE ISAAC
How Facebook Is Changing Your Internet
By JONAH M. KESSEL and PAUL MOZUR
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How Facebook Is Changing Your Internet
Behind the scenes, Facebook is involved in high-stakes diplomatic battles
across the globe that have begun fragmenting the internet itself.
By JONAH M. KESSEL and PAUL MOZUR on Publish Date September 17, 2017.
Photo by Albert Gea/Reuters. Watch in Times Video »
On a muggy, late spring evening, Tuan Pham awoke to the police storming
his house in Hanoi, Vietnam.
They marched him to a police station and made their demand: Hand over your
Facebook password. Mr. Tuan, a computer engineer, had recently written a
poem on the social network called “Mother’s Lullaby,” which criticized how
the communist country was run.
One line read, “One century has passed, we are still poor and hungry, do
you ask why?”
Mr. Tuan’s arrest came just weeks after Facebook offered a major olive
branch to Vietnam’s government. Facebook’s head of global policy
management, Monika Bickert, met with a top Vietnamese official in April
and pledged to remove information from the social network that violated
the country’s laws.
While Facebook said its policies in Vietnam have not changed, and it has a
consistent process for governments to report illegal content, the
Vietnamese government was specific. The social network, they have said,
had agreed to help create a new communications channel with the government
to prioritize Hanoi’s requests and remove what the regime considered
inaccurate posts about senior leaders.
Photo
Vietnam’s government has said Facebook agreed to help create a new
communications channel with the government. Credit Na Son
Nguyen/Associated Press
Populous, developing countries like Vietnam are where the company is
looking to add its next billion customers — and to bolster its ad
business. Facebook’s promise to Vietnam helped the social media giant
placate a government that had called on local companies not to advertise
on foreign sites like Facebook, and it remains a major marketing channel
for businesses there.
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The diplomatic game that unfolded in Vietnam has become increasingly
common for Facebook. The internet is Balkanizing, and the world’s largest
tech companies have had to dispatch envoys to, in effect, contain the
damage such divisions pose to their ambitions.
The internet has long had a reputation of being an anything-goes place
that only a few nations have tried to tame — China in particular. But in
recent years, events as varied as the Arab Spring, elections in France and
confusion in Indonesia over the religion of the country’s president have
awakened governments to how they have lost some control over online
speech, commerce and politics on their home turf.
Even in the United States, tech giants are facing heightened scrutiny from
the government. Facebook recently cooperated with investigators for Robert
S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russian interference in
the American presidential election. In recent weeks, politicians on the
left and the right have also spoken out about the excess power of
America’s largest tech companies.
As nations try to grab back power online, a clash is brewing between
governments and companies. Some of the biggest companies in the world —
Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Alibaba among them — are finding they
need to play by an entirely new set of rules on the once-anarchic
internet.
And it’s not just one new set of rules. According to a review by The New
York Times, more than 50 countries have passed laws over the last five
years to gain greater control over how their people use the web.
“Ultimately, it’s a grand power struggle,” said David Reed, an early
pioneer of the internet and a former professor at the M.I.T. Media Lab.
“Governments started waking up as soon as a significant part of their
powers of communication of any sort started being invaded by companies.”
Facebook encapsulates the reasons for the internet’s fragmentation — and
increasingly, its consequences.
Global Reach
Facebook has grown by leaps and bounds around the world to over 1.3
billion daily users worldwide.
Source: Company reports | 2017 as of the second quarter
By KARL RUSSELL/THE NEW YORK TIMES
The company has become so far-reaching that more than two billion people —
about a quarter of the world’s population — now use Facebook each month.
Internet users (excluding China) spend one in five minutes online within
the Facebook universe, according to comScore, a research firm. And Mark
Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, wants that dominance to grow.
But politicians have struck back. China, which blocked Facebook in 2009,
has resisted Mr. Zuckerberg’s efforts to get the social network back into
the country. In Europe, officials have repudiated Facebook’s attempts to
gather data from its messaging apps and third-party websites.
The Silicon Valley giant’s tussle with the fracturing internet is poised
to escalate. Facebook has now reached almost everyone who already has some
form of internet access, excluding China. Capturing those last users —
including in Asian nations like Vietnam and African countries like Kenya —
may involve more government roadblocks.
“We understand that and accept that our ideals are not everyone’s,” said
Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s vice president of communications and public
policy. “But when you look at the data and truly listen to the people
around the world who rely on our service, it’s clear that we do a much
better job of bringing people together than polarizing them.”
Friending China
By mid-2016, a yearslong campaign by Facebook to get into China — the
world’s biggest internet market — appeared to be sputtering.
Photo
Facebook has tried various methods to get back into China, where the
social network has been blocked since 2009. Credit Ng Han Guan/Associated
Press
Mr. Zuckerberg had wined and dined Chinese politicians, publicly showed
off his newly acquired Chinese-language skills — a moment that set the
internet abuzz — and talked with a potential Chinese partner about pushing
the social network into the market, according to a person familiar with
the talks who declined to be named because the discussions were
confidential.
At a White House dinner in 2015, Mr. Zuckerberg had even asked the Chinese
president, Xi Jinping, whether Mr. Xi might offer a Chinese name for his
soon-to-be-born first child — usually a privilege reserved for older
relatives, or sometimes a fortune teller. Mr. Xi declined, according to a
person briefed on the matter.
But all those efforts flopped, foiling Facebook’s attempts to crack one of
the most isolated pockets of the internet.
China has blocked Facebook and Twitter since mid-2009, after an outbreak
of ethnic rioting in the western part of the country. In recent years,
similar barriers have gone up for Google services and other apps, like
Line and Instagram.
Even if Facebook found a way to enter China now, it would not guarantee
financial success. Today, the overwhelming majority of Chinese citizens
use local online services like Qihoo 360 and Sina Weibo. No American-made
apps rank among China’s 50 most popular services, according to SAMPi, a
market research firm.
Chinese tech officials said that although many in the government are open
to the idea of Facebook releasing products in China, there is resistance
among leaders in the standing committee of the country’s Politburo, its
top decision-making body.
In 2016, Facebook took tentative steps toward embracing China’s censorship
policies. That summer, Facebook developed a tool that could suppress posts
in certain geographic areas, The Times reported last year. The idea was
that it would help the company get into China by enabling Facebook or a
local partner to censor content according to Beijing’s demands. The tool
was not deployed.
In another push last year, Mr. Zuckerberg spent time at a conference in
Beijing that is a standard on the China government relations tour. Using
his characteristic brand of diplomacy — the Facebook status update — he
posted a photo of himself running in Tiananmen Square on a dangerously
smoggy day. The photo drew derision on Twitter, and concerns from Chinese
about Mr. Zuckerberg’s health.
Photo
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, on a run in Beijing in 2016.
The outing set the internet abuzz as “the smog jog.” Credit
Facebook/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
For all the courtship, things never quite worked out.
“There’s an interest on both sides of the dance, so some kind of product
can be introduced,” said Kai-Fu Lee, the former head of Google in China
who now runs a venture-capital firm in Beijing. “But what Facebook wants
is impossible, and what they can have may not be very meaningful.”
This spring, Facebook tried a different tactic: testing the waters in
China without telling anyone. The company authorized the release of a
photo-sharing app there that does not bear its name, and experimented by
linking it to a Chinese social network called WeChat.
One factor driving Mr. Zuckerberg may be the brisk ad business that
Facebook does from its Hong Kong offices, where the company helps Chinese
companies — and the government’s own propaganda organs — spread their
messages. In fact, the scale of the Chinese government’s use of Facebook
to communicate abroad offers a notable sign of Beijing’s understanding of
Facebook’s power to mold public opinion.
Chinese state media outlets have used ad buys to spread propaganda around
key diplomatic events. Its stodgy state-run television station and the
party mouthpiece newspaper each have far more Facebook “likes” than
popular Western news brands like CNN and Fox News, a likely indication of
big ad buys.
To attract more ad spending, Facebook set up one page to show China’s
state broadcaster, CCTV, how to promote on the platform, according to a
person familiar with the matter. Dedicated to Mr. Xi’s international
trips, the page is still regularly updated by CCTV, and has 2.7 million
likes. During the 2015 trip when Mr. Xi met Mr. Zuckerberg, CCTV used the
channel to spread positive stories. One post was titled “Xi’s UN address
wins warm applause.”
Photo
At a White House dinner in 2015, Mr. Zuckerberg asked the Chinese
president, Xi Jinping, whether Mr. Xi might offer a Chinese name for his
soon-to-be-born first child — usually a privilege reserved for older
relatives, or sometimes a fortune teller. Credit Charles
Ommanney/Facebook, via Associated Press
Fittingly, Mr. Zuckerberg’s eagerness and China’s reluctance can be
tracked on Facebook.
During Mr. Xi’s 2015 trip to America, Mr. Zuckerberg posted about how the
visit offered him his first chance to speak a foreign language with a
world leader. The post got more than a half million likes, including from
Chinese state media (despite the national ban). But on Mr. Xi’s propaganda
page, Mr. Zuckerberg got only one mention — in a list of the many tech
executives who met the Chinese president.
Europe’s Privacy Pushback
Last summer, emails winged back and forth between members of Facebook’s
global policy team. They were finalizing plans, more than two years in the
making, for WhatsApp, the messaging app Facebook had bought in 2014, to
start sharing data on its one billion users with its new parent company.
The company planned to use the data to tailor ads on Facebook’s other
services and to stop spam on WhatsApp.
A big issue: how to win over wary regulators around the world.
Despite all that planning, Facebook was hit by a major backlash. A month
after the new data-sharing deal started in August 2016, German privacy
officials ordered WhatsApp to stop passing data on its 36 million local
users to Facebook, claiming people did not have enough say over how it
would be used. The British privacy watchdog soon followed.
By late October, all 28 of Europe’s national data-protection authorities
jointly called on Facebook to stop the practice. Facebook quietly
mothballed its plans in Europe. It has continued to collect people’s
information elsewhere, including the United States.
“There’s a growing awareness that people’s data is controlled by large
American actors,” said Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, France’s privacy
regulator. “These actors now know that times have changed.”
Facebook’s retreat shows how Europe is effectively employing regulations —
including tough privacy rules — to control how parts of the internet are
run.
Photo
Facebook’s international headquarters in Dublin. The company has faced
regulatory pushback in Europe. Credit Aidan Crawley/Bloomberg Nytcredit:
The goal of European regulators, officials said, is to give users greater
control over the data from social media posts, online searches and
purchases that Facebook and other tech giants rely on to monitor our
online habits.
As a tech company whose ad business requires harvesting digital
information, Facebook has often underestimated the deep emotions that
European officials and citizens have tied into the collection of such
details. That dates back to the time of the Cold War, when many Europeans
were routinely monitored by secret police.
Now, regulators from Colombia to Japan are often mimicking Europe’s stance
on digital privacy. “It’s only natural European regulators would be at the
forefront,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and chief legal
officer. “It reflects the importance they’ve attached to the privacy
agenda.”
In interviews, Facebook denied it has played fast and loose with users’
online information and said it complies with national rules wherever it
operates. It questioned whether Europe’s position has been effective in
protecting individuals’ privacy at a time when the region continues to
fall behind the United States and China in all things digital.
Still, the company said it respected Europe’s stance on data protection,
particularly in Germany, where many citizens have long memories of
government surveillance.
“There’s no doubt the German government is a strong voice inside the
European community,” said Richard Allen, Facebook’s head of public policy
in Europe. “We find their directness pretty helpful.”
Europe has the law on its side when dictating global privacy. Facebook’s
non-North American users, roughly 1.8 billion people, are primarily
overseen by Ireland’s privacy regulator because the company’s
international headquarters is in Dublin, mostly for tax reasons. In 2012,
Facebook was forced to alter its global privacy settings — including those
in the United States — after Ireland’s data protection watchdog found
problems while auditing the company’s operations there.
Three years later, Europe’s highest court also threw out a 15-year-old
data-sharing agreement between the region and the United States following
a complaint that Facebook had not sufficiently protected Europeans’ data
when it was transferred across the Atlantic. The company denies any
wrongdoing.
Photo
A Facebook event in Berlin last year. Europe, where Cold War-era
suspicions over monitoring still linger, is exporting its views of privacy
to other parts of the world. Credit Tobias Schwarz/Agence France-Presse —
Getty Images
And on Sept. 12, Spain’s privacy agency fined the company 1.2 million
euros for not giving people sufficient control over their data when
Facebook collected it from third-party websites. Watchdogs in Germany, the
Netherlands and elsewhere are conducting similar investigations. Facebook
is appealing the Spanish ruling.
“Facebook simply can’t stick to a one-size-fits-all product around the
world,” said Max Schrems, an Austrian lawyer who has been a Facebook
critic after filing the case that eventually overturned the 15-year-old
data deal.
Potentially more worrying for Facebook is how Europe’s view of privacy is
being exported. Countries from Brazil to Malaysia, which are crucial to
Facebook’s growth, have incorporated many of Europe’s tough privacy rules
into their legislation.
“We regard the European directives as best practice,” said Pansy Tlakula,
chairwoman of South Africa’s Information Regulator, the country’s data
protection agency. South Africa has gone so far as to copy whole sections,
almost word-for-word, from Europe’s rule book.
The Play for Kenya
Blocked in China and troubled by regulators in Europe, Facebook is trying
to become “the internet” in Africa. Helping get people online, subsidizing
access, and trying to launch satellites to beam the internet down to the
markets it covets, Facebook has become a dominant force on a continent
rapidly getting online.
But that has given it a power that has made some in Africa uncomfortable.
Some countries have blocked access, and outsiders have complained Facebook
could squelch rival online business initiatives. Its competition with
other internet companies from the United States and China has drawn
comparisons to a bygone era of colonialism.
For Kenyans like Phyl Cherop, 33, an entrepreneur in Nairobi, online life
is already dominated by the social network. She abandoned her
bricks-and-mortar store in a middle-class part of the city in 2015 to sell
on Facebook and WhatsApp.
Photo
Phyl Cherop, who lives in Kenya, closed her bricks-and-mortar store to
sell items through Facebook. Credit Adriane Ohanesian for The New York
Times
“I gave it up because people just didn’t come anymore,” said Ms. Cherop,
who sells items like designer dresses and school textbooks. She added that
a stand-alone website would not have the same reach. “I prefer using
Facebook because that’s where my customers are. The first thing people
want to do when they buy a smartphone is to open a Facebook account.”
As Facebook hunts for more users, the company’s aspirations have shifted
to emerging economies where people like Ms. Cherop live. Less than 50
percent of Africa’s population has internet connectivity, and regulation
is often rudimentary.
Since Facebook entered Africa about a decade ago, it has become the
region’s dominant tech platform. Some 170 million people — more than two
thirds of all internet users from South Africa to Senegal — use it,
according Facebook’s statistics. That is up 40 percent since 2015.
The company has struck partnerships with local carriers to offer basic
internet services — centered on those offered by Facebook — for free. It
has built a pared-down version of its social network to run on the
cheaper, less powerful phones that are prevalent there.
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Photo
Mr. Zuckerberg visited Lagos, Nigeria, last year. Credit Andrew Esiebo for
The New York Times
Facebook is also investing tens of millions of dollars alongside telecom
operators to build a 500-mile fiber-optic internet connection in rural
Uganda. In total, it is working with about 30 regional governments on
digital projects.
“We want to bring connectivity to the world,” said Jay Parikh, a Facebook
vice president for engineering who oversees the company’s plans to use
drones, satellites and other technology to connect the developing world.
Facebook is racing to gain the advantage in Africa over rivals like Google
and Chinese players including Tencent, in a 21st century version of the
“Scramble for Africa.” Google has built fiber internet networks in Uganda
and Ghana. Tencent has released WeChat, its popular messaging and
e-commerce app, in South Africa.
Facebook has already hit some bumps in its African push. Chad blocked
access to Facebook and other sites during elections or political protests.
Uganda also took legal action in Irish courts to force the social network
to name an anonymous blogger who had been critical of the government.
Those efforts failed.
In Kenya, one of Africa’s most connected countries, there has been less
pushback.
Facebook expanded its efforts in the country of 48 million in 2014. It
teamed up with Airtel Africa, a mobile operator, to roll out Facebook’s
Free Basics — a no-fee version of the social network, with access to
certain news, health, job and other services there and in more than 20
other countries worldwide. In Kenya, the average person has a budget of
just 30 cents a day to spend on internet access.
Free Basics now lets Kenyans use Facebook and its Messenger service at no
cost, as well as read news from a Kenyan newspaper and view information
about public health programs. Joe Mucheru, Kenya’s tech minister, said it
at least gives his countrymen a degree of internet access.
Still, Facebook’s plans have not always worked out. Many Kenyans with
access to Free Basics rely on it only as a backup when their existing
smartphone credit runs out.
“Free Basics? I don’t really use it that often,” said Victor Odinga, 27,
an accountant in downtown Nairobi. “No one wants to be seen as someone who
can’t afford to get online.”
Photo
A cybercafe in Nairobi, Kenya, earlier this year. Africa, where many
people are only just beginning to get online, is a greenfield for internet
companies like Facebook. Credit Adriane Ohanesian for The New York Times
Paul Mozur reported from Hong Kong, Mark Scott from Nairobi, and Mike
Isaac from San Francisco.
Follow Paul Mozur, Mark Scott and Mike Isaac on Twitter @paulmozur
@markscott82 @MikeIsaac.