{"id":93265,"date":"2011-04-23T08:34:04","date_gmt":"2011-04-23T08:34:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=5185"},"modified":"2011-04-23T08:34:04","modified_gmt":"2011-04-23T08:34:04","slug":"letter-from-america-obama-and-facebook-becoming-good-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=93265","title":{"rendered":"Letter from America: Obama and Facebook becoming good 'friends'?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Barack Obama traveled this week to Palo Alto, California for a cyber \u201ctown hall\u201d<\/a> staged inside the headquarters of Facebook and moderated by its 26-year-old founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerburg. The event was clearly supposed to be novel in concept, with the president talking about the future of the budget, technology and education on precisely the platform<\/a> favored by the country\u2019s future technologists and educators (and Democratic voters, come 2012).<\/p>\n

Zuckerburg plucked from unoffensive questions posted on Facebook, and the whole event was streamed live on the White House\u2019s Facebook page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Pundits were, by and large, not quite sure what to make of the scene<\/a>. Was this stagecraft? A serious discussion? An infomercial \u2013 and for whose benefit: Facebook\u2019s or Obama\u2019s? But prevalent was the sense that there seems to be something odd going on here<\/a> in the burgeoning relationship between the White House and social networking giant.<\/p>\n

Even as the president is leveraging Facebook as a speaking platform, legislators have begun to look critically at the site\u2019s confusing \u2013 and constantly evolving \u2013 privacy practices. Washington\u2019s passions tend to run in cycles, and all things related to consumer privacy are particularly hot right now, with Facebook sitting square at the center of Congress\u2019 sights.<\/p>\n

Last spring, Facebook officials riled Washington by declining to show up for a congressional hearing on global Internet freedom<\/a>. Senators have since been sending the company nasty notes threatening oversight<\/a> to protect consumer privacy. And this month bills have been introduced in both the House<\/a> and the Senate<\/a> aimed at giving consumers more power over their personal information on sites like Facebook.<\/p>\n

Of course, none of these privacy issues came up during Obama\u2019s town hall, following the perverse political logic that the center of a storm is in fact the worst place to even mention its existence.<\/p>\n

Also unmentioned was another rift about explode between the world\u2019s most ambitious social networking site and Congress: Facebook\u2019s stance on free speech as it eyes a move into China.<\/p>\n

Wednesday, the day of the townhall, the Wall Street Journal published an article \u2013\u201cFacebook Seeking Friends in the Beltway<\/a>\u201d \u2013 on the lobbying efforts that will be part of any politically sensitive international expansion behind the Great Firewall. Facebook appears to be plotting the move at the worst time, as China cracks down all the harder on dissidents out of fear of an Arab-style uprising.<\/p>\n

So how would Facebook curry favor with Chinese authorities to gain access?<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe we will block content in some countries, but not others,\u201d one of the company\u2019s lobbyists told the Journal. \u201cWe are occasionally held in uncomfortable positions because now we’re allowing too much, maybe, free speech in countries that haven’t experienced it before.\u201d<\/p>\n

This last headline-ready sound bite \u2013 \u201ctoo much, maybe, free speech<\/a>\u201d \u2013 immediately shot around the blogosphere. Its terribly inarticulate language reinforced the idea that a twenty-something lobbyist for Facebook probably has no business setting policy on a principle as weighty as free speech. (\u2018Nothing says, \u201cI am likely to make a statement that does not represent me or my company well,\u201d like \u201cI am 25-years old \u2014 and male,\u201d\u2019 mocked a Washington Post columnist<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Rumors for the last several weeks have suggested that the president\u2019s close friend and former spokesman, Robert Gibbs, was headed to Facebook<\/a> to help with its communications (and clearly the company will need a savvier \u2013 and older \u2013 Washington insider to navigate what\u2019s ahead). But the Wall Street Journal reported that deal now appears to have fallen through.<\/p>\n

That may be best for the White House anyway. A former high-ranking aide helping Facebook make the case for acquiescing to China would only further confuse the relationship between the country\u2019s president and one of its most influential tech companies. There are, after all, several different kinds of \u201cfriends\u201d on Facebook \u2013 from the professional acquaintance to the late-night drinking buddy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emily Badger:<\/strong> Letter from America: Obama and Facebook becoming good \u2018friends\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":530,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93265"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/530"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=93265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93265\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=93265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=93265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=93265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}