Zuck’s Letter to Jordan and the Telegram CEO Arrest

Summer of chaos continues through the very last week

The summer of chaos did not disappoint. While this last week of August feels slow, there’s plenty of drama to cover. I was going to do a little Summer re-cap (yes, I know Summer technically goes until September 21, but in my head, Summer is Memorial Day to Labor Day), but I’ll save that for next week so this newsletter doesn’t get too long. 

First, a little housekeeping. 

I spent much of Monday doing some strategic planning for the newsletter and podcast this Fall. There are no significant changes; I am just sprucing things up and adding more videos. The podcast will likely start up again on September 9th or 12th. The focus will be on the U.S. election, from what the tech companies are doing to how the campaigns use digital. 

I can’t thank you all enough for reading and supporting me. I was blown away to see subscribers from all 50 states and 124 countries. Do know that I want to revive my paid subscriber strategy and look into ads and other ways of helping finance this work. As of next week, I’m shifting my work arrangement a bit, and in addition to working with Duco, I will also be adding some outside projects. If you need help with anything, please reach out!

I fund the podcast and newsletter all out of my pocket. My goal is to make your life easier by curating news and events and providing insight into what is happening at the intersection of technology and democracy. I also include some personal essays about my life and building my business.

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Ok, on with the programming.

First up is Mark Zuckerberg’s letter to Rep. Jim Jordan. For those unfamiliar, as part of his investigation into potential government censorship of Americans, Jordan asked Meta for documents on their engagement with the Biden administration on COVID and with the FBI on the Hunter Biden laptop story. Last year, Zuckerberg was almost held in contempt of Congress for failing to provide Jordan and his committee with the information they wanted.

Now, a year later, he’s sending a letter in the dead of summer with a lot of mea culpas, including that while they made their own decisions on how to handle content, the Biden administration pressured them, and which they had spoken out more about that. He also says they dealt with the Hunter Biden laptop story poorly and that while his donation in 2020 to help election officials was non-partisan, he knows some people don’t believe this, so he won’t do it again.

I understand why people are frustrated by this letter, but I also understand why Meta did it. Here’s what I think is going on:

1. Mark REALLY does not want to get pulled into any political fray this fall. That will be nearly impossible, but by doing this in late August, they take the hit now and hope it dies down with the Labor Day holiday.

2. I don’t know if this is true, but my guess is that this was a negotiation with Jordan and the committee to avoid any sort of hearings this Fall. It also gives Meta something to point to if people keep bringing this up.

3. This is one of those instances where we wish politics didn’t impact executives' decisions, but it is also the reality of the situation. Meta—and all platforms—are stuck between a rock and a hard place, and they can’t make anyone happy with their decisions. They’re trying to thread a very fine needle with letters like this.

4. Companies should be reflecting on lessons learned from doing content moderation during times of crisis. We have to remember that we didn’t have all of the information we have now in 2020/2021. It’s ok for executives to say they would do things differently today.

5. That said, I wish this reflection had included ways that Republicans have pressured companies to take action - including what prompted this letter - but I think that wasn't an option because of point number two.

6. Government and elected officials have the right to have an opinion about how content should be handled. They can voice that. What they shouldn’t do is use government levers to try to get companies—who have their own First Amendment rights—to do what they want. This is a super hard line to define that officials of all parties will continue to test.

7. The researchers swept up in this also have a First Amendment right to do their research and jobs on the information environment. Jordan and his committee have been horrible in their treatment of them. 

8. This letter doesn’t say much new information, except I didn’t know they don’t demote content while it’s being fact-checked anymore. I don’t think this is worth freaking out over. It’s annoying to give Jordan this kind of win, but it's unsurprising. 

All platforms will be extremely careful with how they handle political content. None of them—except Musk—want to be pulled into politics. However, like I say, they can run but can’t hide, though many of them will surely try.

This takes us to the second story of the week, the arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in France. Telegram is a messaging app with over 900 million users that famously doesn’t care much for content moderation and is extremely hard to get a hold of. He was detained as part of an investigation into criminal activity on Telegram. A judge ordered this, and French President Emmanuel Macron and the European Commission have distanced themselves from the arrest.

Here are my hot takes on this:

1. Arrests of CEOs or company employees to pressure them to give information to authorities is always troubling. This is not the first time it’s happened. Brazil arrested a Facebook executive in 2016 for the company not handing over WhatsApp data (that it didn’t actually have, but that’s another story for another time.)

2. That said, there are legal requirements on companies for how they handle content around child exploitation, terrorism, and drug sales. Daphne Keller has a good rundown on X. Also, most companies engage with government officials and law enforcement to prevent things like this. By refusing to engage, governments and judges will sometimes resort to this - or banning an app like Brazil almost did to Telegram before their election in 2022. 

3. I don’t think this arrest should worry any platform executives except perhaps Elon Musk, who also likes to respond to governments with some choice words and lack of engagement. Daphne and

   Kate Klonick
   discuss that and more in this New York Times piece, looking at whether tech executives can be liable for what happens on their platforms.

Many people will often lament the lack of regulation in the U.S. for tech companies but then also want the companies to push back on government actions like I described above. This all goes back to my belief that what we are in the middle of the building is a new system of checks and balances between platforms, the government, civil society, media, and others, not just to hold one another accountable but to figure out where we want the lines to be drawn about who has the power over speech and what rights do they have to moderate it.

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