Facebook Burn Lawmakers from various countries, who held an extraordinary joint hearing at the British Parliament yesterday regarding Facebook's privacy problem, were not happy that Mark Zuckerberg refused (yet again) to visit London to face the music. So much so that they left an empty chair for him at the hearing. Meanwhile, Facebook EMEA policy chief Richard Allan did testify—just before former FTC chief technologist Ashkan Soltani made a surprise appearance to say Allan had lied to his inquisitors. Sky News
Privacy Legislation Here's a piece written by yours truly (meaning David) about the increasing likelihood of data privacy legislation being passed in the U.S. A year ago, that would have been unthinkable—but a lot has happened in the last year. And yes, Facebook's behavior is a big factor here. Fortune
Facebook exempts news publishers from its archive on political ads Next year the social media giant will no longer require publishers who want to buy ads boosting exposure to their articles on politics to go through its political-ad transparency process, the company said in a blog post Thursday. (Ad Age)
Sandberg and Soros Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg emailed her staff to check if George Soros was shorting the company's stock, after he laid into Facebook's monopolistic tendencies earlier this year. The revelation will bring more scrutiny into Sandberg's role regarding Facebook's hiring of a conservative opposition research outfit that ended up researching Soros—outgoing policy chief Elliot Schrage took the fall for that, but it Sandberg has admitted seeing some of the resulting research. Financial Times
Facebook Cult CNBC has a damning piece about the culture within Facebook, where people are constantly pressured to act as though everything is just groovy, and anytime someone expresses dissent they start getting calls from above. Some employees described the atmosphere as "cult-like," and the bubble seems to have contributed to Facebook's failure to deal with the News Feed's impact on the 2016 election. CNBC
I'm liking the 1 month chart so far....though I question FB's expansion. Seems like millenials are getting tired of it too.
Facebook's new podcast connects aspiring entrepreneurs, business leaders The podcast focuses on bringing together young entrepreneurs with seasoned leaders in the business world. Its first episode brought together three entrepreneurs — TOMS' founder Blake Mycoskie and Two Blind Brothers' founders Bryan and Bradford Manning — to discuss how they've used their businesses as platforms to help others. (USA Today)
Facebook is world wide though. Don't make the mistake of thinking that American millennials are representative of how 100s of millions of other millennials around the world feel about facebook.