Facebook pissed off people by having power.

The power to control the narrative (or take it away from others by virtue of giving yahoos in their basement, or regular people, a huge voice) is the real power, and the elite are really scared of that.

I don't mean that to sound globalist/conspiracist, but it's effectively what's going on here.

Mostly from the centre to far left (FYI not being political here, this has nothing to do with traditional politics, it's just that FB is currently damaging one side more than the other), most believe that FB and it's ilk are the reason 10% believe in QAnon and 35% believe the election was stolen and vaccine hesitancy is at 30%.

Personally, I think they are largely right on that, and on some reasonable level, there should be actually a concern that idiots in their basement making things up have more influence than researchers.

We don't think about the 'rest of the world' so much, but FB is a major conduit for information in a lot of very problematic and violent places. To be fair, probably they're a healthy outlet as well. But you can see how there, too, leaders are wary of 'Facebook'.

Note the Machiavellian manner in which it is framed i.e. this is a 'Facebook' problem, when in reality, it's not Zuck out there making the rules so much as it's people on FB having a voice.

More cynically, the powers that be are very concerned about fairly unmitigated Free Speech.

Just check out these headlines - just from the Atlantic in the last few days.

"The Largest Autocracy on Earth'

"What happened when Facebook became Boomerbook"

"Facebook is a Doomsday Machine"

From Vox: "Mark Zuckerberg runs a nation-state, and he’s the king"

From NYT: "It’s Time to Break Up Facebook"

UPenn: "Who Can Stop Facebook? Limiting the Power of Social Media"

They are all wetting their underpants over this.

The need for a 'good discussion' about this aside - Francis was a Political Agent, from day 1.

This was not a Whistleblower who happened upon some ugly information - this was a planned, organized political hit job. Again for better or worse, I'm not judging that part of the motivation, just that this 'Whistleblower' status is as fake as any of the fake news on Facebook.

The information leaked really isn't justified in the normal sense. Unless there is some legally material wrongdoing here, I can't imagine how someone gets away with leaking millions of emails from their employer 'cause they don't like them'. Probably 50% of people take umbrage with their employers.

This was well planned from the data collection, to the legal team, to the PR team, to the coordination with the press and the coordination with the political bodies.

You don't get to testify in Congress one day after you '60 Minutes' interview breaks the story. Congress doesn't work that fast. This was coordinated by the involved parties.

Her 60 Minutes interview was basically pitch perfect - she was like the 'absolutely perfect witness on the stand' with her tone and disposition just right, and her words chosen very carefully. Those were very well scripted and rehearsed responses. She wouldn't need to see the questions, she knows effectively what they were going to be in general, it was a platform to say what she's been wanting to say (and rehearsing) since before she worked at Facebook.

It's a small world at the top - there are only so many big news agencies so many Senators, there's only one 60 minutes etc..

The press needs the right fuel to drive a narrative, Frances gave them several months worth of headlines, and enough momentum to allow direct political engagement.

I actually do believe that we need some kind of regulator impetus, though I don't know what that would be exactly, and I'm not sure what kind of constitutional basis legislators are going to be able to use, there's not much precedent for this.

Moreover, it's a bit hypocritical to be talking about breaking up FB when there are likely more traditional issues of monopoly at Google and Amazon.

I believe there are a few sane paths to choose, I don't have much faith we'll chose one of them. My bet is they introduce some kind of legislation that doesn't have much teeth and FB ends up mostly being what it was before, while it's main product FB.com slowly dies as their business bets on Insta, FB Messenger, What's app and people switch to other things.