INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Thank you for welcoming me into you inbox yet again.
Last week, I talked about the eternal dumbness of the smart home and how Google had a
big chance to lay out their vision this past week
Guess what? They did not, instead we got a new more expensive Google Wifi that falls under the Nest brand as well as a Google Mini that can
be wall-mounted…
If you&re reading this on the TechCrunch site, you can get this in your inboxhere, and follow my tweetshere.
The big
story
Zuckerberg had an interesting week, delivering a very rehearsed keynote that was neither in front of Congress or an audience of
He spoke at Georgetown on the topic of free speech and Facebook brand of capitalism.
It was an odd speech, but it was an opportunity for him
to speak at length about what he saw as Facebook mission in terms of free speech
These two simple ideas — voice and inclusion — go
We&ve seen this throughout history, even if it doesn''t feel that way today
More people being able to share their perspectives has always been necessary to build a more inclusive society
And our mutual commitment to each other — that we hold each others& right to express our views and be heard above our own desire to always
get the outcomes we want — is how we make progress together.
But this view is increasingly being challenged
Some people believe giving more people a voice is driving division rather than bringing us together
More people across the spectrum believe that achieving the political outcomes they think matter is more important than every person having a
Today I want to talk about why, and some important choices we face around free expression.
Throughout history, we&ve seen how being able
to use your voice helps people come together
We&ve seen this in the civil rights movement
Frederick Douglass once called free expression ''the great moral renovator of society&
He said &slavery cannot tolerate free speech&
Civil rights leaders argued time and again that their protests were protected free expression, and one noted: &nearly all the cases
involving the civil rights movement were decided on First Amendment grounds&.
Facebook is in an interesting position here, where they&re
tying a moral stance with an economic one
They seem to draw the line at paid ads and paid political speech whereas everything before it was so nuanced
I don''t like that very much.
Unrestricted speech on the internet has been an evolving topic
There the very real argument that giving people a megaphone to harass and bully minimizes other people ability to have unrestricted speech
Facebook and most of the other major platforms have agreed with this and have put policies in place.
There also the situation where someone
is threatening or discussing violence or hate speech
Again, Facebook goes further than the law requires and has this firmly in their policies.
If you look at the company existing policies that
have been put in place over the past few years, you would find plenty of guidelines at odds with sections of Zuck speech and yet he seemed
to be drawing a big red line here and now, with the only reason being the criticism of Facebook ad policy that allowed Donald Trump to pay
for and target ads that were ostensibly untrue.
I wrote about the situation in full here and it rings true again after Zuckerberg speech
Timing is everything and it hard to take this moral stance seriously right now especially.
Facebook sure does love free $peech
Send me
feedback
on Twitter@lucasmtnyor email
lucas@techcrunch.com
On to the rest of the week news.
(Photo by Steve Sands/WireImage)
Trends of
the week
Here are a few big news items from big companies, with green links to all the sweet, sweet added context:
Sprint + T-Mobile =
official best friends
The FCC has reportedly decided to let another massive merger go through (after some decent concessions), allowing
T-Mobile and Sprint to proceed in their massive telecom merger.
Switch sales surgeNintendo has already made a major splash with the Switch,
but the traction it gaining in North America has already eclipsed its last-gen system worldwide unit sales
Check out their latest milestone.
Justice Dept takes down a massive child exploitation site
The government infiltrated and clamped down on a
massive child exploitation dark web site this week and my colleague Zack has the full rundown.
GAFA Gaffes
How did the top tech companies
screw up this week? This clearly needs its own section, in order of badness:
$35B lawsuit against FB can move forward:[$35 billion face
lawsuit against Facebook can proceed]
AOC and Ted criticize Apple:[Apple China stance makes for strange political alliances as AOC and Ted
Cruz slam the company]
Sign up for more newsletters in your inbox (including this one)here.
