A few days ago, I was told by the organisers of a “social media” festival that the hashtag was my “new best friend“. As I’ve never hugged a hashtag or cried on the shoulders of one, I felt it was important to question this “wisdom”.
Like millions of others, I’m addicted to Facebook and, to a lesser degree, Twitter. I check these websites so frequently that I often forget they are owned by vast corporations.
Some of these firms’ activities are inherently anti-democratic.
Facebook’s Brussels office is headed by Erika Mann, a former German member of the European Parliament. She has long fought to enable the interests of big business triumph over those of ordinary people.
During her 15 years as an MEP, Mann continuously advocated that the European Union should liberalise its trade with the United States.
At one point, it seemed that her calls were being ignored by political leaders on both sides of the Atlantic. All that changed in February this year, when Barack Obama expressed his support for such an agreement during his State of the Union address. Talks aimed at reaching a very broad trade and investment deal were formally launched in July.
Now wearing her Facebook hat, Erika Mann is still extolling the apparent virtues of “free” trade at every available opportunity.
In April, she spoke at a conference in Dublin, where Facebook’s international headquarters are located. Mann argued that it would be “extremely important” for an eventual deal to make the standards faced by internet companies in the EU and US “more coherent”.
While Mann claimed that she did not wish to see standards becoming “identical”, it is highly improbable that she will be pushing for more robust rules. Facebook recently submitted detailed recommendations to MEPs about how to weaken a new data protection law.
Information leaked by the courageous whistleblower Edward Snowden demonstrated that Facebook has been helping the National Security Agency to undertake espionage on a massive scale.
Before those revelations were made, Erika Mann claimed that Facebook was “leading the way” both in protecting privacy and in helping the digital sector to flourish. Her assurances now appear risible.
Facebook isn’t alone in hoping that the trade agreement will lead to “regulatory convergence” on different sides of the Atlantic. The European Commission has drawn up a paper for the talks, which indicates its willingness to copy and paste demands made by the car industry. The paper suggests that whenever either the EU or the US feels the need to have new rules on the amount of pollution vehicles may cause, they will consult each other with a view to finding a common approach.
Counterpunch for more