The author uses a powerful metaphor ("hostile foreign power") and then wimps out on following through with it.
If you really believe that, then a Congressional declaration of war with Facebook is in order. That would mean, among other things, charging all executives and Board members with treason.
Since that word gets thrown around loosely these days, let's see its actual definition (Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution):
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.
Sounds like a hostile foreign power to me. An open-and-shut case; after all, we're at war with them.
OK, maybe that sounds ridiculous to you (or maybe not)? If so, then magazines shouldn't use clickbait headlines like "hostile foreign power."
Why would you conflate hostile foreign power and being at war? There is a difference here between necessary and sufficient conditions. The presence of hostile foreign powers with whom we are not at war is evidence enough.
First of all, my whole posting was tongue-in-cheek, which everyone else seems to have gotten.
Anyhow, does it makes sense that "A formal declaration of war" has somewhat more legal force than "An Atlantic headline writer declaring them a hostile foreign power" ?
We could try out "rods from God" instead, but I was thinking more along the lines of dissolving the corporation, letting the FBI trash their data centers, and treating Mark Zuckerberg and his cronies to taxpayer-funded rebar suppositories. :)
I think FCPA Prof is arguing that the threat of Federal prosecution alone isn't enough to destroy a corporation. However, the Attorney General of Delaware has the authority to sue in the state's Chancery Court to have a Delaware corp dissolved.
The loss of jobs after the AA shutdown resulted in the US govt. being very reluctant to do that again.
However, the DoJ has circulated memos to company boards to stop paying for legal defenses for individual executives since the DoJ can't win against private corporate lawyers, which boards won't do. (The DoJ and SEC only wants cases they can win, since that looks better on political runs later.
You can look at the Countrywide stalemate to see what happens when a defendant has unlimited money - they just walk away after a few years of litigation, even though Senators were bribed with below-market interest rates.)
This article asks us to think: what if all advertisers around the globe formed a united, transnational organization capable of reaching billions of people per day? In other words, the framing of Facebook as nation-state-like is useful for understanding the size and scope of both the company itself, and the harms it does.
Some other multinationals may be just as "big" in one sense or another. But few (possibly none) have the combination of a) the influence over as many people on a day to day basis, and b) the disregard for society that Facebook possesses.
What makes the article / this framing interesting is that it calls into question some basic assumptions of political theory. For example, it's been assumed that for a state-like power to have influence, there must be a corresponding geographic region. But if you reach billions of people per day, wherever they are... what was previously a black and white distinction is now a grey area.
Hmm, back in its day the Catholic Church certainly acted as a state and had vast powers during the medieval period. That lasted more or less until the Reformation and ended in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, although the church technically had a military until about 1870.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 68.0 ms ] threadIf you really believe that, then a Congressional declaration of war with Facebook is in order. That would mean, among other things, charging all executives and Board members with treason.
Since that word gets thrown around loosely these days, let's see its actual definition (Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution):
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.
Sounds like a hostile foreign power to me. An open-and-shut case; after all, we're at war with them.
OK, maybe that sounds ridiculous to you (or maybe not)? If so, then magazines shouldn't use clickbait headlines like "hostile foreign power."
First of all, my whole posting was tongue-in-cheek, which everyone else seems to have gotten.
Anyhow, does it makes sense that "A formal declaration of war" has somewhat more legal force than "An Atlantic headline writer declaring them a hostile foreign power" ?
(on the plus side, it would hit Apple and Google, too.)
[1] https://fcpaprofessor.com/arthur-anderson-and-the-myth-of-th...
https://news.delaware.gov/2019/09/19/attorney-general-seeks-...
However, the DoJ has circulated memos to company boards to stop paying for legal defenses for individual executives since the DoJ can't win against private corporate lawyers, which boards won't do. (The DoJ and SEC only wants cases they can win, since that looks better on political runs later.
You can look at the Countrywide stalemate to see what happens when a defendant has unlimited money - they just walk away after a few years of litigation, even though Senators were bribed with below-market interest rates.)
Some other multinationals may be just as "big" in one sense or another. But few (possibly none) have the combination of a) the influence over as many people on a day to day basis, and b) the disregard for society that Facebook possesses.
What makes the article / this framing interesting is that it calls into question some basic assumptions of political theory. For example, it's been assumed that for a state-like power to have influence, there must be a corresponding geographic region. But if you reach billions of people per day, wherever they are... what was previously a black and white distinction is now a grey area.
Mega-multinational corporations: exist
Libertarians: No, not like that!