Facebook Confirms It Is Big Brother, Argues in Court ‘There Is No Privacy’ on Its Platform

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Jun 4, 2019

An ongoing class-action lawsuit over a Cambridge Analytica scandal has forced Facebook to admit the obvious publicly: it is an entity hostile toward their users’ basic rights.

“There is no invasion of privacy at all, because there is no privacy,” Facebook attorney Orin Snyder admitted in court last week, according to a Law360 blog.

Snyder also made a curious claim that Facebook is a “digital town square” where users voluntarily surrender their private information to the tech giant.

“You have to closely guard something to have a reasonable expectation of privacy,” Snyder said.

U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria challenged Facebook’s argument and its Orwellian implications.

“What you are saying now sounds contrary to the message that Facebook itself disseminates about privacy,” Chhabria said, according to a Law.com blog.

On the same day, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wast telling his shareholders that his social media entity is planning to become a “privacy-focused social platform,” in a remarkable display of double-speak. He had made a similar pronouncement in a Facebook note from March.

“I believe we should be working towards a world where people can speak privately and live freely knowing that their information will only be seen by who they want to see it and won’t all stick around forever,” Zuckerberg wrote.

“If we can help move the world in this direction, I will be proud of the difference we’ve made,” he added.

Zuckerberg must be hoping that the public isn’t paying attention to what his lawyers are saying in court. Civil liberties activists are not buying his lip service.

“Zuckerberg has been the sole leader of Facebook for its entire 15 years of existence,” the watchdog group Fight for the Future wrote in a blog criticizing Facebook’s abusive practices.

“In that time, there has been no attempt to move away from a business model reliant on violating user privacy. Facebook’s current business practices are fundamentally at odds with democracy and human rights,” they added.

While Facebook may argue that it is a “digital town square” in an attempt to avoid legal culpability for its privacy violations, that is very similar to the argument being used by reformers hoping Facebook is re-classified as a utility so that the U.S.-based corporation has to abide by the Bill of Rights of the Constitution without exception.

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1124063752410869765

https://twitter.com/MarkDice/status/1124787970790182912

Zuckerberg may get more than he bargained for if their legal theories hold up in the court of law, as Facebook and similar Big Tech behemoths like Twitter and Google are under heavier scrutiny than ever before.