Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/24/aoc-grills-the-zuck-like-the-b.html
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Not only that, she crowdsourced questions for him beforehand.
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First came big-name partners abandoning Libra like the future toxic waste dump it was destined to be. Now the hearings over its severe dangers to international financial markets and reserve currencies have turned into a wider condemnation of Facebook’s irresponsible behaviour, with Ocasio-Cortez taking centre stage. I’m enjoying the results of Zuckerberg’s attempt to create “cryptocurrency for dumb f*cks” more than I thought I would.
What’s this, a Congressperson acknowledging the fact that citizens might have more expertise on these topics than her? Clearly Ocasio-Cortez will never make it to the Senate, which is reserved for polymath geniuses like Ted “the Internet is a series of tubes” Stevens.
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If you are lying, we want people to see that you are lying
Sort of like your testimony, huh Zuck?
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I have yet to hear a convincing argument for why I would need that product. I can already buy online without problems. It seems to be a product geared mostly to illegal activity and tax avoidance. It’s great if you’re someone trying to launder funds out of Russia or China into real estate - but why is that good for society?
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I’m not a fan of cryptocurrencies, to put it mildly, so I think you’re being redundant here. Every cryptocurrency is for and by the idiots.
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The broader argument is “the Chinese state is creating an international cryptocurrency that intends to replace the USD and other reserve currencies, so therefore we need one in the West, too”. There’s room for debate there (for example), but putting its implementation in the hands of Mark Zuckerberg (whose voting shares control FB, which would control Libra) is something only an idiot would allow.
I’m with you there. But you’d have to be a particularly big dumb f*ck to use a cryptocurrency issued by someone who isn’t even interested in the baseline cryptocurrency value proposition of respecting your privacy.
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The thing I love about AOC is that she does her homework on an issue before entering into a confrontation. Moreso than her opponents who are usually left gibbering and looking foolish.
Its what allows her to grill like Peter Lugers.
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In this timeline, that’s a shoo-in, then. Just a matter of when. (ETA /s)
Stop the universe, I want to jump to a parallel one.
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It seems like right now the only person in the universe that wants Libra is Zuck.
Every major payment system (MasterCard, Visa, Discover, PayPal, etc) has abandoned it. Facebook is seen as one of the least-trustworthy and least-secure companies in America. Federal regulators on both sides of the aisle clearly distrust Facebook to run their own currency.
If Libra happens, it’ll be 100% Zuck.
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You do not. Facezucker does. This has nothing to do with a crypto currency and everything to do with the blockchain.
There’s an old saying – “I know half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted; I just don’t know which half”.
The blockchain will give Facezucker the kind of visibility needed to tell the ad execs which half was wasted. And once Facezucker can do that, no ad exec will be able to spend advertising money anywhere else.
I am willing to be one of the reasons all the banks and credit cards bailed on Libra was because they had to pay to give that information to Facezucker, and then had to pay to get it back. Your purchase history is a valuable revenue stream to those corporations. There’s simply no way, once they dug into the fine print, they were going to simply hand it over.
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I am really getting sick of legislators using these sessions to grandstand for cameras by putting down people rather than asking them questions.
AOC actually did ask questions and listened for answers which gives her much more authority.
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Seems to me the point is, if a politician wants to say “The sky is green”, should the politician be allowed to say that and be rightly dismissed for doing so? Or should the statement “The sky is green” simply be immediately disallowed as a lie?
(“A politician would never say something that could easily be verified by looking out the window on a sunny day!”, you may reply, but we live in strange times.)
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It’s baffling and honestly worrying how much of an advantage that seems to be. Taking things seriously and doing your homework shouldn’t be this much of an “I win!” button.
Or, more precisely, it’s baffling and worrying that so many people don’t do that, even when they know they’re going to be grilled by a House committee.
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AOC and Katie Porter were both breathing some serious fire in that hearing, and Zuck looked like the incompetent bumbling idiot he actually is for once.
https://twitter.com/JasonOverstreet/status/1187094143111032832
More of this, please.
Edit:
I guess it’s a lot easier to weather the storm of looking like an idiot in front of Congress than to have the potential legal liability of admitting that you know anything about what’s going on.
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Given past track record of committee members’ ‘grilling’ (= grandstanding and not even attempting to land a blow), even I might be tempted to busk it. But not now AOC is asking questions! I’d be prepared to within an inch of my life.
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I’m not paying that much attention to Libra or crypto currency , but I do have a couple of questions for Zuck. Will he or Facebook receive a cut of every transaction? Really how will Facebook make money off it? Is Libra just for use with Facebook products or will I be able (not that I will) use it at the grocery store? What’s the benefit of Libra, vs says a credit card that pays me to use it, or Pay Pal?
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AOC’s qustioning starts about 4:18:25 or so
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