Facebook's Oversight Board seems to me like an attempt to solve the problem of legitimacy without solving the problems of representation and voice.

But representation and voice are what give governmental decisions broad legitimacy!
This is hard to do well even in democratic systems, and our system, for instance, is constantly at war with itself over whether it really is representative (it isn't), and why some voices carry so much further than others.
But Zuckerberg is still the ultimate power at Facebook. The Board is still a Facebook creation. I take seriously that they take it seriously, and it may be an interesting model to insulate corporate decisionmaking from certain pressures.
But it's not going to make those decisions more legitimate unless the public has more voice and representation.

It might make them less legitimate! Zuckerberg is at least a public figure who can be lobbied, while the Board abstracts and disperses authority in confusing ways.
I could think of interesting experiments to try here, like letting the public vote on cases the Board takes, but it's also easy to see how those can go wrong.
That gets to the core conflict: Governments make *a lot* of clumsy trade-offs to achieve legitimacy.

Facebook, a private company, doesn't want to make those tradeoffs. Zuckerberg wants to run it as a fast-growing company, not a slow-moving government.
I give Facebook credit for trying to figure out how to govern itself better, but I'm not sure there's an answer here. Facebook has more power than a private company should have. Governments can take that power or size from them, or not, but Facebook can't answer this.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Ezra Klein

Ezra Klein Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @ezraklein

5 May
I liked this @jonathanchait piece on how the Congress's rules force the Congressional Budget Office to ignore the revenue from better IRS enforcement. But I'm also always caught on one thing here: nymag.com/intelligencer/…
As EVERYONE AT THE CBO WILL TELL YOU, they do not hold any ultimate power. They release reports. The reports are important exactly to the extent Congress listens to them. And this doesn't strike me as an example of a case where the CBO is the powerful actor.
Congress often ignores these reports. Lots of Republicans pretended to believe, or actually believed, the Trump tax cuts would pay for themselves.

Or Congress ignores the rule to offset spending. The Rescue Plan wasn't paid for, and the Jobs Plan pays for itself over 15 years.
Read 10 tweets
3 May
So earlier today, in a thread about why it's great that Eleven Madison Park is going plant-based, I said being vegan comes at a cost in the food you eat.

That made some people I like mad, but I think it's important, and I want to defend it.

So: 🧵
Let me first be clear about where I’m coming from: I’ve been vegetarian for more than a decade, vegan (with a bit of cheese here and there) for about 7 years.

Reducing animal suffering is one of my core political commitments. I write and podcast about it all the time.
That’s why I was excited to see Eleven Madison Park going plant-based, which is the context for that tweet. The more restaurants and chefs and companies working on plant-based food, the better plant-based food will get.
Read 23 tweets
3 May
I love this. It'll be so powerful for a restaurant like Eleven Madison Park to show what they can do with plants. And it's a constraint that'll lead to such wild creativity, too. nytimes.com/2021/05/03/din…
There is no doubt that being veg is less delicious. People who argue otherwise are kidding themselves. But a lot of that is because there are fewer options on menus, so much less money driving creativity. The more plant-based eaters and chefs there are, the tastier it'll get.
My one weird take in this space — which doesn't apply to Eleven Madison Park, as they're operating as a status symbol and a unique experience — is I think it's better for restaurants to go 80% plant-based than to eliminate meat entirely.
Read 7 tweets
30 Apr
The key part of this conversation with Chuck Schumer, to me, is the way his thinking on the median voter has changed. nytimes.com/2021/04/30/opi…
He used to think they were skeptical of big government, resentful that they paid taxes and it helped everyone but them.

That pushed Democrats to target programs tightly, and keep price tags down. Clinton era reflects this.
Now he thinks these voters, "Joe and Eileen Bailey," just want government to help them, and they don't care who else it helps. And so the political path for Democrats is to do anything and everything so these voters feeling helped by the government, right now.
Read 4 tweets
26 Apr
I think the path followed by electric cars over the past decade are a good way of thinking about this stupid debate about meat, and about the policy that will get us to a good outcome here.
Biden isn't going to ban meat.

He's so not going to ban meat and will be so afraid of being caricatured otherwise that I worry Democrats will err on the wrong side of this and ignore all emissions from animal agriculture, which would be devastating for climate goals.
So let's talk about electric cars. Go back a decade and there's a similar culture war. Real 'Muricans drive Hummers and weeny liberals drive Priuses and Volts and if Democrats win they're going to take your cool cars.
Read 17 tweets
23 Apr
I love this @AnnieLowrey jeremiad against the term "low-skill jobs." Those jobs aren't low-skill. They're low-wage, and calling them low-skill is a way of blaming often exploited workers for inequality and unemployment. theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
The idea that a 23-year-old at McKinsey is a high-skill worker while a home healthcare aide with 30 years of experience is low-skill is risible.

The latter may be paid more, but they're not more skilled. And the language of skills recasts that pay gap as natural, even virtuous.
As Annie writes, the point isn't that we shouldn't learn different skills as the economy changes. The point is the language of low and high-skilled jobs obscures the realities of power and policy operating behind this debate.
Read 5 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(