# Zuckerberg’s Preposterous Defense of Facebook - NYTimes.com

<https://nytimes.com/2017/09/29/opinion/mark-zuckerberg-facebook.html>

- Host: [nytimes.com](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/hosts/nytimes.com/)
- Saved: October 1, 2017 (2017-10-01T15:02:23Z)
- Record: https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/75943a3f4496/
- JSON: https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/75943a3f4496.json

## What Jamie wrote

I think this argument is missing a fundamental issue. Facebook is a for-profit company that is allowed to operate on it’s own rules, referenced in it’s Terms of Service and it’s Privacy Policy (which change frequently). Facebook is not the open web, it is not a neutral platform. The best analogy for Facebook is your local mall. If it were an open platform, like the web, the content on it would not be subject to the Terms of Service of Facebook.

As such, Facebook must have an opinion about the content that appears on the site. All of the content. Why? Because it **does** have an opinion about the content that doesn't appear on the site! You cannot have the right to manage content on one side, but not the other. If your local shopping mall had a store that was appalling to you it would be on them, they wouldn't get away with some "well, we are an open platform" argument. Because they are not. It is a chosen set of actions for a business goal. That is what Facebook is too, it just likes to pretend that it is something else so you don't realize you are being monitored and monetized.

## Facts

- Kind: [Page](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/kinds/page/)

## Appears in

- [WT22: Weekly Thing for October 7, 2017](https://weekly.thingelstad.com/archive/22/), Links 📌

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## Elsewhere

- Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://nytimes.com/2017/09/29/opinion/mark-zuckerberg-facebook.html