Convenience Big Store: Treat Facebook like a hostile foreign power

29 September, 2021

In the headlines

Queues for petrol are "starting to calm down", filling-station bosses told the BBC, after knife fights and punch-ups on forecourts shamed Britain. "The queues for petrol pumps are like those for sausage... in the Soviet Union," said a gleeful presenter on the pro-Kremlin Russian television station NTV. Keir Starmer is setting out an "education revolution" at the Labour party conference today, says the Mirror's Pippa Crerar, but everyone really wants to see if his personality cuts through. No one doubts the former lawyer's "fierce intellect", a Labour MP tells Crerar, but "he was always better at convincing the judge than the jury". The traditional bonfire at Dulwich Sports Club's fireworks display will be replaced by a video of an "eco-friendly virtual bonfire" on a big screen. "What the Fawkes going on?" asks The Sun.

Comment of the day

Mark Zuckerberg in an Instagram video posted on 4 July

Treat Facebook like a hostile foreign power

We should treat Facebook like a hostile foreign entity, says Adrienne LaFrance in The Atlantic. It certainly behaves like one. The social media site is single-mindedly focused on its own expansion and ruled by a man obsessed with power – Mark Zuckerberg. Recently he announced that Facebook was developing a cryptocurrency called Diem. Financial regulators fear it could "throw off the global economy and decimate the dollar". Years ago he conspicuously started calling the site's 2.9 billion members his "people", not "users". This is autocratic stuff. What's more, Facebook has no sense of civic obligation, loathes the free press and subverts elections. "If Russia or China were taking the exact same actions to undermine democracy, Americans would surely feel differently."

"Social media is a net good for society" as long as the platforms work in the public's best interest. Facebook does not. It is designed for blunt-force emotional reaction, it reduces human interaction to the clicking of buttons and it pushes users towards extreme material with dodgy algorithms. "Facebook is a lie-disseminating instrument of civilisational collapse." Governments must start taking it seriously.

Biden's bold plans are paying off

This week the US Congress is debating President Biden's $3.5 trillion "human infrastructure" package and $1 trillion "hard infrastructure" bill. The fact that they're negotiating for trillions of dollars, instead of mere billions, shows how ambitious this administration is, says Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. "Anyone who might have imagined that our oldest president would mostly be a soothing corrective after the insanity of the Donald Trump years was dead wrong."

In his eight months in office, Biden has been bold. First he cracked down on China. He secretly negotiated the Aukus defence pact with Britain and Australia; hosted the first in-person summit of the Quad alliance (the US, India, Australia and Japan), which aims to contain China's regional ambitions; and sent Vice-President Kamala Harris to southeast Asia to bolster ties with Singapore and Vietnam. Second, he withdrew from Afghanistan. The withdrawal "wasn't pretty", but after years of dithering under Obama and Trump, it happened. "This nation's longest war is over – any way you look at it, that's a historic milestone." Finally, Biden's plans for the future are big. He wants to introduce electric cars, build high-speed trains, give everyone broadband, expand healthcare benefits and offer free nursery places and two free years of community college. He and Harris might look clumsy sometimes, but they aim high. "And they get things done."

Inside politics

To quell Donald Trump's frequent fits of rage as president, aides in the White House came up with a novel approach: playing his favourite show tunes, including Memory from Cats. There was even an official called the "Music Man" assigned to do it, says former Trump press secretary Stephanie Grisham in her new book, I'll Take Your Questions Now.

Film

After an 18-month delay, No Time to Die had its premiere last night in London. Finally, some proper glamour, says Christian Allaire in Vogue. "Kate Middleton has clearly missed dressing up" – her glittering dress looked like something out of Goldfinger. Some were less impressed. Daniel Craig's pink suede jacket is foul, Piers Morgan raged on Twitter. James Bond is supposed to be a steely-eyed assassin, "not an Austin Powers tribute act". Craig is unlikely to mind – the film got five stars from The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian.

On the money

A Danish museum gave 538,000 kroner (£62,000) in banknotes to artist Jens Haaning, which were to be displayed in two glass frames at an exhibition that opened last week. Instead Haaning trousered the cash and submitted two empty frames, says The Art Newspaper. He changed the title to Take the Money and Run: "The work is that I took the money." The museum was not impressed and has asked for the cash back.

Snapshot

Eating in

Victoria Beckham has revealed her "boring" preferred snack: "I like wholegrain toast with salt on it," she told the River Café Table 4 podcast. "It's that carbohydrate that makes you feel comforted, and I love salt."

Snapshot answer

It's the high street of a "lost village" in the Lake District that has been revealed by falling water levels in the Haweswater Reservoir. Mardale Green was submerged when the valley was flooded in the 1930s, forcing hundreds of residents to leave. Water levels dropped to less than 40% at the end of summer, leaving the remains of a house, a humpback bridge and a church visible. The company that owns the reservoir said a higher-than-usual number of holidaymakers had increased demand for water.