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YouTube is Preparing for Battle Against Regulators

Susan Wojcicki’s latest blog to creators is a thinly-veiled attempt to frame the narrative ahead of a battle with politicians across the globe

Chris Stokel-Walker
FFWD
3 min readAug 27, 2019

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Image: Tom Vickers/MOVI Inc

Five months ago, nearly to the day, Mark Zuckerberg wrote a blog. The blog, which came a couple of weeks before the Facebook founder testified in front of Congress, was a pretty blatant attempt to reframe the narrative ahead of regulation from politicians.

“I believe we need a more active role for governments and regulators,” Zuckerberg wrote. “By updating the rules for the Internet, we can preserve what’s best about it — the freedom for people to express themselves and for entrepreneurs to build new things — while also protecting society from broader harms.”

Read deeper into Zuckerberg’s blog, though, and you realize that actually what he wanted was a more active role for governments and regulators — but on his terms. (Why else would a billionaire say “The rules governing the Internet allowed a generation of entrepreneurs to build services that changed the world and created a lot of value in people’s lives. It’s time to update these rules to define clear responsibilities for people, companies and governments going forward”?)

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Chris Stokel-Walker
Chris Stokel-Walker

Written by Chris Stokel-Walker

UK-based freelancer for The Guardian, The Economist, BuzzFeed News, the BBC and more. Tell me your story, or get me to write for you: stokel@gmail.com

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