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Senator Sherrod Brown announced Tuesday on Facebook the opening of the Senate Banking Committee hearing on the company's new project, Cryptocurrency, Libra.
"Facebook is dangerous," said Democratic member of Ohio and member of the ranking committee. "Now, Facebook may not have the intention to be dangerous, but they surely do not respect the power of the technologies they play with." Like a toddler who has had the hand on a book of matches, Facebook burned the house and on and called each arson a learning experience ".
Brown has repeatedly mentioned what he called Facebook's "competing missions" to make the world more connected and make money for themselves.
"Facebook has demonstrated, scandal after scandal, that it does not deserve our trust, it should be treated as a for-profit corporation that represents it, just like any other company," Brown said.
He also criticized Facebook's initial slogan: "go fast and break things". He discussed the role played by Facebook in facilitating the spread of propaganda in Myanmar leading to violence and genocide in the country. He also discussed the role of the company in disrupting business models of journalistic publications.
"They acted quickly and broke our political rhetoric, they acted quickly and broke the journalism, they acted quickly and helped to incite genocide, they acted quickly and help to undermine our democracy," Brown said. . "Now, Facebook is asking people to trust them with their hard-earned paychecks, it takes a staggering arrogance … to look at this balance sheet and think," Do you know what we really need to do next? … own bank and our own for-profit version of the Federal Reserve. Let's do it for the whole world. "
Later during the hearing, Brown asked David Marcus, head of Facebook's new cryptocurrency subsidiary, Calibra, that he had so much confidence in Libra that he would accept the entire his salary in the new currency. Marcus first circumvented the question by saying that "Libra is not designed to compete with bank accounts". But he then announced that he would accept his salary in Libra.
"If your question is whether I would trust all my badets in Libra, the answer is yes," said Marcus.
In his opening statement, Brown said that Facebook had not proven itself.
"We'd be crazy to give them a chance to experiment with people's bank accounts, to use powerful tools that they do not understand, such as monetary policy, to compromise the ability of working Americans." hard to provide for their families. "
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