View: How to monetise politeness and be two-Facedbook

I have considered myself fortunate to have been well-equipped for these times. I have always bitched about people - humans, politicians, et al - with complete candour, and without self- or external restraint. This has been possible simply because I have kept my bitching within a close, trusted circle. This skill of PNPC - 'poro ninda, poro chorcha,' which roughly translates from Bengali to English to 'bitching about others, discussing about others' - hinges on a certain (read: hypocritical) kind of politeness. I speak freely about people, but ensure that my critique doesn't reach the ears of the people I'm bitching about.

For we live in sensitive times. People get offended easily ('What do you mean I'm short!' shouted Bonaparte from the one-storey building rooftops), yet understandably. And it is too much to expect people to take it on their chin, as I do - lest the same people take this tolerance to be weakness, which I don't. So quite gleefully, I am free speech incarnate, in my self-designated zone of Pax Indica. This isn't about being beholden to the Big Man, but about politeness. And my politeness, I have heard people speaking behind my back, is legendary.

Which is why I don't air my strongest views on platforms like Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg, like me, wants to keep everyone happy while he conducts his business - except that he has his politeness monetised. Facebook - Meta is too meta for simple soul me - has been criticised for being a bad playschool, not having enough nannies to screen bad posts posted by bad people who do bad well especially when behind phone or computer screens. Hate posts, misinformation, even calls for violence - as I have aired from time to time within my 'safe circle' against football clubs, political leaders and writers of my disliking - have found their way to F***book.

But the Washington Post, playing snooping auntie in a terrain where everything goes and, Houston, we have a problem. The WaPo report exposes Zuckerberg censoring posts 'aggressively' - 'gentle censoring' is so passe - to ensure that Facebook is not kicked out of a 'desirable market'. It actually zones in on one-party state (guess which party?) Vietnam reportedly telling Two-Facedbook to help censor anti-government posts, or pack its bags. Quite like if I had PNPCed about someone in his and his impressionable friends' presence. Zuckerberg is unlikely to have a place in heaven. He will also not be remembered for his ideological loyalties. But he is not Prince Politeness, nor was meant to be by his own reckoning.

Let's face it. This is a chap who first built a website called 'Facemash' in 2003 when still in Harvard, which asked users to choose the 'hotter' person between two pictures of (female) Harvard students without the students' consent. Not quite 'We Are the World, We Are the Children' stuff. The website was duly shut down. Zuckerberg took his outsourced PNPC elsewhere, and voila, as in August 2021, he has a company called Facebook with a market cap of $1.21 trillion - not funded by the likes of Newcastle FC owner and Saudi despot Mohammed bin Salman.

In his content agnosticism, Zuckenberg reminds me of Deng Xiaoping, who famously said, 'Buguan hei mao bai mao, zhuo dao laoshu jiu shi hao mao.' Which if you paid attention to 'other markets' at the right time means, 'No matter if it is a white cat or a black cat, as long as it can catch mice, it is a good cat.' Zuckerberg, too, has no preference for kitty colour as long as it rolls the money in. Whenever threatened enough by a running dog of paranoid authoritarianism, he develops 'colour sensitivity'. Facebook is neither good or bad, but its thinking about money makes it so.

Zuckerberg is content neutral. He just cares about operating in markets where people can bitch to their hearts' content. But without prickly governments - in constant need of validation through 'likes' and 'loves' and loyal acts like arresting people who share celebratory messages of 'arch-enemies' winning in sporting clashes - unfriending his enterprise.