Arrington vs Facebook? THAT interview from Le Web
I was in Paris for Le Web last week and one of my standout sessions was the uncomfortable interview between Michael Arrington (Techcrunch) and Ethan Beard (Facebook). I wasn’t sure if this was funny or embarrassing, watching it was a little like a bad X-Factor audition. Arrington asked questions like, ‘Is Facebook evil or amoral? Do you guys care? Is it just about the money?’ and on the subject of privacy, ‘Some people see it as exceptionally not good. What’s going on, it’s confusing, you keep changing the defaults? Are the mess-ups incompetence?’. They were valid questions, but it was the way they were posed that felt unnecessarily confrontational, and with this being the first Q&A session of the conference I was surprised. Yet Beard’s replies were calm and he seemed honest – I came out liking Facebook, not Techcrunch which isn’t what I expected. Props to Ethan Beard.
Find 20mins and watch it in full to judge for yourself.