President Obama is scheduled
to participate in a Facebook Live discussion with Mark Zuckerberg this
Friday as part of a conference on tech from emerging markets.
The White House announced that the 2016 Global Entrepreneurship
Summit (GES) in Palo Alto, California, will also see Obama talk with an
audience of entrepreneurs from 170 countries, reports
Instead of addressing domestic concerns over the use of social media
by extremists, Obama will reportedly focus on connecting Silicon
Valley’s brightest minds, and investors, with fledgling tech innovators
from around the world.
“We believe the United States needs to have affirmative values that
we are promoting around the world, in addition to the efforts we do to
counter terrorism,” Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security
adviser, told reporters. “We wanted to discuss not just what we’re
against, but what we’re for.”
It is unclear at this stage what format the Facebook Live discussion
will take. Zuckerberg has not asked for users to contribute their
questions for the President to answer, meaning a pre-planned discussion
may be on the cards. However, audience participation is a major part of
Facebook Live as viewers can interact with a stream in real-time using
reactions and comments.
This isn’t the first time Obama and Zuckerberg have met to host a
discussion. In 2011, the President ventured to Facebook’s HQ to take
part in a town hall
style meeting with the social network’s CEO. This time round the
audience won’t just consist of the platform’s employees, but will
instead have the potential to reach a large number of its 1.65 billon
users. Such a high-profile event will also provide a much needed boost
for Facebook’s burgeoning live-streaming feature, which it is
aggressively expanding with the help of celebs and media firms.
The GES is now in its seventh year with the White House claiming that
it has reached a total of 17,000 people in, mostly-Muslim, emerging
markets since its inception in 2009.
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