If only corporations truly had the interests of the citizens at heart.<p>-- Speaking at the Mobile World Congress, an annual tech and telecommunications conference here, Mr. Zuckerberg said that Facebook would play its part in the fight against global terrorism, but that weakening the digital security of technology companies was a bad idea.<p>-- “I don’t think building back doors is the way to go, so we’re pretty sympathetic to Tim and Apple,” said Mr. Zuckerberg, in reference to Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook.<p>That&#x27;s about at weak as &quot;protection&quot; gets. He&#x27;s giving a speech at a tech conference so he needs to mention the elephant in the room. He hedges, knowing that consumer trust is the cornerstone of Facebook&#x27;s ability to collect and monetize data. That he needs to throw cautious support to Apple to have the people on his side, but that he also needs to show that Facebook is against terrorism. Because we all cower like a fucking scared bunch of children whenever we hear the word &quot;terrorist&quot; and we want to feel like we&#x27;re so important that the security of our stupid instagram pictures, grocery lists, and sexts is that fucking important.<p>True, it&#x27;s not his place to speak his mind. He needs to speak for the thousands of employees at Facebook. He needs to speak for their stock price, their financial well being, their ability to send their children to college, to show up to work happy that they are the scions and mechanics of a good, benevolent engine of prosperity, peace, and progress.<p>Therefore, it&#x27;s pointless to listen to what any of these people - Zuckerberg, Cook, Pichai - say. They speak for their companies, big, gray amalgamations with no feelings, no brothers, no father or mother, just a lot of interchangeable children and no goddamn soul.<p>They speak for the business decisions that will keep their investors, boards, and employees happy. They could have extremely radical or enlightened views about encryption and terrorism, but they shut up and they do their job - make the stock price go up. Play up our protection of the consumer, but make sure we&#x27;re still open to spying for the FBI and the CIA. Talk both sides of the issue, leave everyone feeling happy, let the storm roll over, keep making money.<p>It&#x27;s just business, nothing personal.