Welcome to the Colette Podcast. My name is Claire Lehman and I am editor and chief of Colette.

Colette is where Free Thought lives. We are an independent grassroots platform for heterodox ideas and fearless commentary.

Our podcast is a team effort and is jointly hosted by myself,

associate editor Toby Young and Canadian editor Jonathan Kay. You can support our podcast by

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Welcome to the Colette Podcast.

I'm your host this week, Jonathan Kay.

When it was founded 15 years ago, Facebook was a place to express your thoughts and connect with friends.

Then it became popular as a way to share photos and videos.

Eventually the company moved into voice and video communication.

Facebook now claims to have more than 2 billion regular users and own several other popular services, including Instagram and WhatsApp.

Next year, Facebook will embark on yet another bold expansion, launching a new cryptocurrency called Libra, which

will be managed by a 28-member organization known as the Libra Association, headquartered

in Geneva, Switzerland.

Though not all details are yet known, it is expected that Libra-based

transactions will be integrated into Facebook users' social media experience, a prospect that

has alarmed everyone from privacy watchdogs to national banking regulators.

In an article posted to Colette.com this week, Paris-based New York University professor

and cryptographer Nadeem Kobayse raised his own concerns about Libra.

Among these were the possibility that Facebook and other social media sites might use

control of Libra as a way to financially punish users who run afoul of ideological or political

...