Exclusive: After a two-year battle to get hold of them, notes from of a secret meeting between Mark Zuckerberg and Matt Hancock reveal a UK government in thrall to Facebook and seemingly cowed by their threats:

Zuckerberg told Hancock the UK's 'anti-tech' attitude meant it was 'the only country in the world he will not visit [redacted]
After Zuckerberg was reassured by Hancock the tone could shift from 'threatening regulation to encouraging collaborative working' the 'ambience' of the meeting shifted from 'guarded hostility to cautious optimism'
DCMS fought for for two years to withhold the minutes, breaching the FOI Act twice in the process, with its lawyers making a last ditch attempt to stop the release
The Information Commissioner's Office ordered DCMS to release the meeting minutes after describing them as 'the only available insight and understanding' into Zuckerberg’s position on UK tech legislation
Some interesting context courtesy of @jason_kint, Hancock was sat next to Facebook's Joel Kaplan and Michael Beckerman (chief exec of Internet Association, lobbyists for Facebook) at an exclusive New York dinner just three weeks prior to the meeting with Zuckerberg in Paris
The meeting between Zuckerberg and Hancock was brokered by Matthew Gould, who would later be appointed as chief exec of NHSX without interview when Hancock became health secretary
Our revelations come days before the Government is due to provide its full response to proposals to regulate tech giants. @julianknight15 has expressed fears the government has already rowed back on the scope of its online harms legislation
For those who have scrolled this far, here are the notes from the meeting: https://t.co/5nNmYHB1NX
It turns out Facebook was not the only company Hancock was fawning over at VivaTech, Uber also got the same treatment H/T @jtemperton https://t.co/4ts0tWXOqY
Another concerning element of the whole process was DCMS making the veiled threat to the ICO that releasing notes from this meeting would mean future meetings were held 'off the record'. cf point 95 in the ICO's decision notice: https://t.co/SRnFO1dzrG
Relationships between Matt Hancock and Mark Zuckerberg still very cosy, Hancock says he has been doing a lot of work with Nick Clegg, who he refers to as 'Mark Zuckerberg's representative on Earth' https://t.co/mtfYvZzHRt

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I'm going to do two history threads on Ethiopia, one on its ancient history, one on its modern story (1800 to today). 🇪🇹

I'll begin with the ancient history ... and it goes way back. Because modern humans - and before that, the ancestors of humans - almost certainly originated in Ethiopia. 🇪🇹 (sub-thread):


The first likely historical reference to Ethiopia is ancient Egyptian records of trade expeditions to the "Land of Punt" in search of gold, ebony, ivory, incense, and wild animals, starting in c 2500 BC 🇪🇹


Ethiopians themselves believe that the Queen of Sheba, who visited Israel's King Solomon in the Bible (c 950 BC), came from Ethiopia (not Yemen, as others believe). Here she is meeting Solomon in a stain-glassed window in Addis Ababa's Holy Trinity Church. 🇪🇹


References to the Queen of Sheba are everywhere in Ethiopia. The national airline's frequent flier miles are even called "ShebaMiles". 🇪🇹