DUBLIN — For about two or three years know, we’ve been discussing the possibility that companies like Facebook would face much more stringent regulation (and fines) in the future. Throughout history, whenever a set of corporate interests grow “too” powerful – whether that means they have too much power to shape cities, like the railways, or too much power to shape minds, like Facebook – the rest of society has intervened. It was inevitable that the tech giants, who developed in a largely regulation-free environment and who have acted with almost no constraints for the last twenty-odd years, would eventually have to accept that they function in rules-based civilisations and they, too, have to obey rules. A series of scandals and the dramatic political developments of the last few years, including the frightening re-emergence of fascist ideology, the spread of far-right terrorist ideology, and the ongoing rise of religious terrorism, have prompted governments to start seriously asking themselves if our current communication systems are working for us. At last, even Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that rules are needed. Don’t forget that this is an about-face by Zuckerberg. In 2018, when the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, Zuckerberg was adamant that self-regulation was all that was needed. Now, in the face of ongoing and relentless scandal, he has changed his mind. Let’s hope that governments are ready to step up and do their part at long last. – Felicity Duncan
Facebook Chief Mark Zuckerberg Wants More Internet Regulation
By Jeff Horwitz
(The Wall Street Journal) Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg called for global regulators to take a “more active role” in governing the internet, among his strongest remarks yet on regulation that come after more than a year of intense scrutiny over missteps at the social network.
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In an op-ed published Saturday on the websites of the Washington Post and Ireland’s Independent, Mr. Zuckerberg said such intervention is vital to protect both the welfare of users and the fundamental values of an open internet.
He said the US needed European-style privacy regulations and called on regulators globally to set clearer rules regarding “harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability.”
Every day, he said, Facebook makes “decisions about what speech is harmful, what constitutes political advertising, and how to prevent sophisticated cyberattacks,” calling the work necessary. “But if we were starting from scratch, we wouldn’t ask companies to make these judgments alone,” he said.
The piece, also published on Facebook, follows a difficult two years for the company, which has been assailed by legislators and regulators for failing to prevent foreign interference in U.S. elections, failing to adequately safeguard its users’ data and failing to suppress hate speech and other forms of harmful content on its platform. Earlier this month, Mr. Zuckerberg cited Facebook users’ desire to have more private conversations as the impetus for pivoting toward more intimate, encrypted messaging-based products.
It marked Mr. Zuckerberg’s clearest embrace to date of the need for governments to set rules as well as hold Facebook and its competitors accountable for lapses in content moderation and data security.
Many of Mr. Zuckerberg’s recommendations would require international cooperation, such as his proposal that governments world-wide adopt rules akin to Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation – widely regarded as among the most stringent in its requirements on privacy and data security. Other tech executives, including Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook and Google chief Sundar Pichai, also have suggested the US pursue stricter privacy rules.
Governments globally need similar rules, Mr. Zuckerberg said, to “ensure that the Internet does not get fractured.”
His proposals also highlight ways in which Facebook’s business is changing. His embrace of privacy regulations, stricter content-moderation requirements and data portability – in which users would be able to access and interact with personal accounts across many different sites and apps—echoes proposals made by Facebook opponents within just the past few years.
“People shouldn’t have to rely on individual companies addressing these issues by themselves,” Mr. Zuckerberg concluded in his op-ed. “We should have a broader debate about what we want as a society and how regulation can help.”
