Mark Zuckerberg appears before the US Senate: what now?
Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance before the US Senate Committee on Trade, Science and Transport lasted for more than ten hours, producing some interesting conclusions, some strange moments, the biggest rise in the company’s stock for two years, and proof that many committee members, in addition to having received large financial contributions from Facebook for their campaigns, generally have very little knowledge of what Facebook is and what it really does.
One thing is clear: this is what happens when someone creates a very powerful platform to connect people and finances this through segmented advertising in a country where there are minimal privacy laws. If Mark Zuckerberg himself says he is still unable to understand what he has created and its impact, expecting a handful of US senators to do so and fix it, is optimistic, to say the least. His appearance can be watched in its entirety for those with the stomach to do so, along with full transcripts and even part of Zuckerberg’s notes, but the conclusions, I am afraid, the same: in a country, the US, where privacy is not the object of excessive protection, asking the founder of Facebook to explain how his company works and should operate is patently absurd: what needs to be done first is to reach consensus as to what privacy is and how far we want to protect it, then pass the necessary laws, thus making it unequivocally clear to Facebook how it must operate.
Mark Zuckerberg defended himself against accusations of running a monopoly, denied urban legends that his company listened to its users’ telephone conversations so as to create custom-made advertisements, and did not object in principle to future regulation of his company’s activities, although he was evasive on the subject and showed clearly that his long-term idea is to continue developing artificial intelligence to correct some of the problems of his platform. Again, the idea of having the Facebook founder appear before a Senate committee to answer these issues seems pointless: what should be done is to decide on regulation, set some rules and force Facebook and its competitors to play by those rules or face the consequences.
This is an area where Europe could lead the United States through its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which responds to the public’s concerns and is a general proposal that must be handled flexibly and adapted in response to its impact, but that at least offers a clear framework to work with. The possibility that Facebook is now considering adapting to this level of protection of personal data and not just in Europe, but throughout the world, is far and away the most interesting fallout of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. That said, whether the United States would consider implementing laws comparable to Europe’s: if one thing emerged from Zuckerberg’s appearance on Tuesday, Facebook is closer to fixing its problems via EU legislation or by itself than by depending on the decisions of US politicians.
(En español, aquí)
