Facebook the victim

creators, fake-news generators, voter manipulators, privacybreachers and opinion-warpers who emerged from the shadows in recent weeks via the Cambridge Analytica affair.

Facebook, after all, has not been guilty of breaching the privacy of 87 million users for political gain. That guilt belongs to the politicians and/or their various backroom organizations whose inner workings were apparently exposed and certainly sensationalized by Christopher Wylie, the 28-year-old Canadian who last month testified before a British House of Commons committee.

Wylie, who also fed key media companies his story, does not come across as the most credible of witnesses. But he has turned the world against Facebook, mostly by claiming to have evidence of purloined Even his wording is suspiciously non-categorical and leaves lots of wiggle room. On the use of data and funding by the Leave side in the British Brexit referendum, Wylie hedges: “I think it is completely reasonable to say that there could have been a different outcome in the referendum had there not been, in my view, cheating.”

At this point, though, it is irrelevant whether Wylie is a truth saying oracle or an unhinged young man parading his delusions of power and influence before the media and government committees. The world has listened and now the real victim of the scandal, Facebook, is being paraded in public for punishment.

Facebook is also a proxy for Silicon Valley. A weekend Financial Times report outlines the objective, which is to use privacy issues to bring Facebook and other Internet operations under greater government and regulatory control. According to European activist Max Schrems, says the Times, “we risk shifting power over our lives from laws made by elected officials to a self-appointed Silicon Valley cabal.”

Right now it looks like the opposite is afoot, with lawmakers taking power over Silicon Valley. And squishy liberal Zuckerberg is ready to go along with more political regulation by the politicians who pose most of the risks of data abuse.

In a media conference call last week, Zuckerberg said he was ready to accept Europe’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), said to be the most comprehensive data privacy laws in the world, with corporate fines in the billions of dollars against companies who breach regulations. “I think regulations like the GDPR are very positive,” said Zuckerberg.

Facebook, in other words, will submit to politicians whose electoral back offices are responsible for creating the Facebook data scandal.