Zuckerberg’s lacklustre performance and explanations

With much of Europe facing fears over data protection and the way in which personal data was harvested by Cambridge Analytica, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘grilling’ before the European Parliament was a rather lacklustre affair both in terms of performance as well as in substance.

At the long-awaited hearing in Brussels on Tuesday, MEPs were eager for explanations about the growing number of fake Facebook accounts, data harvesting and whether Facebook will comply with new EU privacy rules.

Most MEPs, however, left the assembly frustrated by Zuckerberg’s lack of answers. After a few short opening remarks, Zuckerberg heard out all the MEPs’ questions first, and then responded to them all in one fell swoop.

As a result, he was able to avoid giving some answers and ran out of time before he could provide others.

This was a far cry from Zuckerberg’s painful testimony before the US Congress last month, where there was a proper back and forth with lawmakers, with the possibility for supplementary follow-up questions.

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This ‘grilling’ format employed by the European Parliament is really not much of a grilling at all, and appears to be more of an opportunity to exchange ideas rather than allowing MEPs to get to the meat of the debate at hand. Zuckerberg acknowledged and apologised for the way in which the world’s leading social network had been used to produce fake news, interfere in elections and sweep up people’s personal data.

His appearance in Brussels came after it was alleged last month that political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had used the data of millions of Facebook users to target voters during political campaigns, including Brexit and the last US election.

Within this whole controversy, it is tiny Malta that should really be taking an interest in how its citizens’ data was harvested by Cambridge Analytica. Although only 6,011 Maltese citizens had their data harvested by the controversial firm, Malta’s per capita proportion makes it the most ‘harvested’ country in the European Union after the United Kingdom. Although the government has denied any sort of involvement with the firm, it still stands to be understood why the company had such an interest in tiny Malta, so much so that close to one in 70 Maltese Facebook users are reported by the European Commission to have had their data mined and harvested by Cambridge Analytica. Such campaigns are not conducted on a whim – there is always a reason for them. And while the details of 6,000-odd people may not seem like a mountain of data, it is significant for a country of this size, as it is far more than enough of a sample size for psychological electioneering profiling and who knows what else.

And those dubious, alleged links between Cambridge Analytica’s mother company, SCL Elections, and Malta’s citizenship concessionaires Henley and Partners makes answers from a Maltese viewpoint even more pressing, especially coupled with allegations that SCL Elections manipulated elections in St Kitts and Nevis.

Although we had plenty of apologies from Facebook on Tuesday in Brussels, we are just as much in the dark about such matters as we were on Monday.