End of the Wild West era for tech firms
THE ‘Wild West’ era for technology firms like Facebook and Google is over, the Cabinet minister responsible for overseeing them declares today.
Silicon Valley giants face much greater regulation to control their use of people’s data and ensure they cannot avoid being properly taxed, Matt Hancock warns.
The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s comments were made in an interview for Technology Intelligence, a new initiative from The Telegraph dedicated to covering the increasingly important world of technology.
In the first of a five-part series examining Britain’s burgeoning technology industry, Mr Hancock says that the world’s biggest companies must accept increasing regulation and taxation by national governments.
The Government will put “rules in place so that tech can be harnessed for the good of the people”, he says, adding that “the Wild West for tech companies is over”. “Freedom operates within a framework,” he says.
“The liberal values of cherishing freedom whilst protecting the freedom of others is the new approach we’re taking and the argument we’re making in the UK is getting global resonance.”
Mr Hancock’s intervention comes as Facebook faces increasing scrutiny over how it uses people’s data.
MPS yesterday demanded that the company’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, explain how the social media giant allowed a British firm to harvest the details of 50 million users in 2014. Cambridge Analytica has been accused of improperly using the data while working as political analysts for Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential team and the successful Brexit campaign. The firm has described the accusations – made by a whistle-blower – as “pure fantasy”.
Yesterday Damian Collins, the chairman of the digital, culture, media and sport committee, said Mr Zuckerberg should “stop hiding behind his Facebook page” and answer questions.
Mr Collins said his committee had “repeatedly asked” Facebook about how companies acquire and hold on to user data from the site, and whether information had been taken from people without their consent.
Facebook said last night it was conducting a review of the incident and investigating ties between an employee and Cambridge Analytica.
Mr Hancock says that governments have not been able to keep pace with rapid technological change.
He says that the “break things fast, then fix them” entrepreneurial attitude common in Silicon Valley needs to evolve as very young companies have quickly become the biggest on the planet, holding huge amounts of data on billions of people.
“The tech industry grew up with a libertarian attitude that the government should just get out of the way because connecting people would improve lives,” he says. “And for the vast majority of people that is true. But it isn’t true for everybody.
“The rules that society has – whether norms of behaviour or formal legislative and regulatory rules – have not kept up with technology.”
Mr Hancock also says it is “very important that big tech companies play fair and pay an appropriate amount of tax”. The Treasury is already examining the idea of taxing their revenues rather than their profits.