Advocates ask Facebook why it’s opposing privacy act
As the social network deals with the data scandal, it’s being called out for not supporting the proposed measure
When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg finally spoke Wednesday after five days of silence about the company’s latest major crisis, he said during a television interview that he wasn’t “sure we shouldn’t be regulated.”
Why, then, is Facebook opposing the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018? That’s what the lead proponent of a proposed state ballot initiative wants to know.
“It drives me a little crazy that the company says it puts privacy first and it’s at the center of everything they do,” Alastair Mactaggart, a San Francisco real estate developer, told this publication Wednesday.
Thisweek, Mactaggart penned an open letter to Zuckerberg, in which he referenced the Cambridge Analytica mess — the apparent misuse of 50 million Facebook users’ personal information by a data analytics firm that worked with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign— and called the Facebook CEO out for funding an effort to defeat his measure.
“When we were drafting the initiative, we reached out to Facebook to try to enlist its support,” hewrote. “Wewere… disappointed to learn that on February 27, 2018, Facebook joined Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, and Google, to contribute over $1 million to a political action committee you set up to oppose the measure.”
He said he and his group, Californians for Consumer Privacy, have not heard back from Facebook.
State records show Facebook and Google contributed $200,000 each to the Committee to Protect California Jobs. Comcast and Verizon each contributed the same amount, according to the late contribution report filed with California’s sec---
retary of state. A separate report shows a $200,000 donation by AT&T. The reports filed with the state show either the California Chamber of Commerce or the California Chamber of Commerce and “a Coalition of Innovation Companies” as filers.
Google did not return a request for comment Thursday. Facebook did not return repeated requests for comment.
But the spokesman for the opposition to the measure, which is led by tech trade groups TechNet and The Internet Association, contacted this publication.
“This ballot measure disconnects California,” Steven Maviglio said. “It is unworkable, requiring the internet in California to operate differently — limiting our choices, hurting our businesses, and cutting our connection to the global economy.”
Mactaggart said his effort is “on track” when it comes to collecting enough signatures to qualify the initiative for the November ballot. The measure — which he decided to back after talking to a Google worker at a cocktail party, plus seeing a friend deal with identity theft— seeks todo three main things:
• Allow consumers to see what information big businesses collect about them.
• Allow consumers to ask corporations to stop selling their personal information without being discriminated against by doing so.
• Hold businesses accountable for data breaches.
Consumer Watchdog, a group that criticizes tech companies loudly and often, is throwing Zuckerberg’s Wednesday mea culpa back at him.
“In a Facebook post on Wednesday Zuckerberg wrote, ‘ We have a responsibility to protect your data, and ifwe can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you’,” the group said in a news release Thursday.
But the release goes on to quote John Simpson, director of its privacy project: “That’s meaningless blather unless Facebook takes action to protect users’ data.”
So what might Zuckerberg have been referring to when he signaled being open to regulation?
“I think in general, technology is an increasingly important trend in the world, and I actually think the question is more, ‘ What is the right regulation?’ rather than, ‘ Yes or no, should it be regulated?” Zuckerberg told CNN’s Laurie Segall.
“There are things like ads transparency regulation that I would love to see,” he said.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, DMinnesota, took that to mean that Zuckerberg supports her Honest Ads Act, which would introduce transparency to online political advertising.
“Just watched Mark Zuckerberg on @CNN & I was surprised to hear him say he supported the senate bill on election ads,” she tweeted Wednesday. “That’s my bill — the Honest Ads Act — w/ @SenJohnMcCain & @ MarkWarner ..It’s a new position for Facebook & we’d like toget it done before election. Twitter? Google?”
However, Quartz reports that Facebook has been working behind the scenes against the Honest Ads Act in its entirety, although Zuckerberg told Wired the company will “implement most of it anyway.”