Reigning in big tech

“In a lot of ways,” Mark Zuckerberg has famously said, “Facebook is more like a government than a traditional company.”

… Finally, though, there are signs governments are stirring themselves to meet the challenge — and not a moment too soon.

In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission slapped Facebook with a record fine of $5 billion … for misleading its users about the privacy of their personal information. In addition, the FTC ordered the company to set up a new board-level committee on privacy and make its data practices more transparent.

… The Trudeau government brought in new rules governing election advertising online and foreign meddling in campaigns. But it had no effective response when Google simply said it won’t carry any election ads rather than meet the Canadian requirements.

And Canada’s privacy commissioner was left to sputter impotently when he rebuked the company for violating the privacy of 620,000 Canadian users and it brushed him off. It turns out he has no power to tell Facebook to do anything. Even if he takes the company to court and wins, the maximum fine would be a risible $100,000. …

As for the future, the best the Liberals can offer is the tepid “digital charter” that Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains unveiled in May. It points in the right direction on privacy and other issues, but there’s no reason the government could not have moved faster in those areas.

Canadians deserve better. The trend across the developed world clearly favours reining in Big Tech, and Canada should be more than a bystander as these parallel governments are brought under control.

The coming election campaign will be an ideal time for the federal parties to spell out how they would meet that challenge.