Facebook caused own problems

When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg heads to Washington, D.C., next week to testify before two congressional committees, he had better give a masterful performance, persuasive enough to fend off the seemingly inevitable regulatory incursion that threatens to drastically change the social media giant. It is very possible, if not probable, that Facebook will be treated like a monolithic, unregulated utility ripe for federal intervention.

“When you see lapses like that, it opens the door for Congress to get involved,” U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III told the Herald. Kennedy is one of the congressmen who will be grilling Zuckerberg on Capitol Hill when he testifies Wednesday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Facebook is not likely to have a friend in the room, as Democrats feel the company is culpable for the 2016 presidential election loss, and Republicans are keenly aware of Facebook’s track record of working toward progressive causes, including selectively censoring conservative voices in the news feed.

Cyber security expert Gary Miliefsky, the executive producer of Cyber Defense Magazine, told Herald Radio on Friday that he believes there are plenty of existing laws and regulations on the books to disrupt Facebook as it exists today: “We could go under HIPAA, we can go under SEC regulation, we could go under FTC. I actually think consumer. gov, the FTC and, I think, state attorney generals should be coming down on Facebook very hard.”

We all like an open and free internet, but sometimes it brings the governance onto itself.