Resist calls for regulating Facebook

Facebook’s mounting scandals and unflattering revelations are tempting more Americans to want to crack down through strict federal regulations. That’s a temptation to be resisted.

There’s no doubt that the company has taken advantage of users’ data, in some cases implicitly deceiving them about what is private and what is not. But the solution to this frustrating problem is not to expand government control over private companies whose services people can freely walk away from at any time.

The issue has come to a head as the attorney general of the city of Washington, D.C. — no, not the federal AG — has filed a lawsuit against Facebook. It’s primarily focused on the platform’s interactions with Cambridge Analytica, the political consultancy that used a quiz app to gather Facebook data useful in targeting online campaign ads for thencandidate Donald Trump.

According to District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine, Facebook failed to protect users’ data, actively exposing them to the risk that it would be abused, and mislead them about how private that data was. Racine seeks monetary damages and an injunction against Facebook.

It is not at all clear, however, whether traditional offline consumer protection rules and standards can be effectively applied to online activity of the sort Facebook is involved in.

Clearly, a company that flouts its own privacy settings is violating basic trust with its customers.

But both regulators and elected officials are being naïve if they think there is not a general expectation online that user data travels much more freely than it does offline. It is not even evident that many Facebook users are particularly bothered by the news that their ostensibly private information was shared with other hugely popular apps like Spotify.

Part of this casual attitude no doubt relates to the fact that so many Facebook users are not actually customers of Facebook’s in any traditional sense.

The platform is free, and relies on the unfettered broadcast of personal information to provide much of its services.

True, a significant number of people do rely on Facebook for income, because they have managed to effectively monetize their presence and activity on the site. And some media companies have suffered grievously as a result of “pivoting to video” to game Facebook algorithms the company changed.

For those companies to put their business at risk by gambling all on a single company’s shifting algorithms betokens more irresponsibility on their part than on Facebook’s.

Two can play at that game, in fact. Facebook is not a public utility.

It depends on huge market share to maintain its scale — and massively favorable public opinion.

Millions of users could simply delete or neglect their accounts without suffering any kind of measurable harm, as the new trend of dumping Facebook indicates.

It’s reasonable for regulators to want to punish Facebook for making a promise not to violate their own users’ privacy settings.

A punitive fine is one thing; heaping rash and over-extensive new regulations on the company, and whichever others wind up in the line of fire, is another.

Users aren’t simply victims. Americans still cherish their freedom to take their own risks. And in the free market online, today’s behemoths are often tomorrow’s dinosaurs. — Southern California News

Group, Digital First Media

Clearly, a company that flouts its own privacy settings is violating basic trust with its customers.