Lawmakers grill Zuckerberg on data and privacy
What happened
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg faced two days of often-combative questions on Capitol Hill this week, as anger mounted in Washington and around the world over Facebook’s handling of users’ data, raising the possibility that the social network could face a regulatory crackdown. The 33-year-old billionaire, appearing contrite and composed for his first Washington hearing, told House and Senate lawmakers that it was clear the social network had not done enough to protect its 2.2 billion users from privacy abuses and disinformation, and pledged to take whatever steps are necessary to restore users’ trust. “We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility,” Zuckerberg said. “It was my mistake and I’m sorry.” That did not stop both Democrats and Republicans from chiding Zuckerberg for Facebook’s expansive data collection. “I think it is time to ask whether Facebook may have moved too fast and broken too many things,” said Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.).
Facebook has faced increasing scrutiny for more than a year, after it emerged that Russian agents spread fake news on the platform during the 2016 presidential campaign. But calls for regulation ramped up significantly last month, following reports that Cambridge Analytica, a political data firm connected to President Trump’s campaign, had improperly accessed the personal information of as many as 87 million users. Last week, Facebook acknowledged that “malicious actors” have probably scraped data from most of the site’s users. “Given what’s happened here,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) asked Zuckerberg, “why should we let you self-regulate?”
What the editorials said
“Lawmakers need to stop relying on internet companies to police themselves,” said the Los Angeles Times. While the Federal Trade Commission has authority to slap fines on tech firms for unfair or deceptive privacy practices—Google paid a $22.5 million penalty in 2012—that isn’t enough to stop abuses by companies that are worth hundreds of billions of dollars. “Internet users should have clear privacy rights under federal law that regulators and courts can enforce.” At an absolute minimum, those should include “the right to know what data is being collected about them and to limit its use.” Zuckerberg appeared open to new regulations during his testimony—but only because he knows they would benefit his business, said the Washington Examiner. He has suggested that social media firms could be compelled to use artificial intelligence tools to scan for and block “hate speech.” That wouldn’t be hard for Facebook, he said recently, because it already devotes 15,000 employees to security. But what about startups that could challenge Facebook but “don’t have that sort of staff, or can’t afford AI?” Conveniently for Zuckerberg, “they’d be crushed.”
What the columnists said
Zuckerberg is following the same PR strategy Facebook has used for years, said Zeynep Tufekci in The New York Times. After each scandal—that Facebook tracked users on outside sites without their consent or conducted psychological tests on unwitting users— Zuckerberg expresses regret, announces a few minor fixes, and then lobbies against any legislation that addresses “how our data is harvested, used, and profited from.” Lawmakers should ignore Zuckerberg’s “earnest-sounding promises” and “pass laws that will protect us from what Facebook has unleashed.”
If only, said Elaina Plott in TheAtlantic.com. It was depressingly clear that our tech-challenged lawmakers are extraordinarily clueless about the “basic mechanics” of Facebook, never mind its “cultural and political implications.” Sen. Orrin Hatch actually asked how the free platform makes money, to which a befuddled Zuckerberg replied, “Senator, we run ads.” The hearings were like “a real-world simulation of a common Facebook experience: a grandparent asking a grandchild in all caps how, exactly, all this works.”
It’s tempting to treat Zuckerberg as the “monster we can blame” for all the ills of social media, said Stephen Marche in NewYorker .com. But no one really forced us to give up our data for free, just as no one forced us to continue to use platforms that have brought unprecedented alienation, loss of privacy, and disinformation. “We blame Zuckerberg because we can’t stand to blame ourselves.” But our anger at him is simply a reflection of our “deep disquiet about the world we are building.”