Coverage: How Facebook could face regulation

Apple CEO Tim Cook called for stronger privacy regulations to prevent the abuse and misuse of data on Saturday in the aftermath of the leak of Facebook user information.

Christopher Carbone of Fox News had the story:

Cook’s statement will add to the mounting scandal hitting Facebook, which has pushed its stock price down 14 percent, and the growing pressure on co-founder Mark Zuckerberg to testify in public and overhaul its privacy protocol with app developers following revelations that his company allowed a firm paid by the Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica, to amass personal data on 50 million users.

“I think that this certain situation is so dire and has become so large that probably some well-crafted regulation is necessary,” Cook said after being asked if the use of data should be restricted in light of the Facebook incident.

He continued: “The ability of anyone to know what you’ve been browsing about for years, who your contacts are, who their contacts are, things you like and dislike and every intimate detail of your life—from my own point of view it shouldn’t exist.”

The Apple chief executive said his company had long worried that users were giving up access to information without realizing the ramifications of how the data could be used.

Josh Constine of TechCrunch writes that regulation could protect Facebook, not hurt it:

But the danger is that those same requirements could be much more onerous for a tiny upstart company to uphold. Without much cash or enough employees, and with product-market fit still to nail down, young startups might be anchored by the weight of regulation. It could prevent them from ever rising to become a true alternative to Facebook. Venture capitalists choosing whether to fund the next Facebook killer might look at the regulations as too high of a price of entry.

The lack of viable alternatives has made the #DeleteFacebook movement toothless. Where are people going to go? Instagram?  WhatsApp? The government already missed its chances to stop Facebook from acquiring these companies that are massive social networks in their own right.

The only social networks to carve out communities since Facebook’s rise did so largely by being completely different, like the ephemeral Snapchat that purposefully doesn’t serve as a web identity platform, and the mostly-public Twitter that caters to thought leaders and celebrities more than normal people sharing their personal lives. Blockchain-based decentralized social networks sound nice but may be impossible to spin up.

Robert Kuttner of The Huffington Post writes about how Facebook could be regulated:

Proposed Senate legislation to require greater disclosure of Facebook ads is sponsored jointly by Democrats Amy Klobuchar and Mark Warner and Republican John McCain. This is just a start, and Klobuchar has already said she wants to go further.

A better approach is the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, which takes effect May 25. GDPR basically requires far more disclosure, and tries to restrict invasions of privacy. But skeptics are convinced that Facebook will find workarounds that preserve its basic ability to tabulate and sell users’ data.

Still better would be the aforementioned drastic fines by the FTC for data breaches enabled or tolerated by Facebook, and outright prohibitions of sale of data not expressly authorized by the individual user. We also need to enforce the anti-trust laws. Part of Facebook’s business model is to snap up potential rivals that might threaten its network dominance, like Instagram and WhatsApp . It’s preposterous that these acquisitions have been allowed.

Yes, some uses of Facebook are valid and valuable. The successful West Virginia teachers’ strike relied heavily on Facebook, as do many legitimate affinity groups.