April 12, 2018

Zuckerberg’s Senate testimony is history in the making

located:	USA
editor:	Shira Jeczmien

In many ways, watching Mark Zuckerberg testify in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday and Wednesday, 10-11 April, felt like history in the making. Myself, alongside millions of others, found ourselves glued to the live-streaming of the event—ironically, my fix was being televised through Facebook. Because Facebook is where I, alongside 45% of American adults, get at least some of our news. Which feeds into and plays a large role in this extraordinary moment in time.

Following the Cambridge Analytica data breach expose and the data protection mechanisms that this event has set in motion, both in the U.S. – Zuckerberg’s testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees is but a trophy of this – and in the EU with the nearing GDPR law, this is a turning moment for what we understand as data protection and hopefully a eureka moment for us all.

“How will Facebook and other companies take greater responsibility for what happens on their platforms? How will you protect users’ data? How will you inform users’ about the changes that you are making? And how do you intend to proactively stop harmful conduct instead of being forced to respond to it months or years later.” Senator John Thune said in his opening speech. “We are listening, America’s listening, and quite possibly the world is listening too.”

At the time of the testimony, as chairman Mr. Grassley acutely noted, despite collecting enormous amounts of data from its users, including consumers’ contact lists, networks, location and third parties, the company’s data policy is only a few pages long. Banian examples embellish the policy section, such as ‘Connecting with friends’. But in depth explanation of the complex web behind how this data is collected, handled and used is entirely absent.

When asked why the company doesn’t disclose to its users all the ways in which their data might be used by Facebook, or any other third parties, Zuckerberg said it was for the benefits of user accessibility. His reasoning being that too much information – particularly legal language that breaks down the enormity of claus and policies – will disengage users and make the data policy section daunting.

From Cory Booker's questioning of the CEO on the ProRepublica 2016 investigation that revealed Facebook allowed advertisers to target consumers by race, to why the company did not notify its users in 2015 when it realised Camridge Analytica had misused their data. The motivations behind Facebook’s negligence of data protection for its 1.4 billion daily users are manyfold. But for me, Zuckerberg’s comment on the company’s seeming efforts to simplify data policies for the benefits of its users is key. What if companies’ ethos was to empower the lives of their users while working to educate them too? Yes, data policies are complex, but basic understanding of what exactly we consent to is invaluable – just as it is achievable. As we learn how to navigate through present and nearing future realities that are raising very important ethical questions about human rights, tech tycoons are as blind as the consumers, policy makers and regulators; it is a level playing field that demands as much vigilance from users as it does from Facebook’s executive developers. We can no longer afford to have policies simplified for us – this is the age of information. And this historical moment is when we should awake from autopilot and start living up to its tag line.

Photo: CC BY 2.0, via flickr/Andrew Feinberg