Amy
Peters
Tough Questions Facebook’s Zuckerberg Can
Expect From Congress
Mark Zuckerberg is due in congress
for hearings this week regarding Russia’s manipulation of Facebook to meddle
with the 2016 election. Zuckerberg’s
current meetings with lawmakers is due to his previous unsatisfactory responses
to address this issue last year, as the company is still struggling to
eliminate fake news and fake accounts on its platform. For a long time Facebook has struggled with
privacy issues, and Zuckerberg has admitted he is unsure how much of Facebook
user’s data has been hacked into. Even though Facebook has now announced new
actions to protect its users, Zuckerberg is still expected to receive some hard-hitting
questions when he appears in Congress this week. For example, the government is
interested in knowing how they can trust Facebook in the future, why shouldn’t
the company face stiffer regulations, why didn’t the company act quicker when
the Russian hacking was taking place and why hasn’t Facebook notified its users
of these issues more aggressively. I
personally completely agree with these interrogation questions of Zuckerberg
and I believe if his answers are not deemed satisfactory his company should
face larger repercussions for this Russian scandal, as the safety of user’s
information is a very serious matter. I believe if these privacy issues are not
seriously addressed the government should consider shutting down Facebook or
implementing higher regulations.
6 comments:
I feel like a company like Facebook should not have the kind of power that Zuckerberg is asking for. most of the people that have this social media are not interested in having the elections on their facebook, also because why should they trust them? Why does Zuckerberg think that they have the right to have this information? This is all questions that are probably going to be asked by the Congress, and also I feel like he will lose a lot of users due to this, because many people don't like talking about politics over facebook, and they don't see the platform as the best way to do the elections. It is also fair to say some user to indeed think this would be a good idea, and are completely agreeing with Zuckerberg, but it would be a huge gamble by the company even if the Congress approves this.
Facebook has had privacy issues in the past and was reprimanded for them, as well as being threatened with a fine of $40,000 a day per violation (this would amount to billions of dollars on the current violation) in the case of breaking a consent decree that resolved an issue in 2011. The decree was created by the FTC in an effort to reign in Facebook's unfettered access to private data without the consent of the owner.
The whole thing is quite a scandal, but at the same time it is not surprising at all. As one of the largest networking systems in the world, it was probably only a matter of time for its users' information to be exposed. However, this does not make it any more justifiable. And I'm not sure I believe Zuckerberg when he says he's unsure of how much data has been hacked into, I think he knows more than he would like to share simply because he got caught.
As Congress continues to question Zuck, it is evident they have little understanding of how the internet works, let alone facebooks platform. It is troubling that our policymakers are so uneducated about technology. They don't even know what cookies are and they plan to regulate out of fear of the unknown. Certainly, Facebook needs regulation, but Congress does not seem to be the effective group to do so.
I think Rob's point is incredibly correct -- It's funny to the point that it's sad how little the older (mostly Senate) members of Congress understand about what they're trying to regulate. There's a lot of pressure on Congress to do something right now, but with the summer recess approaching, no budget bill to vote on, and the election coming up in November, we're looking at a political arena where very little is actually going to get done until after the election. In this case, I think that's a really good thing, because regulation created in an uneducated but pressured situation is probably the worst situation possible. I'm hoping that the FCC or another more specialized on technology (and younger) bureau takes over the issue, otherwise we could have a more serious problem that gets accidentally entrenched in the legal system.
Facebook made a huge mistake hear and Mark Zuckerberg needs to figure out a way to fix the issues he created. It will effect Facebook but the real question is by how much. Robert makes a good point how our congressmen know very little about technology and it is pretty scary to think about how they are making decisions on these things.
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