Author: Jessica Rich / Source: WIRED
In the wake of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica debacle, we’re hearing a lot of new and interesting ideas about how to solve the so-called Facebook problem: Let’s classify Facebook as a monopoly and break it up.
Let’s declare it a public utility and regulate it like electricity or phone service. Let’s force Facebook to reveal exactly how its algorithm works so there’s greater transparency and accountability.The ease with which Cambridge Analytica was able to harvest and exploit Facebook user data is indeed highly disturbing. However, some context and pragmatism are in order. First, Facebook is hardly the only company that develops detailed profiles about consumers and uses them—or allows them to be used—for commercial and political targeting. This has been going on for years, across a multitude of industries. The current scandal merely pulled back the curtain on a common practice that industry doesn’t like to talk about.
Second, the ability of companies to collect, combine, infer, and sell the kind of detailed information that Cambridge Analytica stockpiled has rapidly expanded while Congress has stood idly by and let it happen—if not enabled it. For more than 20 years, many of us who champion consumers have urged Congress to pass a federal law establishing basic privacy rules that all companies must follow, and that all Americans can count on. With each attempt, industry has objected and Congress has retreated, even recently eliminating the federal rules governing broadband privacy.
Today, even as countries across the globe are strengthening their privacy laws to meet the challenges and threats of the digital era, the US remains one of the only countries in the Western world that still lacks even the most basic rules to protect the privacy of its citizens.
Rather than getting caught up in the shock and outrage about Cambridge Analytica, or dreaming up new and creative solutions to clip Facebook’s (and only Facebook’s) wings, let’s focus more broadly on what is one of today’s most important consumer protection issues and finally do what’s been needed for over 20 years: pass a privacy law that gives…
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