[Electronic Frontier Foundation] It’s past time for Facebook to come clean about how it is handling user data. After the latest Cambridge Analytica news broke the dam on over a decade of Facebook privacy concerns, Mark Zuckerberg is heading to to Washington, D.C. this week for two days of Congressional testimony. On Tuesday, he’ll appear before the Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees, and on Wednesday the House Energy & Commerce Committee.The last thing we need from Zuckerberg at these hearings is more apologies. What we want is information and accountability, and not just in connection with discrete scandals like Cambridge Analytica. Congress should be asking Facebook for a detailed account of what data Facebook has shared with third parties, what it has done to prevent misuse of that data, what it told users about how it would handle their information, and what steps it will take in the future to respect users' privacy rights.
And because this is about more than just Facebook, Congress should also be asking whether Facebook will serve as an industry leader by publicly embracing key privacy-protective principles.
Beyond nailing down down the details of specific cases like the Cambridge Analytica mess and the revelation of paid Russian propaganda on the social media giant's platform, we hope lawmakers will also keep in mind the larger tension at the core of each one of Facebook's privacy missteps and scandals: A company ethos of connection and growth at all costs cannot co-exist with users' privacy rights. Facebook operates by collecting, storing, and making it easy for third parties to use unprecedented amounts of user data. Until that changes, the privacy and integrity concerns that spurred these hearings are here to stay.
Getting to the Bottom of Facebook’s Word Games
There is no shortage of questions and angles that Congress members can grill Zuckerberg on—from the Cambridge Analytica fiasco that exposed the data of approximately 1 in 5 Americans, to paid propaganda’s effect on the 2016 election, to private censorship, to the role of AI technologies in detecting and mitigating all of the above.
And Zuckerberg will no doubt weave word games and roundabout language into his answers to distract from the real problem.
Here is some language to watch out for—and for lawmakers to drill down on when they hear it:
“Bad actors”
Selling or not selling user data
What Facebook knows about you
“Idealistic and optimistic”
Back to the Big Question
We can expect Zuckerberg to apologize for past mistakes, explain the challenges his platform faces, and outline the fixes Facebook is ready to roll out. But the big question is: Will he be able to convince users and members of Congress that any of those fixes is substantial enough to amount to real change?
The CEO’s testimonies are an opportunity for Congress to shed light not only on Facebook’s “black box” algorithms but also on its data operation as a whole. That means confronting the hard, fundamental questions about how an advertising-powered, surveillance-based platform can provide adequate user privacy protections.
In particular, Congress should beware of offers from Zuckerberg to better control the misuse of user data and expression by granting his company and other tech giants an even greater, more exclusive role as the opaque guardians of that data. Facebook has had a long history of saying, “Trust us. We know what we’re doing," without offering much transparency or accountability to their users. Congress should take this opportunity to trust Zuckerberg a little less, and Facebooks’ users—who are also, coincidentally, their voters—a little more.