What to do with Facebook?

What if Facebook were to pay for your data? What is the realistic ’market value’ of your data? What to do with Facebook? There is consensus that something has to be done, but what?

The reason for no clear solution is a lack of appropriately analogous social, technological, legislative precedent and disagreement over the nature of the issues, or even on the question of what Facebook really is. A social utility? A publisher? A platform utility? A communications service?

However the lack of adequate action on Facebook’s part to counter fake news, police disinformation and foreign influence shows the unsustainability of the current situation. It is also alarming that since October 2019, Facebook exempts political advertisements from fact-checking.

Another issue is that big tech can stifle innovation and competition – even if a new and innovative app or technology isn’t bought up it is copied almost immediately. This begs the question of the applicability of antitrust legislation; however, lack of precedent is an obstacle yet again: traditionally monopolies are judged based on the cost of the service, while using Facebook is free of charge.

The most popular solution is to chop the giant up: to divest such services as Instagram or WhatsApp.

The author argues that the most dramatic action is not necessarily the most effective. He suggests another approach: using the GDPR as a model for US legislation, focus could be shifted from monetary cost to „cost paid in data”. Also if we agreed that Facebook was to serve public interest, that would enable the FCC (Federal Communications Commission)[1] to hold Facebook accountable for the content it allows through its filters. The author also suggests that viewing personal data as a public resource could benefit competition: if it was viewed as such, it would create a level playing field for competition in social media, counteracting the market’s tendency towards a few or one dominant player. Right now development of a potentially competitive product is contingent on the developer’s willingness not to compete (because the goal is developing a product to be bought by a bigger player) and the barriers to entry to the higher echelons of the market are extremely high. The gap in competitiveness owes mostly to the disparity in accessible user data than financial and human resources.

However, if personal data were to be regarded as a public resource, Facebook could be required to adopt interoperability measures – this however needs to entail strict and carefully maintained privacy protection measures – and there could be strict rules regarding how much and what kind of data can be collected.

As it is now, even Facebook is calling for regulation: it would move the responsibility from Facebook to the regulators and the potential for antitrust proceedings would also diminish.

Author: Zsolt Pálmai