When Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg this week, he may once more of a 鈥渟ocial infrastructure鈥� that can 鈥済ive people the power to build a global community that works for all of us鈥�.
He has been called to appear after masses of Facebook user data got into the hands of an organisation intent on influencing elections.聽This may be the moment he needs to face up to the fact that his company is not that infrastructure, and that despite having built a world-spanning social network, it is very hard to control it.
Rewind to 2012 and the ability to influence Facebook users was made clearer. The company tweaked the algorithms that determine which updates appeared in nearly 700,000 people鈥檚 news feeds. Half saw primarily positive content from friends, the other half, a mostly negative stream. The first group posted happier updates themselves, and vice versa for the downbeat stream. Researchers carrying out the study called it 鈥渢he first experimental evidence for massive-scale emotional contagion via social networks鈥�.
Advertisement
At the time, many academics questioned whether Facebook鈥檚 terms of service amounted to informed consent for psychological experimentation. Some even speculated that manipulating emotions might have led to mental health crises. In response, Facebook (IRB) to protect users and promote ethical practices for its own research. This includes employee training, and checks by experts in law, ethics, communication and policy.
Malicious actors
Since then, other players have used the platform to try to exert their own influence. Fake news, politically-polarised content and state-sponsored propaganda have spread like wildfire on the network. There have also been lapses in privacy and transparency. The most explosive include up to 87 million people having their Facebook data shared with political consultancy Cambridge Analytica and the recent revelation that most of the network鈥檚 users have probably had their personal data scraped by what it calls 鈥渕alicious actors鈥�.
So perhaps in his appearance before Congress committees, Zuckerberg should admit that the time has come to extend oversight like the IRB to all Facebook鈥檚 activities. The network has immense power and unprecedented reach. It has more than two billion users, 45 per cent of whom get all of their news through the platform. Together with Google, it accounts for nearly two-thirds of all digital advertising. It bought one of its very few social media rivals, Instagram, in 2012, and also controls the , Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.
Zuckerberg should recognise that Facebook has proven to be an unreliable custodian of its users鈥� data. As far back as 2011, that it would no longer allow app developers or advertisers improper access to user data. But time and again, it has emerged that and glossed over problems.
Global scope
Regional measures, like the imminent EU , may be a step in the right direction, but they do not go far enough to address the vast influence that Facebook (as well as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple) have over many aspects of our lives, from the personal and psychological, to the economic and political. And of course, such regulations are geographically limited.
The corporate equivalent of an IRB could be a better answer 鈥� an independent non-commercial organisation with the power to set and enforce binding standards around privacy, transparency, security and accountability. This board should be global in scale and scope, made up of academics, researchers and industry experts from around the world. While not explicitly governmental, it should be informed by the laws and norms of the countries in which Facebook and its ilk operate.
Congress will have plenty of questions for Zuckerberg. Will he have these kinds of answers?
