Mark Zuckerberg’s surprising call for tighter government regulation of the Internet has its share of supporters in Congress, but neither lawmakers nor advocates are sure how much of the Facebook CEO’s advice they want.
“These decisions about the future of Facebook and Internet firms need to be made through democratic institutions, and some of those outcomes may be good for Facebook and some may create more challenges for Facebook,” said Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “What Facebook thinks is best for Facebook should not determine the outcome of the policy process.”
With a market value of $497 billion, Facebook is at the forefront of America’s debate over how to regulate Silicon Valley firms that connect anyone who has a smartphone with a real-time global audience and that garner billions in sales by leveraging comprehensive user data for advertisers.
In the two years since President Trump took office, the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company has faced scrutiny over its misuse by Russian agents seeking to influence the 2016 election, how it safeguards private user information, and whether it discriminates against conservatives when removing content it deems harmful.
Zuckerberg, who has testified repeatedly before Congress along with his competitors, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed on March 30 that the U.S. should consider tightening Internet rules in four areas: harmful content, election integrity, privacy, and data portability.
“We need a more active role for governments and regulators,” Zuckerberg wrote. “By updating the rules for the Internet, we can preserve what’s best about it — the freedom for people to express themselves and for entrepreneurs to build new things — while also protecting society from broader harms.”
His opinion drew mixed reactions from policymakers. Some analysts and Democratic lawmakers have suggested previously that Facebook and its Silicon Valley competitors want a federal privacy rule merely to undercut strict new policies in states like California.
The Facebook CEO “doesn’t get to make the rules anymore,” warned Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I. “Facebook is under criminal and civil investigation. It has shown it cannot regulate itself,” he tweeted. “Does anyone even want his advice?”
Others took a softer approach. “Zuckerberg is right,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., posted on Twitter. “Tech companies must be accountable for safeguarding against violent extremists and foreign adversaries. There must be strict legal limits on how platforms use our data. It’s time for Congress to set clear and common-sense rules.”
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and a leading critic of tech companies, urged the social media giant to work alongside Congress on a legislative solution. The industry needs “effective legislative guardrails,” he said, and “the largest platforms, like Facebook, are going to need to be subject to a higher level of regulation in keeping with their enormous power.”
But when it comes to controlling content, a crucial topic for a company that struggled to keep up with viral reposts of a video from a mass shooting in New Zealand in March, Facebook may still have to make many decisions on its own. As a business, it has constitutional latitude that Congress lacks.
“Outsourcing censorship to the government is not just a bad idea, it would violate the First Amendment,” said Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr, a Republican.
Betsy Page Sigman, a Georgetown University professor who studies social media, said Zuckerberg’s proposal raises more questions than answers.
“In general, it’s hard for social media executives and social media so-called experts to even keep up with and have a wide understanding of this constantly morphing force in this country that’s called social media,” she said. “I’m wondering how on earth government is going to, first, get an understanding of it and, second, devise a way to control it.”
Zuckerberg’s embrace of government oversight could be a maneuver to protect his company’s interests, particularly as the future of Silicon Valley’s titans is also being thrust into the 2020 presidential campaign. In a blog post last month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., called for a breakup of Internet titans and lamented their outsize power.
“There have been numerous public concerns about social media, and so the company could not do nothing,” said Darrell West, director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution. “They had to call for some action. They probably are hoping it’s going to take a while for the regulators to agree on what to do.”
Bipartisan criticism of Facebook and other big tech companies reached a fever pitch after the 2016 presidential election, when intelligence agencies said the Russian government exploited platforms to sway voters. The company also came under fire after the disclosure that Cambridge Analytica, a British consulting firm that worked with the Trump campaign, improperly harvested personal data from 50 million Facebook users.
West said Zuckerberg is likely hoping for light-touch regulation, but acknowledged reaching consensus in Congress would not be an easy task.
“It’s going to be difficult generating a majority, because you have different businesses that make money in very different ways,” he said. “You have lots of differences across sectors in terms of how tech plays out, so it won’t be easy to actually pass legislation.”
Sigman urged government stakeholders to proceed with caution in the wake of Zuckerberg’s call.
“He was being a natural CEO who wants to defend his company and grow it — that’s what a CEO naturally wants to do,” she said. “Government should be very careful when they come up with regulation for the Internet.”
