Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s weeklong campaign for more government regulation hasn’t exactly been met with a warm embrace from lawmakers.
Since Zuckerberg published an op-ed in the Washington Post at the end of last month, calling for an “update” to the internet rules that enabled platforms like Facebook to scale, lawmakers have responded with a collective “thanks, but no thanks.”
Rhode Island Congressman David Cicilline, who chairs the House Judiciary Subcommittee on antitrust, questioned the unsolicited advice, tweeting “Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t get to make the rules anymore.”
Meanwhile, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr questioned the Facebook chief’s motives, in an interview with Yahoo Finance.
“When large corporations ask for greater government control, it’s not an act of charity,” he said.
“Larger companies have armies of regulatory lawyers and lobbyists that can work through complex heavy handed regulatory regimes. Smaller competitors can’t.”
Lawmakers appear united in their desire to crack down on big tech to safeguard against data breaches, hate speech, and disinformation, but they remain divided on the legal tools necessary to do so, especially given the mixed results in Europe so far. The General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR — a law that strengthened individual privacy protection and enforced harsh penalties on companies for data breaches — has become a type of template globally on how to regulate digital risks. But the law designed in part to reign in big tech has actually pressured their smaller competitors. ‘We cannot leave it to Facebook’
Nearly a year after GDPR’s passage, Facebook’s potential fines have topped $1 billion.
And yet, in the company’s most recent earnings report, the social media platform posted record profit. Average revenue per user actually increased in Europe. Earlier this year, French regulators slapped Google with a roughly $57 million fine for failing to comply with GDPR. That marked the largest penalty lobbed against a U.S. firm under Europe’s new law.
But that paled in comparison to the $39.8 billion revenue parent Alphabet posted in the 4th quarter.
(yahoo finance)
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