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'Digital Gangster' Facebook Intentionally and Knowingly Violated UK Privacy and Competition Rules, British Lawmakers Say (washingtonpost.com)

Posted by msmash on from the but-what-do-you-really-feel? dept.

British lawmakers on Sunday accused Facebook of having "intentionally and knowingly violated both data privacy and anti-competition laws" in the country, and they called for investigations into the social media giant's business practices. From a report: The sharp rebuke came in a 108-page report written by members of Parliament, who in 2017 began a wide-ranging study of Facebook and the spread of malicious content online. They concluded that the United Kingdom should adopt new regulations so lawmakers can hold Facebook and its tech peers in Silicon Valley accountable for digital misdeeds. "Companies like Facebook should not be allowed to behave like 'digital gangsters' in the online world," U.K. lawmakers said in their report, "considering themselves to be ahead of and beyond the law."

1 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Summary/Article disagreement by cardpuncher · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Sorry to interrupt your little rant of hurt American exceptionalism, but Facebook were issued with the maximum fine for the laws pertaining at the time for something that was actually illegal at the time. GDPR rules would have allowed a much greater fine to be levied but it wasn't because "ex post facto" is simply a figment of your imagination and the offences were committed before those rules came into force.

    Why do they need new laws? Because, despite assurances, Facebook is still pushing out swathes of overtly political advertising without effectively identifying the source and appears to be failing miserably to control seriously harmful content that is leading to the children harming and killing themselves. Also, it appears that Facebook seem to accept that they may have been breaking the law and haven't been that concerned about it: the law, if that be true, needs to be made more compelling.

    Politics was very reluctant to take on tech - partly because they didn't understand it and partly because they didn't want to be seen to be stifling economic growth. However, they now do understand it - it's not about tech and it's not about beneficial economic growth, it's about an amoral group of rich people making themselves richer still. So they now feel rather more comfortable about legislating.