Facebook wants Internet regulations - but are they honest?

Facebook has 1.2 billion users. If Facebook were a country, it would be the second-most populous country, second only to China, which has 1.3 billion citizens.

So when Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg writes an opinion demanding new rules for the Internet, everyone in the sector must listen.

Especially because Facebook, like other Internet companies such as Amazon, Netflix and Google have thrived precisely because of the lack of internet rules.

And for decades, these Internet companies, commonly known by their acronym 'FANG', have fought tirelessly against any rules governing their services. They have rightly argued that the high turnover of Internet innovations is courtesy of the permission-less nature of the Internet.

The Internet, by design, allows anyone, anywhere and anyhow to deploy a service online, anytime. There is no need to ask for permission from any central authority to do this. This permission-less feature is what gave birth to Facebook, Amazon and Google in the early days and more recently, Skype, Netflix, Uber, Twitter and WhatsApp.

Nobody can really predict what else lies ahead in terms of innovation, three to five years from now. Put differently, Facebook’s major competitor could be lurking ahead, waiting to happen anytime. Could some stringent regulatory framework, if introduced, delay Facebook’s next competitor just for a while longer? Mr Ryan McMaken, seems to think so. In ''3 Reasons Why Facebook's Zuckerberg Wants More Government Regulation'', he argues that new regulations would give Facebook, as the leading player in the sector, an opportunity to lead and ensure the Internet rules are in their favour.

UNFAIR COMPETITION

Potentially ensuring less competition to its already dominant position, new innovation companies or start-ups will not have the capacity to carry the financial, technical and legal burdens that come with regulations.

They would therefore be declared dead on arrival, even before they start operations.

Whereas this interpretation is possible, it fails to acknowledge the fact that Facebook is proposing an adoption of an already-existing legislation written by the European Union – the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

GDPR has become the de-facto standard for matters data protection and privacy. It does contain some clauses that begin to speak to the challenges facing online services, including those that have afflicted Facebook the most in recent years.

Harmful content, election integrity, data privacy and data portability are some of the issues identified by Facebook as areas of concern.

In the recent terror attack in New Zealand, the terrorist broadcasted his activities live on Facebook, as he slaughtered innocent faithfuls praying in the mosque.

During the 2016 US elections, Russians allegedly abused the Facebook platform by planting fake news to millions of US citizens in order to influence the elections.

Cambridge Analytica is also accused of abusing the platform in a similar manner to influence the Brexit vote.

The whole process of abusing or exploiting Facebook begins by harvesting profile data from users without their knowledge or consent – the core data privacy issues.

Data portability will allow users to easily move from one platform to another, thus improving the competitive environment by reducing the cost incurred by users who wish to jump to competing platforms.

All these are excellent proposals from Facebook. But as they say, the devil is always in the details. It will be a while before the Facebook game plan unravels.

Stay awake, or as the millennials would prefer to say – Stay Woke.

Mr Walubengo is a lecturer at Multimedia University of Kenya, Faculty of Computing and IT.

Email: [email protected], Twitter: @Jwalu