Looking for Social Media's Judge Rakoff
Late last month, the FTC proposed to step back from alleging that Facebook had shared, with advertisers, the personal information of users - in spite of repeatedly assuring users that it would not do so.
I know, I know, you read differently elsewhere: allegations were made by the FTC, and what's happening now is that a repentant Facebook has entered into a consent agreement with the FTC, to settle the matter.
Uncannily, both characterizations are fairly accurate: the FTC did not actually sue Facebook; and Facebook did agree to "settle," even though it has not actually admitted that it did anything illegal.
We've seen this pattern before: agency prepares a draft complaint; doesn't actually "file" it in any way that gets an adjudicatory process going; and the target of the "draft" buys peace with the agency by agreeing, essentially, to a monitoring program that will make it easier for the FTC to bring charges in the future for new violations.
Meantime, Facebook's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, publicly regrets only "a small number of high profile mistakes," which he implies are a matter of "poor execution." "Overall," he asserts, "I think we have a good history of providing transparency and control over who can see your information." Is this credible? If we knew the facts, we might be able to judge.
In a blog post, Zuckerberg even makes it seem like the FTC is Facebook's partner, working to proactively establish standards in heretofore uncharted territory:
"Recently, the US Federal Trade Commission established agreements with Google and Twitter that are helping to shape new privacy standards for our industry. Today, the FTC announced a similar agreement with Facebook. These agreements create a framework for how companies should approach privacy in the United States and around the world."
Message: rest easy; regulators and regulated see eye to eye.
From a frame of reference outside US borders, one could not be blamed for regarding the dance as a not so subtle method of mutually convenient extortion. Public process is bypassed, truth is buried, and a "go along to get along" ethos is affirmed as normative (or else the best America may expect of itself in its 21st Century, corporatized version of democracy).
Continued on the next page
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