Zuckerberg testifies before EU Parliament
Members of the European Parliament questioned Facebook CEO Zuckerberg about the Cambridge Analytica data scandal for almost ninety minutes on Tuesday. Zuckerberg had already testified before the US Congress in April. Commentators believed data protection will play a key role in technological advances and call on both Facebook and the EU to protect people's privacy.
Only clarity will help Zuckerberg win "friends"
Pretty words alone won't help Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on his "apology tour", Lidové noviny is convinced:
“One of the key questions he must answer is how Facebook plans to guarantee that it won't be used to manipulate election results. Zuckerberg must say which of his employees was responsible for providing data to Cambridge Analytica and what is being done to prevent a repetition of such incidents. We also haven't heard how Facebook plans to deal with the data protection officials of small countries like the Czech Republic, which wants to implement the new data protection rules. Only clear statements and not sugary words will bring Mark Zuckerberg 'friends' - as they say in his social network.”
Europe making unexpected progress
Europe's data protection measures are a step in the right direction, prosecutor and legal expert in telecommunications Carlos López Blanco writes in El País:
“The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), together with the tax offensive against Apple and the competition proceedings launched against the Google operating system are a more serious attempt on the part of Europe to have its say on the rules that apply in the digital game. This has the virtue of calling into question the slogan coined by the Anglo-Saxon media according to which data is the new petrol. Data is worth far more than petrol. It forms part of an individual's private sphere and must therefore be protected beyond its economic value. ... Zuckerberg's hearing and its consequences as well as the coming into force of the GDPR set an unexpected positive precedent on this path.”
Facebook must be reined in
With the campaign "Freedom from Facebook" leftist groups in the US are calling for Facebook to be broken up. But that would just be scratching the surface, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung writes:
“Many dark aspects of the technological revolution can be resolved without the sledgehammer of a break-up. Facebook, for example, can be kept on a shorter leash by subjecting it to the same rules that already apply for media companies. ... We as a society are in the process of finding out what price we are willing to pay in the trade-off between privacy and technical benefits for users. Such questions will gain even more relevance once algorithms start anticipating and complementing our behaviour. These changes can't be checked, but they can be planned.”