KING OF THE HILL
Warner introduced
the Honest Ads Act in
2017 (top); Facebook
CEO Mark Zuckerberg
testiɿed on Capitol Hill
last year (bottom).NEWSWEEK.COM 13
Let’s talk about the recent $
billion Federal Trade Commision
settlement with Facebook over
breaking a 2011 promise about
privacy. The deal won’t do much to
change Facebook’s business; they
will still be able to self-regulate,
collect user data and target ads.
How is that a win for the public?
While technically the largest settle-
ment ever, it was peanuts in terms
of the scope of Facebook’s revenue.
If they’re allowed to build that into
the cost of doing business without
any further penalty, we’re going
to be even worse off.
Seven attorneys general are going
after Facebook, almost every state
is going after Google. Is a big tech
breakup inevitable?
I still think there are other tools I’d
like to use. For example, data portabili-
ty. If you get tired of Facebook, can you
move easily to a new site, bring your
data and still be interoperable? More
transparency. Being able to know
what kind of data is being collected
and how much it’s worth. Better pri-
vacy protections. Making sure that we
have the right to know whether we’re
being contacted by a human being
versus a bot.One of the reasons why I’m not yet
at full breakup is that I don’t want to
see these global enterprises simply
replaced by the Alibabas, the Chinese
tech companies who would come with
even worse behavioral tendencies.Recently the White House hosted
members of the tweeting right who
complain about being censored
by social media. When Trump
was inaugurated, you had Milo
Yiannopoulos, Alex Jones and
Roger Stone all starring in huge
roles on social media and now they
are out. So, do you think there’s
any validity to that complaint? And
should 4Chan and 8Chan be shut
down, because of what’s going on
there with respect to violent white
nationalists?
I’ve seen no objective evidence that
any of the platform companies are
censoring or silencing voices on the
right. What I have seen is the nature
of their businesses: If you lean right,
they reinforce your message promot-
ing the more and more outrageous
stories, and if you lean left you get
more and more outrageous stories
on the left. I mean, these companies
are about making money, and I think
they are about trying to reinforce your
preconceived notions, which is a bit
the opposite of what you want in an
informed democracy. But I have not
seen evidence of validity of the accu-
sation that the right has been, is be-
ing, silenced. As a matter of fact, if you
look at some of the activity in Europe,
it feels in many ways that the right still
dominates most of social media, much
more than the left.
And in terms of 4Chan, I don’t
think you can come up with an ad
hoc solution to 4Chan and some of
the other sites, as vile as they may be.
I think you do need to have a de-
bate about Section 230 and the ex-