Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg testifies before Congress: What comes next?

What will happen after Zuckerberg’s testimony?

Congress will most likely revisit individual control of privacy: In addition to considering a lean adaptation of the European Union's GDPR framework, Congress might also revisit the Balancing the Rights of Web Surfers Equally and Responsibly Act (BROWSER Act), recently proposed by House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). Initially written to replace the previous Federal Communications Commission’s privacy rules, the legislation reinstated an “opt-in” requirement for all companies, not just Internet service providers, supporting the concept of “platform neutrality” where all companies would be treated equally online. 

Big data analytics will make privacy legislation more difficult: How do legislators bring fixes to big data analytics that are now driving the algorithms that make causal predictions about user preferences and infer attributes and activities, from our lifestyles to our voting behaviors? In many respects, this is at the core of Facebook’s dealings with Cambridge Analytica. It is what makes this entire scenario very scary. While it’s unclear how much of the inquiry of Zuckerberg will dissect the role of data science in the hearings, members of Congress will have to learn quickly if they are going to establish privacy frameworks resilient against foreign operatives and myopic information developers.