Daily Digest 3/22/2018 (Zuckerberg Speaks)

Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and Congresswoman Yvette Clarke (D-NY) sent a letter signed by over 60 House members to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, urging him to protect the Lifeline program which provides access to phone and broadband services to over 13 million low-income Americans, the majority of whom earn less than $10,000 a year. “The Lifeline Program is essential for millions of Americans who use their devices to find jobs, schedule doctor’s appointments, complete their school assignments, call 9-1-1 during an emergency or to communicate with their loved ones,” the Members wrote. “Policymakers at all levels of government are united in their desire to close the digital divide, but the FCC should be strengthening Lifeline which has brought connectivity to millions of Americans.”

Judge Edward Chen of US District Court for the Northern District of California has revived a lawsuit that angry customers filed against AT&T over the company's throttling of unlimited mobile data plans. The decision comes two years after the same judge decided that customers could only have their complaints heard individually in arbitration instead of in a class-action lawsuit. The 2016 ruling in AT&T's favor was affirmed by a federal appeals court. But the customers subsequently filed a motion to reconsider the arbitration decision, saying that an April 2017 decision by the California Supreme Court "constitutes a change in law occurring after the Court‟s arbitration order," ruled Judge Chen. The state Supreme Court "held that an arbitration agreement that waives the right to seek the statutory remedy of public injunctive relief in any forum is contrary to California public policy and therefore unenforceable," Judge Chen wrote.

[Press release] This was a breach of trust between Cambridge University Researcher Aleksandr Kogan, Cambridge Analytica, and Facebook. But it was also a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it. We need to fix that. We already took the most important steps a few years ago in 2014 to prevent bad actors from accessing people's information in this way. But there's more we need to do and I'll outline those steps here:

• First, we will investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of information before we changed our platform to dramatically reduce data access in 2014, and we will conduct a full audit of any app with suspicious activity. We will ban any developer from our platform that does not agree to a thorough audit. And if we find developers that misused personally identifiable information, we will ban them and tell everyone affected by those apps. That includes people whose data Kogan misused as well.
• Second, we will restrict developers' data access even further to prevent other kinds of abuse. For example, we will remove developers' access to your data if you haven't used their app in 3 months. We will reduce the data you give an app when you sign in -- to only your name, profile photo, and email address. We'll require developers to not only get approval but also sign a contract in order to ask anyone for access to their posts or other private data. And we'll have more changes to share in the next few days.
• Third, we want to make sure you understand which apps you've allowed to access your data. In the next month, we will show everyone a tool at the top of your News Feed with the apps you've used and an easy way to revoke those apps' permissions to your data. We already have a tool to do this in your privacy settings, and now we will put this tool at the top of your News Feed to make sure everyone sees it.

[Mark Zuckerberg is Chairman and CEO of Facebook]

[Commentary] A storm dubbed #DeleteFacebook is brewing in techie communities, on Twitter and — irony alert — on Facebook. The idea is this time is different from all the other times the social network has violated our trust. There have been many calls to boycott Facebook for past indiscretions. If we want the result to be any different this time, we need to address the broader problem. Aside from a dramatic change of heart from founder Mark Zuckerberg, getting Facebook to reform what data it collects and how it uses it requires destabilizing its business. And that boils down to this: Making Facebook an unreliable or expensive way for marketers to reach us. Option A: advertisers leave en masse. Option B is more of a hammer: If governments force Facebook to change the way it uses data, advertisers may become less enamored with Facebook just because it won’t be as effective. The regulation question is: What exactly should change? There will be many ideas floated in the months ahead.

[Fowler is The Washington Post’s technology columnist based in San Francisco]

The European Commission proposed new rules to ensure that digital business activities are taxed in a fair and growth-friendly way in the European Union. Two distinct legislative proposals will lead to a fairer taxation of digital activities in the EU:

• The first initiative aims to reform corporate tax rules so that profits are registered and taxed where businesses have significant interaction with users through digital channels. This forms the Commission's preferred long-term solution. This proposal would enable Member States to tax profits that are generated in their territory, even if a company does not have a physicalpresence there. The new rules would ensure that online businesses contribute to public finances at the same level as traditional 'brick-and-mortar' companies.
• The second proposal responds to calls from several Member States for an interim tax which covers the main digital activities that currently escape tax altogether in the EU. This interim tax ensures that those activities which are currently not effectively taxed would begin to generate immediate revenues for Member States. It would also help to avoid unilateral measures to tax digital activities in certain Member States which could lead to a patchwork of national responses which would be damaging for our Single Market.

The legislative proposals will be submitted to the Council for adoption and to the European Parliament for consultation. The EU will also continue to actively contribute to the global discussions on digital taxation within the G20/OECD, and push for ambitious international solutions.