Online privacy

Under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule, online services touted as ways to keep kids connected need to comply with key parental notice and consent provisions of COPPA – especially when they’re collecting children’s geolocation. That’s the message of two warning letters just sent by Federal Trade Commission staff. But the letters send another important message about the reach of COPPA.

Facebook is used to being the cool kid. But now it’s eating lunch alone: Companies are trying to figure out how to be as un-Facebook-like as possible.  Several tech companies, including Apple, IBM and Salesforce, have publicly differentiated themselves from Facebook. Now that lawmakers are getting more interested in regulating tech, other companies are considering launching their own campaigns to stay as far away as possible from Facebook's privacy drama. 

he pithiness that makes “you are the product” so quotable risks obscuring the complex pact between Facebook and its users, in ways that make social media’s problems seem inevitable and insoluble. They’re not—but if we want to fix them, the first thing we need to do is redefine our relationship. To the extent that our personal data has become a product, it’s because we—and our representatives in government—have allowed it to happen. If we don’t like how Facebook is treating us, we shouldn’t throw up our hands and call ourselves the product of a system over which we have no control.

In London, Facebook’s chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer, faced more than four hours of questions from a British parliamentary committee over the company’s data-collection techniques, oversight of app developers, fake accounts, political advertising and links to the voter-targeting firm Cambridge Analytica. If American politicians have been lampooned for being Luddites, the British Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee has built a reputation for thoroughness and detailed questioning.

Users of Facebook, Google and other popular technology platforms are likely to benefit from stricter privacy regulations that will require new disclosures, new forms of consent and new power to limit how personal data is stored and utilized. The changes are being announced in emails, blog posts and new on-screen messages that many consumers are already beginning to see from Apple, Twitter, Airbnb, GoDaddy and others. Don’t bother thanking Washington.

[Op-ed] There is considerable confusion about what’s really at stake in the congressional debates over net neutrality and online privacy regulation.

In response to the Cambridge Analytica story, Facebook has curbed outsiders’ access to its data, vowed to hire thousands of additional content reviewers, and offered users clearer privacy controls. “I don’t think they do anything that will cost them more than a dollar over the long term,” said New York University professor Scott Galloway. The changes Facebook announced to regain consumer trust were “a series of half measures — one part delay, one part obfuscation. They’ve effectively done nothing [and] it doesn’t look like anyone cares,” he said.

Democrats on the House Commerce Committee have an additional 600 questions for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg. Among the questions:

Facebook replaced its head of policy in the United States, Erin Egan, as the social network scrambles to respond to intense scrutiny from federal regulators and lawmakers. Egan, who is also Facebook’s chief privacy officer, was responsible for lobbying and government relations as head of policy for the last two years. She will be replaced by Kevin Martin on an interim basis. Martin has been Facebook’s vice president of mobile and global access policy and is a former Republican chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

[Commentary] When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before two committees earlier in April, even GOP lawmakers typically opposed to regulations said new rules to restrict the actions of Facebook and other internet companies may be necessary. That’s a bad idea. Restrictions may help establish better metes and bounds around privacy and security practices, but there will still be privacy lapses or security breaches due to, among other things, employee negligence, systems failure and the violations of agreements and those laws.