Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham
I believe writers from the Guardian would sooner hand over control of the United States to the EU rather than try to understand why the US does things differently; but I think this question bears repeating: ethically, what has Facebook done wrong?<p>Understanding the full context of this hearing is vital to your opinion on the matter. I&#x27;m nobody with an outsider&#x27;s perspective, but to me Facebook has made very few errors in bad faith. This whole uproar has been about Facebook&#x27;s well known (or, what I once thought was well know, I guess) practices as a data and advertising platform. We know Facebook cooperates with governments around the world to produce data on its citizens. We know what can happen with our data if we _let_ it fall into the wrong hands.<p>I started using Facebook when I was 13 in 2007. (As a side note, I think Facebook should not be sharing data about minors to any parties.) I filled out a fair few questionnaires and I may have even participated in &quot;Your digital life&quot; somewhere along the line. At that time I started using Facebook it was providing an interface for establishing informed consent (basically their OAuth flow), to the extent at which it was reasonable for them (which to this day extends beyond the requirements of the law in the US as far as I know.) I consented to sharing my data with the 3rd party, which was essentially a license for that party to own that data. I knew that, and I did it anyway because I couldn&#x27;t predict the ramifications of its collection and aggregation by a hostile party.<p>I think the people who are most upset about this whole controversy are the ones who blame it for Russia&#x27;s Active Measures.<p>In my opinion, the solution isn&#x27;t a GDPR-esque approach. I think we have to teach people why data is valuable and how it can be used against them. This is important for both creating an intellectual barrier to the efficacy of propaganda and so that people can make real, informed decisions about their privacy so that when they&#x27;re asked if they want to share their friends&#x27; birthdates and phone numbers, they know what their answer should be.