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Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal puts Indonesia’s tech firms on the spot
Fake news and data breach that affected a million Indonesians have revived Jakarta’s zeal for tightening regulations
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During the grilling of Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg by a joint congressional committee in the United States this month, one line of questioning stood out. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham asked the 33-year-old billionaire whether the social media giant he created had an actual competitor.
Zuckerberg – who was in the hot seat regarding revelations that the British political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica had misused the data of up to 87 million Facebook users – responded by naming tech companies with services that overlap Facebook’s such as Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Twitter. A truly viable rival – Instagram – was bought by Facebook in 2012 for US$1 billion.
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“You don’t think you have a monopoly?” Graham asked. “Ah, it certainly doesn’t feel like that to me” Zuckerberg said, followed by laughter.
The senator then asked whether Facebook should be allowed to continue to self-regulate, and whether Zuckerberg would help lawmakers come up with the necessary regulations for Facebook and its ilk.
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“Well senator, my position is not that there should be no regulation … I think the real question as the internet becomes more important in people’s lives, is what is the right regulation, not whether there should be regulation,” Zuckerberg said.
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