A CEO ASKING FOR REGULATION?

Mark Zuckerberg Endorses The Regulation Of Facebook Ahead Of Congressional Testimony

Updated:
 

In a Facebook post Friday, Mark Zuckerberg leaned into the fears of traders, announcing a new verification system intended to prevent election interference while also endorsing a regulatory measure that would hold online ad hosts accountable for preventing foreign political ads and maintaining advertising records. 

The move comes after a series of stories revealed that Cambridge Analytica harvested personal data from more than 85 million users to help various political campaigns (including the Trump and and pro-Brexit campaigns) craft specific, targeted ads at people around the world. Some have suggested that Cambridge Analytica data was also provided to Russia to facilitate their online election interference campaign.

As a result of the scandals, Facebook has been pummeled on Wall Street and in Washington, with lawmakers calling for Zuckerberg to testify before Congress twice next week.

In his post, Zuckerberg listed a handful of solutions to prevent future election interference: 

  • Political advertisers and owners of large pages will need verify their identity and location.
  • Advertisements will be labeled and show who paid for them.
  • Users will be able to see every ad that a page is running.

Along with the changes, Zuckerberg announced his support of The Honest Ads Act, taking the nontraditional stance of a CEO calling for the regulation of the business he runs. The legislation that would apply standing transparency laws pertaining to televised political ads to online advertisements. 

The provisions of the act mirror Facebook's announced changes, mandating disclosure of who funded an ad and a database of online political ads.

While it's possible that Zuck announced his support of the bill in earnest, a less generous reading of the situation is that Zuckerberg's newfound support of the bill was deployed to provide the CEO with a much-needed line of defense ahead of the pummeling he'll face in Congress next week.

In previous Congressional testimony, neither Facebook, Google nor Twitter would commit to supporting the regulation. 

Benjamin Goggin is the News Editor at Digg. 

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