{"id":6235,"date":"2018-04-19T09:08:15","date_gmt":"2018-04-19T13:08:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/business.financialpost.com\/?p=1577651"},"modified":"2018-04-19T09:08:15","modified_gmt":"2018-04-19T13:08:15","slug":"terence-corcoran-whats-even-worse-than-an-unregulated-facebook-a-regulated-facebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/2018\/04\/19\/terence-corcoran-whats-even-worse-than-an-unregulated-facebook-a-regulated-facebook\/","title":{"rendered":"Terence Corcoran: What\u2019s even worse than an unregulated Facebook? A regulated Facebook"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sixty years ago, long before the arrival of the internet, the burning mass communications issue of the day was the dangerous sway advertisers and marketers allegedly held over the lives of citizens. The leading purveyor of the idea was Vance Packard, whose 1957 book, The Hidden Persuaders, was described by The New Yorker as an \u201cauthoritative and frightening report on how manufacturers, fundraisers and politicians are attempting to turn the American mind into a kind of catatonic dough that will buy, give or vote at their command.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Now The New Yorker is back flogging the same old scare, this time pegged to Facebook and corporations that rule the new digital world. \u201cThe big debates about values and policies that campaigns are supposed to facilitate and take part in are replaced by psychographically derived messages targeted to ever-tinier slivers of voters who are deemed by an algorithm to be persuadable. The organization of all of online life by data-mining operations makes this goal seem attainable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Apparently we\u2019re no wiser today about recognizing a rampaging regulatory zeitgeist. Launched by the overhyped and dubious claims of data geek Christopher Wylie about his work with Facebook data for Cambridge Analytica, politicians are moving to shackle the Silicon Valley monopolists supposedly invading our privacy and manipulating us into buying, giving and voting at their command.<\/p>\n<ul class=\"related_links\">\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/business.financialpost.com\/opinion\/terence-corcoran-politicians-are-gunning-to-regulate-facebook-over-a-scandal-caused-by-politicians\">Terence Corcoran: Politicians are gunning to regulate Facebook \u2014 over a scandal caused by politicians<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/business.financialpost.com\/opinion\/terence-corcoran-one-victim-being-unfairly-dragged-into-the-facebook-scandal-is-facebook\">One victim being unfairly dragged into the \u2018Facebook\u2019 scandal is \u2026 Facebook<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/business.financialpost.com\/opinion\/why-facebook-and-google-want-to-make-sure-canadians-can-keep-stealing-entertainment\">Why tech giants like Google want to make sure Canadians can keep stealing entertainment<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Last week, Congress paraded Facebook\u2019s Mark Zuckerberg before its assorted grandstanding Pooh-Bahs. This week, less-famous Facebook staffers appear before Ottawa\u2019s ethics committee, allowing Parliamentary Pooh-Bahs to demonstrate their condescending authority over technologies they cannot possibly understand.<\/p>\n<p>Also involved is Daniel Therrien, Canada\u2019s privacy commissioner, a bureaucrat who seems to have an eye for the flirtatious advances of a higher profile. Therrien appeared before the Commons ethics committee Tuesday to advocate for more authority. Putting it in Vance Packardian terms, he said the Analytica scandal shakes \u201cthe very foundation on which our digital economy is based. Not only is consumer trust at risk, so too is trust in our democratic processes.\u201d Therrien wants a new, \u201cmodern law\u201d to give \u201cmy office\u2026 the power to make laws and issue fines.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s hard to know where this power train is heading, but the policy and media buzz in North America lately is about the European Union\u2019s General Data Protection Regulation, the GDPR. In typical EU form, the GDPR is a monster piece of state intervention, 120 pages of <a href=\"http:\/\/eur-lex.europa.eu\/legal-content\/EN\/TXT\/?uri=celex:32016R0679\">innovation-stifling regulation<\/a>. Taking effect on May 25<sup>th<\/sup>, it gives EU members the power to impose billion-dollar fines on companies that breach the EU\u2019s version of privacy. Two days before its European activation, the GDPR is to be topic No. 1 at the Toronto meeting of the&nbsp;International Association of Privacy Professionals, where Therrien and other regulation backers are speaking.<\/p>\n<p>Ottawa and Washington might want to think twice before jumping on the GDPR bandwagon. An alert about the significant risks of EU-style regulation was sounded last week by George Addy, formerly head of the Competition Bureau, in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dwpv.com\/en\/Insights\/Publications\/2018\/Digital-Disruption\">an article on the Davies Ward Phillips &amp; Vineberg LLP website<\/a>. Addy provides a thoughtful warning against regulatory overkill: \u201cThe very notion of designing detailed, sound, effective and socially beneficial regulation that can keep pace with technological change is at best extremely challenging and more likely virtually impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Worse, it could be destructive in an industry fuelled by constant change. Addy warns of \u201cinnovation chill\u201d as the digital sector absorbs the costs of adapting to regulation and the incalculable costs of \u201cunintended negative consequences flowing from mistaken regulatory intervention.\u201d Bad regulatory cures &#8220;can be worse that the perceived disease.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Addy provides a useful reminder that the tremendous benefits of the digital revolution resulted from deliberate policy. Google, Facebook and Netflix are products of the Clinton administration\u2019s 1997 Framework for Global Electronic Commerce, which established regulatory restraint and encouraged industry self-regulation. The lack of big digital successes in Europe and Asia, says Addy, suggests \u201cit would be best to lean heavily toward the U.S. approach and away from European and Asian models.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Among his recommendations is that Ottawa should resist short-term remedies and \u201caccept more risk,\u201d understanding that rapid change in the digital economy is beyond the ability of regulators to keep up. Bad actors, like Cambridge Analytica, and the failures of Facebook and others to protect privacy, are often \u201cmuch more quickly and effectively punished in the digital marketplace than by regulatory fiat.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Facebook\u2019s massive stock-market loss after the Analytica affair already looks like a more effective force for corporate change and innovative privacy policies than more regulatory power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Regulations could be destructive in an industry fuelled by constant change<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":578,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6235"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/578"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}