Policymakers across the globe are keenly watching how the US lawmakers are responding to the recent data breach scandal involving Facebook and its now-estranged partner Cambridge Analytica. Already, there are reports that lawmakers of many countries are contemplating measures to enhance protection of individual privacy and build mechanisms to ensure users of social media and other internet-enabled services enjoy control over the data they share online. This is well-intended and, hence, welcome. That said, authorities shouldn’t get paranoid over privacy and introduce measures that would end up controlling social media, affecting growth of data start-ups and leading to more state control.

This requires a healthy understanding of the way social media operate, how data companies collect and use information. It is also important to know what can be used and what cannot. To give an example, a taxi service app must have access to user location to offer its services. It does that by collating location data accessing users’ GPS, WiFI and cellular networks. A social media network, like Facebook, needs to have access to users’ browsing behaviour to enhance their timeline experience. Putting curbs on these practices, as some lawmakers have hinted, would be naïve.

What is important for data, privacy protection is to control how third parties access data that users share with a particular network. This can be done by making the parent network, like Facebook, responsible and liable for the behaviour of all their partners. Such a move would bring in more accountability and the social media company would be forced to bring in more checks and balances while choosing partners. This should be applicable to all the pages, apps and other programmes embedded to the social media network. Any blanket attempt at regulating social media would endanger the inherent democratic, transparent nature of the web, leading to a digital licence Raj.

Jinoy Jose PDeputy Editor

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