As social media grows, need for better laws gets stronger
Despite the data breach allegations which prompted a US Senate hearing plus the #DeleteFacebook movement, US social media giant Facebook delivered a bumper earnings result for the quarter ending March 31. Earnings per share (EPS) came in at US$1.65 against analysts' predicted US$1.35.
Expectedly, the results soothed frayed nerves of spooked investors. But beyond the financial numbers, Facebook shared some statistics that show just how much of an unstoppable force the social media site has become. Facebook now has 1.45 billion daily active users and 2.2 billion monthly active users, reinforcing the adage that if the social network were a country, it would be the world's biggest by a stretch.
That's not all. The company's two messaging platforms - WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger - saw around 100 billion messages, combined, being sent a day globally during the quarter. To put things in perspective, at the peak of the SMS (short messaging service) era, the highest number of messages recorded per day was around 20 billion. It is natural that Facebook is doing what it can to monetise this massive reach. There is talk about the company "being more open to" advertising on WhatsApp, especially with the company's original founder, Jan Koum, leaving Facebook.
From a purely commercial point of view, the sterling growth of Facebook and other consumer technology companies such as Google, Twitter, Amazon and Apple are to be welcomed as they are at the cutting edge of the digital, data-driven economy that is changing the way we live, work and play - mostly for the better.
At the same time, the worry is their access to user data makes them incredibly powerful - and in some ways inexperienced about being responsible custodians of this power. For example, last month, during the US Senate hearing the Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said the company would do its best to "maintain the integrity of the elections in India". This naturally set off a massive political storm in the world's largest democracy. While there is no doubting Mr Zuckerberg's sincerity, what's implied is - he's in a position to give such an assurance. India is Facebook's biggest market but the company has the same kind of reach in many countries around the world. In other words, Facebook can potentially manipulate elections.
It would be fallacious to assume that companies such as Facebook, Google and others are inherently evil. The problem lies elsewhere. Since the turn of the millennia, technology disruption has been happening so fast that civil society, governments and even the companies themselves are hard put to keep up with its unintended consequences. Many lawmakers around the world do not have the necessary training to draft suitable legislation to put in the requisite checks and balances, while ensuring that innovation is not stifled. Banning social media sites on fear of data breaches and fake news is not the answer.
There is an urgent need for industry, lawmakers and representatives of civil society to sit down and talk about the problem and find the best solution to deal with it. Regular hearings, like what Singapore had in March on fake news, can help produce a consensus on how legislation needs to adapt to tackle the data breach and fake news menace. The European GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is also another model worth pursuing. Society at large needs to catch up with the technology that it is addicted to.
