Zuckerberg Enters the Lion's Den: Privacy-Focused Europe -- Update
May 22 2018 - 7:57AM
Dow Jones News
By Natalia Drozdiak, Sam Schechner and Valentina Pop
BRUSSELS -- Top European lawmakers are set to interrogate
Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday over the
company's handling of alleged data misuse and election interference
on the platform, as the tech giant seeks to appease officials in a
region where it is regulated strictly.
The event starts in Brussels around 6:30 p.m. local time, or
12:30 p.m. ET. Roughly a dozen of the European Parliament's most
senior members and its president will press the Facebook CEO, who
testified on Capital Hill over similar issues last month, on a
range of issues.
Lawmakers say they will seek answers about how Facebook will
prevent further scandals like that involving data-analytics firm
Cambridge Analytica, which allegedly improperly obtained the
personal information of as many as 87 million Facebook users. The
data company has since announced it was closing down.
In his opening remarks, Mr. Zuckerberg is likely to outline the
actions the company has taken, according to a company
spokeswoman.
He is expected to apologize for failing to do enough to combat
fake news and foreign interference in elections, or to prevent
developers from misusing user information, according to a copy of
his remarks pre-released by Facebook.
"It's also become clear over the last couple of years that we
haven't done enough to prevent the tools we've built from being
used for harm as well," Mr. Zuckerberg is expected to say. "That
was a mistake, and I'm sorry."
He is expected to stress Facebook's commitment to Europe,
announcing that it will hire 3,000 more employees in the region to
reach a total of 10,000 by the end of the year.
Some lawmakers suggested questions could arise about whether the
social-media giant should split off certain services if it doesn't
comply with the EU's rules. One said they intended to press
Facebook over possible compensation for victims of data misuse.
Mr. Zuckerberg will likely face tough questions more
specifically over how the social network will comply with the EU's
new privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation, which
enters into force Friday. Jan Philipp Albrecht, the German lawmaker
who led the GDPR negotiations for the parliament, is among the
questioners and said he would seek clarifications from the company
about its privacy-policy updates.
"It's clear that [the policies] won't [meet the demands of the
GDPR,] so it's one of the points where Zuckerberg needs to
elaborate on," said Mr. Albrecht.
He said a particular focus is whether all the data Facebook
collects on users is truly necessary for the service.
Facebook is under pressure to show that it respects European
privacy law before GDPR takes effect. Even before the Cambridge
Analytica scandal, the company was at pains to show it embraces EU
standards, recently sending senior executives to meet EU officials
and rolling out changes to its privacy practices.
Brussels is just the first stop for Mr. Zuckerberg as he seeks
to calm tensions with European officials. On Wednesday, Mr.
Zuckerberg will travel to Paris, where he will attend a
government-organized lunch with executives from Uber Technologies
Inc., Microsoft Corp. and other firms about using technology to
promote the common good, and Thursday he will speak at a tech
conference. While in town, Mr. Zuckerberg will have a private
meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron.
"No subject will be avoided," an official at the French
presidential palace said of the meeting with Mr. Zuckerberg. "The
president is very direct."
EU and European national regulators for years have been among
the most active world-wide in trying to rein in Facebook. A working
group of several EU data-protection watchdogs brought sanctions
against the company for prior changes to its privacy policies,
though some of those decisions were thrown out in court. Some EU
regulators are also investigating the company's use of data about
users of chat app WhatsApp, which it bought in 2014 for $22
billion.
The company has also faced criticism in Europe for its handling
of hate speech and terrorist propaganda. The EU has pushed Facebook
and other social-media companies to speed up their removal of
extremist propaganda and hate speech under threat of new
legislation. Germany last year passed a new law threatening
social-media companies with fines of up to EUR50 million ($58.9
million) if they fail to quickly delete hate speech and other
illegal content.
Convincing Mr. Zuckerberg to speak was a victory for the
751-member parliament, which is the EU's most democratic
institution but wields little power. Facebook has so far spurned a
similar invitation from the U.K. parliament. Mr. Zuckerberg had
initially agreed to answer questions in a closed-door meeting. That
sparked outrage from many EU politicians and commentators,
prompting the parliament to negotiate an agreement to webcast the
event.
Write to Natalia Drozdiak at natalia.drozdiak@wsj.com, Sam
Schechner at sam.schechner@wsj.com and Valentina Pop at
valentina.pop@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 22, 2018 07:42 ET (11:42 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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