Despite the long-awaited appearance of Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the MEPs were not delighted with his speech about personal data protection.
In his visit to the European Parliament, Zuckerberg has apologised to European lawmakers for failing to do necessary to protect the data of his social network users.
In his statement during the meeting, the founder and owner of Facebook said:
“We have not done enough to prevent the tools that we deliver to be used in an unappropriated way. This also applies to fake news, intervention in elections and misuse of personal information”, he added.
“We didn’t had a broad idea of our responsibility and this was a mistake, I am sorry for that”, Zuckerberg said.
He pledged, by the end of the year, Facebook to reveal another 3,000 jobs in the EU, thus reaching 10,000. Zuckerberg noted that, because of his activity, Europeans, and many people around the world, had the opportunity to establish a connection with their relatives in the recent terrorist attacks. He also said that there was a suspicion of personal data collection by 200 apps in his platform.
Despite the explanations, according to MEPs, the CEO has avoided some questions or has not fully answered the questions. For example, he has not answered whether Facebook has a market monopoly and how he intends to use the data from the WhatsApp application.
The deputies have not received a clear answer to the question whether should personal data be collected from persons who do not have profiles in the social network.
The European Parliament elections in May 2019 must protected from manipulations via social networks (similar to the Cambridge Analytica scandal), EP Speaker Antonio Tajani said.
“After a year, 100 million European voters will elect members of the European Parliament. Their voices must be free from manipulation and their personal data must not be used for commercial purposes. We do not want to get rid of social networks, but we must be sure that our data will be protected”, Tajani added.
At a time during the hearing, Guy Verhofstadt from the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) asked Zuckerberg to talk about its legacy.
“You have to ask yourself how you will be remembered. As one of the three big Internet giants along with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, who enriched our world and our societies, or on the other hand, as a genius, which created a digital monster that destroys our democracies and societies”.
Many questions, but not equal answers, that’s how the US press commented on Zuckerberg‘s appearance to the European Parliament. Much of the answers from Zuckerberg were similar to what we have heard already and the specific concerns of EU legislators were not answered. One of the possible reasons for this could be the extraordinary interview format, where all questions were first presented, and the answers were given at the end. It has allowed Zuckerburg to miss some of them and also this format does not allow follow-up questions.
The EU’s GDPR regulation, which comes into force on 25 May, aims to give consumers more control of their personal data on the Internet, with large fines for companies that fail to comply with the regulation.
