(Bloomberg) – Facebook Inc. told the Federal Trade Commission that the social media company needs clear guidance on how to comply with new laws that give consumers the right to pass on their data without violating users’ privacy.Regulators in Europe and California has ruled that consumers have the right to collect and move their personal information to new websites – “data portability” laws designed to encourage people to choose different products, increase competition for giants such as Facebook. But on Facebook, each user’s data is exchanged with that of their friends and family, via tags on photos, messages and locations. Facebook submitted official comments to the FTC on Friday, asking the regulator to explain how the company should operate data portability without violating privacy rules that could lead to a fine. The request came ahead of an FTC workshop on the topic planned in September.
“The last time we tried to do this on a scale, we had Cambridge Analytica happen,” said Bijan Madhani, Facebook’s privacy and public policy manager. “We want to make sure we are crystal clear about the obligations on us.”
Facebook paid a $ 5 billion settlement to the FTC in 2019, following a scandal involving users signing up for a personality quiz app. Their data and that of their friends were transferred to a third-party developer, who then passed it on to the political advisory firm Cambridge Analytica, in breach of the company’s privacy obligation.
The company sometimes faces conflicting regulatory pressures regarding anti-trust and privacy issues. The power of Facebook, which has been criticized as monopolistic, comes from its massive network of more than 3 billion people over the apps it has, and the advertising power it has built on top of the generated data. Data portability is a potential solution. But privacy laws, which require Facebook to obtain the express consent of users before transferring data to third parties, often undermine the company’s market position.
Facebook has been working on a project to allow users to upload their photos to Google Photos. Madhani says Facebook has discussed similar projects with other companies, but it is difficult to get the sector to agree on the infrastructure and format, as well as the types of data that need to be transferred. With photos, would Facebook need to include a date, time and location, or would this information go beyond what users would expect to be transmitted? Could people be allowed to post a photo where they are accessed in that someone else took? And if an intrusion occurs after a data transfer, who’s to blame? In its comment to the FTC, Facebook asked that what the regulator decides fit in with the existing laws, such as the General Data Protection Regulation in Europe.
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