Yahoo Finance Demise of Facebook 'would pose serious risk to people's privacy'
Breaking up big social media companies like Facebook would put billions of people's personal information at serious risk, a leading Oxford think-tank has said.
In a new report from the Oxford Internet Institute, researchers warned over growing regulatory pressure to curb Big Tech's dominance, with some watchdogs having pushed for large US firms to be broken up.
The researchers said, in Facebook's case, this could lead to a restructuring or a closure of the main Facebook site, or even the company as a whole.
Carl Ohman, one of those behind the report, said: "Companies regularly fail and shut down, yet existing regulatory frameworks simply don’t answer the question of what happens if a company like Facebook folds."
Around 2.6 billion people use Facebook, giving the site access to vast amounts of data on its users, from their birthdays to their hobbies and relationships.
The researchers urged policymakers to establish a new regulatory framework for what they termed "Systemically Important Technological Institutions", which would treat social media sites in a similar way to critical national infrastructure and public utilities.
This would require that it would be possible for the "essential services" provided by Facebook, such as acting as a place for discussion for billions of people, to be "maintained or transferred" to another company.
New laws should be put in place to stop companies being able to arbitrarily auction out user data, and there should be stronger privacy protections for deceased users, preventing Facebook selling or mining their accounts for information, the researchers said.
Nikita Aggarwal, who co-authored the report, said: “The Covid-19 crisis has highlighted the systemic importance of platforms such as Facebook to the exchange of information in today’s society, providing vital access to public health advice and keeping communities connected through digital communication tools.
"As such, there are compelling reasons to regulate these platforms as systemically important technological institutions in order to minimize disruption to the essential services that they provide.”
