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"I'm sorry, really sorry." In the 1960s, it was a hit song of the 15-year-old American singer, Brenda Lee, speaking of unrequited love. In the 21st century, "sorry, sorry" has become the tragic modus operandi of banks, corporations and social media giants. Time and time again, mega companies are exploiting customer data for damaging reasons, go with a pat on their fingers – and sometimes a hefty fine or two – and launch a public relations campaign "we'll do better" .
"Today, we are renewing our commitment to you – and working to regain your trust," Wells Fargo wrote in a caption after being made to have opened bank accounts to millions of customers without permission .
"From now on, [we’ll] do more to ensure your safety and protect your privacy, "said Facebook after an avalanche of bad press, tanker stockpiles and negative public reactions due to its handling of false information and the sale of information d & # 39; users.
The reasons why companies lie are obvious. The first is financial pressure: stock prices and investors do not always respond well to transparency. Second, the ego. Having no incentive to admit mistakes, businesses are blocking consumers in an unfair loop and are doomed to repeat themselves until a real change occurs.
Why, as consumers, do we accept dishonesty and hollow excuses like the status quo? And how can we change?
Disappointment 411
If Mark Zuckerberg had explained what Facebook was doing (collecting user data and selling for profit), there would be no real need to ask these questions. We would have made informed decisions about the platforms and businesses we wanted to devote to our time, to our attention, to our information and, in many cases, to money.
Instead, we are facing another "sorry" campaign that is shifting responsibility elsewhere.
Earlier this year, we learned that Russia had mingled with the US presidential election via the Facebook platform. Next come the news of Cambridge Analytica, a massive data protection scandal that has touched 87 million Facebook users. Then come the persistent Russian troll farms that spread false information on the platform and add the genius of Facebook that produces the troubling testimony of Congress on the topics discussed by the company in data processing.
More recently, Facebook has again found itself defending deceitful and underhanded practices. Gizmodo announced this week that Facebook allows its advertising partners to target a Facebook user based on their phone number. Users then assigned this number to Facebook with the implicit purpose of enabling 2FA account security. In addition, Facebook will collect phone numbers from contact lists imported from other users, associating these contacts with user profiles in "ghost contact information", even when those users have not provided their contact numbers. phone directly to Facebook.
Facebook was neither transparent nor honest about what it did with the data you collected. Unfortunately, he can currently do it legally, because there is no privacy law in the United States for this type of thing.
Companies like Facebook prove that you can not trust the right thing.
Yes, the social media giant is taking action to clean up its tainted reputation. However, it is not a matter of taking real action to solve the problem.
Equation to solve
The "Sorry, Not Sorry" campaigns do nothing to adopt a more principled position.
Cut of national advertising campaign in which Facebook tries to appropriate its "snafus" around "spam, click attacks, false information and misuse of data". . The ad explains little of Facebook's laissez-faire role after the sale of its users' data. Uber has published a similar commercial, "Moving Forward", which sweeps its well-known missteps and attributes them to its previous management team, as if we were supposed to assume that things would be different in the future.
The new wave of privacy protection by regulation
What will inaugurate an era of honesty? Is the policy framework or regulation the answer?
Confidentiality regulations, such as the RPGDs, the EU's far-reaching laws on data use and confidentiality, mark a new beginning that will require more transparent practices. Subsequently, countries like Saudi Arabia, India, China and Singapore have also adopted new data protection laws, which means that about 70% of potential Internet users in the world are divided in the context of complex legislation relating to personal information and the use of intellectual property.
In the United States, the media is increasingly interested in the fact that private companies, including Facebook, Google, Twitter and other technology giants, dominate the advertising, speech and media space. information. An interesting proposal put forward is to regulate these companies as utilities.
It is too early to say which combination of policy and regulation will break the cycle "sorry, not sorry". One thing is essential: consumers must demand that platforms hold themselves accountable. This has not happened yet because, in general, we have not understood how or why our data are used. Now that our democracy is at stake, consumers are beginning to realize that social media always has a cost. It is only when we act democratically and urge companies to stop harvesting derivatives of our identities and selling them for profit that the phenomenon of "sorry, not sorry" ceases.
Can we break the cycle?
Once upon a time, Google's slogan was "Do not be mean". Today, this slogan is pronounced with sarcasm and sarcasm.
The Facebook Zuckerberg often talks about doing what's right while doing the opposite.
Equifax continues to act as if nothing had happened, even after allowing hackers to exploit the financial data of 143 million Americans.
Wells Fargo apologized for fraudulently opening millions of accounts to his clients while simultaneously encouraging his bankers to sell fake car insurance.
Obviously, these companies and other companies like them can not be trusted to "do the right thing" on their own.
It is therefore up to us, consumers, to punish bad behavior and reward good ones. The two mechanisms at our disposal are voting with our feet and our wallets and voting for representation in our government so that we can pass legislation to protect the privacy of consumers.
Founders and business leaders must remember that integrity, transparency, and fairness can include profit and growth. The old quote "Love means never having to say that we are sorry" should be changed as follows: "Do not be a jerk, it's not to have to say" we are sorry "with multi-million dollar advertising campaigns.
Joshua Strebel is the CEO of Pagely.
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