Mark Zuckerberg Can Still Fix This Mess; The New York Times, April 7, 2018

Jonathan Zittrain, The New York Times; Mark Zuckerberg Can Still Fix This Mess

"There are several technical and legal advances that could make a difference.

On the policy front, we should look to how the law treats professionals with specialized skills who get to know clients’ troubles and secrets intimately. For example, doctors and lawyers draw lots of sensitive information from, and wield a lot of power over, their patients and clients. There’s not only an ethical trust relationship there but also a legal one: that of a “fiduciary,” which at its core means that the professionals are obliged to place their clients’ interests ahead of their own.

The legal scholar Jack Balkin has convincingly argued that companies like Facebook and Twitter are in a similar relationship of knowledge about, and power over, their users — and thus should be considered “information fiduciaries.”...

Given the blowback around current privacy and advertising practices — and the threat of regulation, especially from the European Union — companies like Facebook should do the right thing and commit to representing users’ interests. And the law could nudge them in that direction without outright requiring it. These actions might reduce Facebook’s growth or profitability, but that is not a compelling reason to stop doing something harmful. It may be that aspects of an advertising-based business model are indeed incompatible with ethically serving users, as polluted streams are incompatible with ethically mining coal."