By Nicole Zhu
Facebook’s much-publicized legal troubles last year regarding the Cambridge Analytica data scandal was only the beginning of the company’s run-ins with the law. Now, amid rising pressure from regulators from the United States, the European Union, and even from presidential candidate front-runner Elizabeth Warren, the future of Facebook—and its controversial CEO Mark Zuckerberg—is being called into question.
On Thursday, the European Court of Justice ruled that countries can force Facebook to take down false or defamatory information in their own countries and beyond—dealing the social media company one of the strongest regulatory blows to date. The decision came from a case brought by an Austrian politician, Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek, who sued Facebook to take down posts that falsely described her as a “lousy traitor,” the New York Times said.
The ruling, which cannot be appealed, means that the European Union has ultimate control over what users put onto Facebook, and could open the doors for further regulation—the method preferred by Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s newly re-appointed antitrust regulator, who slapped fellow tech behemoths Apple and Google’s Alphabet with multi-million dollar fines earlier this year. This, combined with the fact that Zuckerberg failed to show up to multiple EU hearings, puts the tech company in uncharted territory on its increasingly fraught foreign relationships.
Stateside, FBI Director Christopher Wray has called on Facebook to halt a plan to encrypt all user messages—a move, he said, that would be an unprecedented “dream come true” for child pornographers, according to CNN. According to Wray, encryption would mean that government officials could have a harder time finding evidence to prosecute criminals, especially those preying on children. Facebook had previously announced the encryption move as a plan to increase data privacy of its users and prevent unwarranted access of user information by government officials.
Now, even presidential candidates are joining the fight—Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, as well as several other candidates, has pledged to break up Facebook and its peers. In leaked audio from a company-wide conference call from news site The Verge, Zuckerberg pledged to sue Warren if she succeeded in the 2020 presidential race. Zuckerberg has since recanted—telling employees that he would not “further antagonize” Warren.
Facebook’s woes look set to only worsen. As the company bumps up against regulators and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic, the threats against it will likely grow increasingly severe. Warren’s calls to break up Facebook reflect broader antitrust concerns about the unique advantage enjoyed by big internet firms who benefit from network effects, a sentiment shared by Vestager and other EU regulators. So far, Facebook’s PR strategy has been to dodge and deflect. If that continues, the company may not remain in one piece for long.