Fettering Facebook

Unconstrained internet advertising and porn merchants should prepare to be reined in.

- Peter Griffin

I hope Mark Zuckerberg and the other titans of Silicon Valley got a good rest over the Christmas break because they are in for the fight of their lives in 2019.

Last year saw the worm start to turn against Facebook, Google and the other online companies that take our attention – and personal details – after a decade or more of largely unregulated growth.

The Cambridge Analytica data scandal did untold damage to Facebook. The #deletefacebook campaign, a plunging share price and leaked emails that revealed the ruthlessness of Zuckerberg’s strategies to deal with competitors only compounded the social network operator’s problems.

Now regulators are closing in. In December, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) released a report that showed Google pockets $47 out of every $100 spent on digital advertising in Australia, Facebook and its Instagram app take $21 and thousands of other websites fight over the scraps.

In the face of the two companies’ market domination, the ACCC has proposed a new regulatory body that would make judgments on the fair display of news stories and ads on Google and the appointment of a digital ombudsman to rule on disputes between local companies and the tech giants.