Technically speaking, this was my second meeting with Mark Zuckerberg, as we had already met briefly when he attended the first Tech for Good summit held by President Macron last year. Yet the working lunch on Friday was the first opportunity we had to have a direct conversation, in the company of four members of parliament working on digital regulation (Laetitia Avia, Éric Bothorel, Paula Forteza and Laure de la Raudière). This meeting was useful in many ways.
First of all, it comes at a time when there is particularly strong pressure on the American tech giants on a par with the challenges they pose for our economies and our societies. Whether in terms of combating online hate speech, protecting privacy, taxation, algorithm transparency or trade relations with their ecosystem, the question of regulating the players commonly referred to in France as the GAFA* is one of the major government undertakings of these coming years.
Our discussion, just before Mr Zuckerberg’s bilateral meeting with President Macron, is an element of the global tech giant accountability strategy launched by France and embodied by the Tech for Good summit to be held on Wednesday, 15 May, at the Palais de l’Elysée. This strategy is based on the simple observation that these tech giants are now virtually systemic players in our societies and our economies. Every day, billions of people (including tens of millions of French people) connect to their Facebook account, write an e-mail on Gmail, use their iPhone or place an order on Amazon. Whatever anyone may think about that, we realistically have no other choice but to deal with the situation, at least in the short term. However, the as-yet-unknown mark these players are making on our lives calls for particular attention (and probably specific regulations). That is the reason for the ongoing dialogue that President Macron has set up with the leading digital platforms (primarily American, but also Chinese as shown by his meeting this week with Jack Ma, Executive Chairman of Alibaba). If we want things to change, progress with tech giant accountability is a priority. Accountability cannot replace legislation, but it can usefully supplement it, and sometimes pave the way for it.
There is nothing fainthearted about this dialogue. All parties are firmly playing their role, as shown by the tax on digital services proposed by Bruno Le Maire and the introduction of a regulation on hate speech with fines of up to 4% of global turnover: France is firm when it comes to defending its sovereign interests and the interests of its citizens. Conversely, the off-the-cuff suggestions made by some to regulate the tech giants are neither effective nor efficient. First of all, because it has not been clearly established that many of the practices decried today are actually illegal, and in any case, it will take time and call for a complex review of our legislation, along with regulators with the resources to ensure enforcement. Secondly, because the effective scale for action, if any action is required, is often at European level and our partners do not necessarily share our point of view. Lastly, because Europeans are in two minds about the companies concerned, being both critical of their practices and drawn by their extraordinary capacity for innovation and the quality of their services: these companies continue to win over thousands of users every day and many of us would find it hard to imagine a world without Gmail, Facebook or the iPhone.
In this context, the discussions with Mark Zuckerberg have revealed one thing: that Facebook is the player that has probably taken on board the need for a new regulatory framework the most. This observation is obviously no carte blanche: there are still a great many problems to be solved and we probably have some tough discussions ahead. However, the Facebook founder’s recent editorial calling for more regulation and the approval given for the audit mission conducted by the French administration cannot be dismissed as mere trifles. The audit mission laid the foundations for an innovative, effective draft regulation to counter online hate speech, which is set to form the basis for the parliamentary debate on blatant hate speech to be launched with the upcoming deliberation of the bill tabled by Deputy Laetitia Avia (whose work and steadfast commitment I commend here) and the upcoming broadcasting bill.
One last word on the subject of dismantling the tech giants, brought back to the table by a recent article by Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook, in the New York Times, is that this question — particularly popular in American academic circles — is worth asking (see The Curse of Bigness by Tim Wu). It is a question that calls for thinking on its opportunity cost ratio and possibly an extensive review of our antitrust rules (note that neither the US Federal Trade Commission nor the European Commission ruled that Facebook’s acquisition of Whatsapp was in breach of existing rules — the case was therefore clearly studied).** Yet Nick Clegg touches on an important point when he says that dismantlement will not answer the — urgent — questions currently facing Western societies. If Facebook were carved up into three or ten pieces, each new entity would keep hundreds of millions of users which would still, for example, pose the same protection of privacy questions (if not even more keenly, since ten different companies would have to be overseen). This is why I believe, like Margrethe Vestager, that what is most urgently needed is a regulatory framework on systemic players. This is what France will propose very soon, in connection with combatting online hate speech, with the Avia bill and the broadcasting bill. It is what the Renaissance electoral list, headed by Nathalie Loiseau for the European Parliament elections, proposes taking to the European level with the creation of a special regulatory framework for tech giants. Because the right level, whatever the subject addressed, is clearly the European level.
I am not one to resign myself to laissez-faire nor one to believe in “all change”. I believe in a third effective European way based on clear rules and controls. In short, ongoing, effective regulatory action rather than superficial and, ultimately, vain threatening rhetoric.
* I am not a great fan of the use of the term GAFA (for Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple) used in France, because it rolls into one players with very different business models that raise very different regulatory issues for the government — their size aside. Privacy issues (Google and Facebook), for example, have nothing to do with the issues raised by Apple and Amazon in terms of trade relations with their respective ecosystems (which, moreover, have nothing to do with each other).
** This question is inextricably linked with a review of European and Western trade policy, in view of the colossal sums invested in research and development by the Chinese giants in such strategic areas as artificial intelligence and quantum computing — only the GAFAs currently have the critical mass to face up to them.
