Democrat Senator thinks it’s time to regulate Facebook

According to The Gateway Pundit, Facebook is facing a tsunami of criticism following the leak of an explosive memo revealing the tech giant’s lack of concern for people dying thanks to the tools it offers to users. Now, one Democrat Senator thinks it could be time to unleash regulators on Facebook.

Ed Markey on Twitter: “Death from bullying cannot be the cost of doing business. Terrorist attacks cannot be the cost of doing business.It is @facebook’s moral obligation to maintain the integrity and safety of their platform. When they fail to do so, Congress must act.https://t.co/Ui12vPvyr6 / Twitter”

Death from bullying cannot be the cost of doing business. Terrorist attacks cannot be the cost of doing business.It is @facebook’s moral obligation to maintain the integrity and safety of their platform. When they fail to do so, Congress must act.https://t.co/Ui12vPvyr6

Daily Caller reports…

Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts threatened to devise and enact regulations on social media after finding out a Facebook executive published a memo appearing to express insensitivity over its effects.

“So we connect more people,” Facebook Vice President Bosworth wrote in a company wide message in 2016, which BuzzFeed recently published. “That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs someone a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools.” […]

Bosworth’s memo continued:

The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good. It is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we are concerned. That isn’t something we are doing for ourselves. Or for our stock price (ha!). It is literally just what we do. We connect people. Period.

Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) has threatened to appoint regulators to examine Facebook.

“Death from bullying cannot be the cost of doing business. Terrorist attacks cannot be the cost of doing business. It is @facebook’s moral obligation to maintain the integrity and safety of their platform. When they fail to do so, Congress must act.”

Ed Markey on Twitter: “Death from bullying cannot be the cost of doing business. Terrorist attacks cannot be the cost of doing business.It is @facebook’s moral obligation to maintain the integrity and safety of their platform. When they fail to do so, Congress must act.https://t.co/Ui12vPvyr6 / Twitter”

Death from bullying cannot be the cost of doing business. Terrorist attacks cannot be the cost of doing business.It is @facebook’s moral obligation to maintain the integrity and safety of their platform. When they fail to do so, Congress must act.https://t.co/Ui12vPvyr6

Federal investigators have started a probe into Facebook’s use of personal data after reports surfaced that Cambridge Analytica “improperly gained access to the data of more than 50 million users.”

CNBC reports…

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether the use of personal data from 50 million Facebook users by Cambridge Analytica violated a consent decree the tech company signed with the agency in 2011, Bloomberg reported Monday. […]

“We are aware of the issues that have been raised but cannot comment on whether we are investigating. We take any allegations of violations of our consent decrees very seriously as we did in 2012 in a privacy case involving Google,” a spokesman for the FTC said Tuesday.

Facebook said in a statement to the Washington Post over the weekend…

“We reject any suggestion of violation of the consent decree. We respected the privacy settings that people had in place. Privacy and data protections are fundamental to every decision we make.”