Trump Administration Plans To Have A Go At Online Privacy Regulation

But if the US takes a similar approach to GDPR in addressing online privacy it may favor big tech platforms, which have already invested a lot in compliance across markets. Meanwhile, smaller companies without the means to invest in compliance could suffer.

“Global organizations don’t want one privacy and security policy for Europe and one policy for the US,” said Mike Anderson, chief technology officer at Tealium, in a previous AdExchanger story. “We’ll see them take the most difficult standard and just deploy that across the board.”

Tech giants and members of the Republican Party, however, are calling for a lighter touch-regulation that doesn’t hold companies as financially accountable for noncompliance, according to the Post.

Regardless of how the law turns out, the question remains: is the US government informed enough about how the internet works to write regulation that will hold platforms accountable, or will it inadvertently strengthen their already dominant positions in the market? If the Mark Zuckerberg congressional testimony is any example, tasking politicians with creating effective regulation could prove challenging.

2. Keeping California quiet

With California cooking up its own privacy law, the US government has incentive to come up with a federal solution to avoid a fragmented, state-led approach to privacy.

The California privacy law, signed by Governor Jerry Brown earlier this month, takes a much stricter approach to online privacy regulation than GDPR. The law allows consumers to ask companies to completely opt out of having their data collected and sold to third parties.

Not only would that hurt the online ad industry, but it would create a compliance headache for companies that would have to adapt to different privacy laws state by state if others follow suit.

“California has such a substantial footprint that whatever happens there could have a significant impact everywhere else – it’s like the nation of California,” said Dan Jaffe, group EVP of government relations at the ANA, in a previous AdExchanger interview. “For years, companies have been using the opt-out system for privacy, but they may not have that choice if the states or others start to force the issue.”

3. Cambridge Analytica rebound

The US government has been pressured to regulate Facebook since the Cambridge Analytica scandal blew up in March.

Facebook’s lack of data oversight has affected elections and countries far beyond the US, from the Brexit referendum in the UK to the ongoing violence in India and Myanmar sparked by false information spread on the platform.

It’s at the point where public pressure has made rewriting US privacy laws almost inevitable.

“People increasingly want their privacy protected in some way,” Fatima Khan, chief privacy officer at Demandbase, told AdExchanger in May. “One way they can get it is by making sure the companies with whom they share data don’t do it in a way they find offensive.”

This post was syndicated from Ad Exchanger.