Thread by @profcarroll

The financial industry knows who its customers are. It does the due diligence. Facebook is only pretending to practice Know Your Customer and it probably creates a false sense of transparency and trust. propublica.org/article/how-bi…

Ultimately this is the problem with corporate secrecy in America…looking at you Delaware. It’s also the problem of not having data protection laws and regulators that would require official registration to use protected personal data.

If FB could trace a registered entity to its data protection registration it could automate advertiser verification at scale. Supply your company number and registered data controller number and you’re good to go. FB should be lobbying for data controller/processor registration.

No data controller/processor registration number? Sorry then you can’t upload personal data to FB Custom Audiences for data matching because you’re not registered with the FTC (in US, I’d imagine) or with appropriate Data Protection Authority such as ICO in UK, CNIL in France etc

I doubt Facebook can fix this ads transparency problem without using its muscle to lobby for a tough corporate transparency law (sorry Delaware) and registration requirements as part of a national data protection law (like GDPR). cnn.com/2018/11/01/tec…

Consider UK as a model
☑️corporate transparency: check out Companies House
☑️data protection registration requirements (for 20 years now): Information Commissioner’s Office seized servers under warrant
☑️Electoral Commission just referred criminal matter to National Crime Agency

Consider US by comp.
—corporate secrecy: thanks Delaware
—self-regulated; self-certified; uninsured; unregistered; privatized accountability on data protection
—electoral anarchy; FEC considered by many to be an ineffectual hyper-partisan agency; Citizens United “money is speech”