It became clear today that Facebook is a public service like energy or water – and it needs to be regulated in the same way

Right now we are largely reliant on Facebook to fix the problems that have emerged with its platform. And that's not an intelligent way to approach the problem

Protesters from the pressure group Avaaz demonstrate against Facebook outside Portcullis House in Westminster

(Reuters)

It’s becoming increasingly clear that Facebook is the Wild West and its users are in desperate need of a sheriff to protect them from the bandits surrounding their wagons.

That was underlined by the appearance of chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer before MPs on the Culture Media & Sport Committee today. They’ve been running an inquiry into fake news that is increasingly focussing on the questionable goings-on at the social network.

At issue is not just an apparently cavalier approach to users’ data that allowed actors such as Russia’s Internet Research Agency, our very own Cambridge Analytica, and other likeminded or linked companies to make hay, potentially influencing both the US election that brought Donald Trump to power and Britain’s EU referendum. It’s the response to it.

That can be described as leaden-footed at best. Schroepfer notably struggled to explain why it took three years to inform users whose data was harvested by an app created by Cambridge academic Aleksandr Kogan, at the centre of the scandal surrounding the network.

At worst, however, Facebook has appeared to be deliberately obstructive. Want evidence? How about the lawyers’ letters sent to reporters that were described as “bullying” at the hearing, or MPs’ belief that they were misled by Simon Milner, a recently minted vice president of Facebook, at an earlier evidence session held in Washington DC?

Schroepfer pointed out that his company has various bodies looking at it, including – in the UK alone – the Information Commissioner’s Office, and the Electoral Commission, in addition to the Committee.

But the two regulators only look at the parts of the picture specific to their remit.

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There is no one organisation with the overarching job of overseeing the way Facebook and its peers behave themselves with respect to users in this country, or in any other country to date.

There is no lawman or woman at Facebook Gulch and it’s time to talk about installing one.

We have OfCom for broadcasting and telecoms, OfGem for energy, OfWat for water, and the Financial Conduct Authority for banks, insurers and the City of London.

While their respective effectiveness varies greatly, they are there because they are necessary. They oversee important or essential services and the companies that provide them, ones that otherwise might be inclined to misbehave – and in fact that do misbehave, and frequently, despite the watchdogs being there.

Given the power, reach and influence social media has obtained, and the increasingly obvious potential for misuse, there’s a clear need for an OfFace, or rather, an OfSocMed, because Facebook is far from the only company in this sphere to have been creating problems.

Right now we are largely reliant on Facebook to fix the problems that have emerged with its platform.

“I believe deeply in our mission,” Schroepfer said, declaring that the opprobrium it has faced “hurts”. He was also at pains to highlight the good things that Facebook can do, using the support executive Lady Mendelssohn has received from a global group set up for those diagnosed with the same incurable cancer she has as an example.

But set against that is the disturbing “pattern of behaviour” and the “unwillingness to engage” highlighted by the committee’s chair Damian Collins, a former advertising man who made several very good points during the course of the hearing.

It was good to hear Schroepfer talking about “empowering the user” but, as Collins pointed out, Facebook is putting a lot of weight on its users’ shoulders. One MP noted that it took 14 or so swipes of a mobile phone to remove some of the things users might not want.

For my part, as a long-time and active, but also cautious, user, I heard things described that I didn’t know I could do to protect myself. Apparently you can mute ads, which is new to me. I haven’t the faintest idea of how to go about doing it.

Schroepfer said Facebook would engage with us users about how to improve things. But can we really trust it to draw the right conclusions from them?

This, after all, is primarily a business whose interest is not so much in “connecting people” as it is in making money. As a US public company, it has to be that way.

As such, if Facebook’s commercial interests run counter to those of users, which do you think will come first?

A day before the hearing, the company revealed that its recent troubles have done nothing to dent its first quarter earnings, which beat analysts’ forecasts.

Therein lies the problem. For all their misgivings, people are very reluctant to give it up, partly because it is so useful and such a key part of their lives.

We regulate that sort of business.

Doing so would be a challenge in the case of Facebook. But it’s one that needs taking on.

It’s time for our sheriff to get saddled up.