Hello and welcome to this week’s Future in Five Questions, our first-ever dual interview. This week, Meta’s co-chief privacy officers Erin Egan and Michel Protti talked about the company’s vision for federal privacy regulation, their respective dislike for NFTs and wearable tech, and in great detail about the recent legal action between the company and the Federal Trade Commission. Responses have been edited and condensed for clarity: What’s one underrated big idea? Egan: Simply fostering understanding. When there's fear and confusion about a technology or industry practice, bad public policy proposals and laws that stifle innovation are more likely to result. The only antidote to that fear is understanding. Understanding clears the path for innovation and all the important benefits it brings, and fosters regulation that protects consumer choice, enables small businesses to get ahead, allows people to find products they want. Understanding gives us regulation that works. Protti: Building diverse teams, in terms of interdisciplinary backgrounds. There’s a lot of insight to be gained from different disciplines that can make people even more innovative. I studied drama in undergrad before taking a career path that ended up in consumer tech; my background has influenced the way I listen to ideas, the way I communicate with my teams, the way I interact day to day. What’s a technology you think is overhyped? Egan: NFTs. I am the type of person who gets excited about new technologies, but I just never got excited about NFTs. But as with all big hype cycles, there's usually a slump before another big comeback. So maybe there’ll be another NFT boom and it’ll come back to prove me wrong. I truly hope that happens, at least for the sake of the folks who spent thousands of dollars on Bored Apes. Protti: I'm not super into wearables. I'm skeptical on how much we're all ultimately going to want our physical actions programmed by devices. I kind of want to make the choice for myself of when it's time to go outside or get some exercise or get some sleep. The next-generation class of wearables that has the potential to allow people to put something on their wrist and then control a digital experience using only their thoughts, now, that's quite interesting. But it’s a long way off in terms of mass adoption. What book most shaped your conception of the future? Egan: “Klara and the Sun” by Kazuo Ishiguro. It’s a book that raises profound questions about what it means to be human and inspires us to think critically about that relationship between technology and human life, the benefits, the limitations, and how the decisions we make today about the use of technology will impact our sense of humanity in the future. It’s quite relevant as we’re grappling with the future of AI. Protti: “Under a White Sky” by Elizabeth Kolbert. It explores the role that human evolution, innovation and ingenuity have played in creating climate change, and then the role they can play in creating a sustainable future and helping to mitigate some of the effects of climate change. She writes that it’s a book about people trying to solve problems created by people trying to solve problems — it has so many parallels with the moment we're in with consumer tech, especially around generative AI. What could the government be doing regarding tech that it isn’t? Egan: As a start, the U.S. government should adopt a comprehensive federal privacy regulation. I still remember first working on comprehensive privacy bills in 2001, and while there have been some proposals over the 20-plus intervening years, we haven't seen anything that's truly likely to pass. Meta supports federal privacy legislation. What’s happening is that states are trying to fill that void, and we're seeing a mosaic of privacy laws that are different enough to make compliance challenging for small and even large businesses. It’s not a great consumer experience to have different frameworks in different states. All of this is happening against the backdrop of other countries passing comprehensive privacy laws and leaving the U.S. trailing behind. Protti: I would like to see a deeper level of collaboration between regulators, policymakers, legislators and the consumer tech industry. I'd love to see regulators engage in a way that's deeply informed by an understanding of how consumers actually experience technology, to strike the right balance between consumer protection and consumer value. What has surprised you most this year? Egan: The Federal Trade Commission's recent enforcement action against Meta regarding an agreement that we entered into with the agency in 2020. We have made it a priority to be in regular contact with the Federal Trade Commission, and the privacy incidents they raise as part of their enforcement action are years old and have long ago been addressed. Also, remarkably, the action came just hours before an independent assessor, approved by the FTC, was scheduled to share an update with the FTC about our ongoing compliance with that 2020 agreement. We work with the FTC and regularly engage with them on our privacy work in an effort to be transparent, so it was shocking to me. Protti: The increasing wave of, let’s call it, inconsistent regulation. I have two teenagers, I'm pretty deeply invested in the goal of creating safe positive online spaces for youth and teens. We’re seeing youth online safety bills that hold very different standards state by state, and hold very different services to different standards. All of this on its current path is ultimately going to lead to significant confusion for teens, for parents and for companies. Our aspiration here should be for clearer, more consistent rules.
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