New internet privacy rules to take effect in the European Union on Friday — considered the world’s most comprehensive protections yet — come at a time of deep skepticism globally about online protections, according to data that also shows a strong correlation between regions of the world where people rely less on social media to communicate and a sense that private companies are more trustworthy than their own governments.
More than three-quarters of people globally believe their internet privacy is at risk, according to data compiled by U.S. News as a part of its 2018 Best Countries rankings, breaking down how respondents from particular nations and regions view the world. The rates of concern are almost all between 75 percent and 80 percent regardless of gender, age or living in an urban or rural environment, and are comparable among respondents in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, and the Americas.
Differences begin to appear in expectations for who is responsible for solving such problems. Sixty-three percent of respondents outside Europe say they trust private companies more than their own governments. Particular faith in the private sector can be found in countries with emerging national economies, principally South Africa, where 86 percent of respondents offer their support, and in Brazil and Mexico, with roughly 78 percent each.
However, in Europe, only 57 percent favor the private sector over trusting local governments. That rate drops to 47 percent or less in the U.K., Denmark and Finland. The lowest trust in private companies is found in Russia at 41 percent — not necessarily indicative of a trust instead in government, but these results align with other data that show widespread support in Russia for President Vladimir Putin‘s administration.
More than 5,000 respondents from each of the four world regions participated in the U.S. News survey, which is based on responses from more than 21,000 people in 36 countries and was conducted between July and September last year.
These data appear to align with the extent to which global citizens rely on social media to stay in contact with others. Europe stands out significantly with only 42 percent of respondents relying on social media as a primary mode of communication. Those numbers rise to 56 percent in the Americas, and more than 70 percent in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, is considered the most comprehensive international regulation on protecting personal data. The regulation serves as an update to the last general directive for data protection in 1995, and seeks to provide equal rights and protections for EU citizens more completely rather than the hodgepodge of regulations that have emerged in the past 23 years.
The law will make it much easier for users to know how their data is being used, and imposes strict requirements on companies possessing massive troves of data, writes the German Marshall Fund’s Susan Ness and Peter Chase in a recent analysis. However, it also prioritizes privacy over free speech, innovation, entrepreneurship and business interests.
“In some cases, these trade-offs are the results of considered policymaking,” they write. “In others, GDPR has been critiqued for creating needless regulation where technical solutions would be more appropriate. And in yet other cases, the trade-offs in GDPR are the result of the compromises necessary to satisfy the multiple and sometimes divergent interests within and between Brussels and the different EU member states.”
The law also suffers from not having companion regulations in the U.S., though technically data will no longer allowed to be transferred to the U.S. without separate agreements.
The role of private companies in protecting users’ personal data has become a central part of the privacy debate in Europe, and similarly elsewhere, particularly in the wake of reports that Facebook allowed data firm Cambridge Analytica to improperly obtain user information it told the social media giant it had deleted. Following testimony before U.S. Congress in April, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared before the European Parliament earlier this week in a hearing that was structured so each representative could ask a question but did not allow enough time for Zuckerberg to be pressed to respond to each.
Many parliamentarians emerged from the session dissatisfied with Zuckerberg’s responses, particularly regarding concerns over perceived loopholes that may allow Facebook to export Europeans’ data for manipulation elsewhere.
“There are already fears that Facebook has taken steps to at best mitigate the protections detailed in the GDPR legislation and at worse, to evade its provisions,” Guy Verhofstadt, president of the parliament’s Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Group, wrote in an op-ed for CNN. “This contrasts rather sharply with his promise to apply European GDPR standards even outside of the EU.”
At the time the U.S. News survey was conducted — months before the news of the Cambridge Analytica scandal — 10 percent of Europeans strongly disapproved of Zuckerberg, while 17 percent strongly approved, the least among world regions. A quarter answered they felt neutrally.
Zuckerberg found the most regional approval at the time in Africa, where 50 percent strongly approved.
More from U.S. News
The Future of Social Media: Redesign, Don’t Quit
What It’s Like to Live Without Social Media
Countries’ Actions on Internet Spark Growing Privacy Worries
Data: Heavy Reliance on Social Media Aligns With Trust in Private Companies originally appeared on usnews.com
