Facebookistan

Abstract:     
Who rules Facebookistan? Who makes the rules that govern the way a tenth of humanity connects on the Internet? The United States, France, China, or Mark Zuckerberg? Facebook represents a type of multinational corporation new to the world stage — one that raises issues different than those raised by earlier generations of multinational corporations. A review of international controversies involving Facebook reveals that Facebook has changed some of its policies as a result of pressures from governments around the world, while resisting other pressures. At the same time, Facebook has itself helped spur changes in the law, most evidently in helping undermine repressive governments. Ultimately, this Article finds that regulatory power is, de facto, dispersed across a wide array of international actors.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 37

Keywords: Facebook, multistakeholder governance, data protection authorities, regulatory competition, European Data Protection Directive

Accepted Paper Series