BIG DATA
Facebook: Key Take
Away’s For Our Local
Context From Mark
Zuckerberg’s Congress
Testimony
By Timothy Oriedo
W
ith public and media attention
focused on Mark Zuckerberg’s
congressional
hearings
regarding user privacy and data, among
other topics, it was noticeable that some
members of Congress used the hearings as
an opportunity for a political sound bite,
and Zuckerberg at times had to explain
basic features and settings on the app.
Overall, there are key lesson we can take
out from it to apply to our local context.
Here’s what regulators, Taxman, users,
brands, marketers should take away from
the hearings:
Regulators
It’s time we start paying attention to
technology usage and application so as
to lay in place policies that will mitigate
the abuse of the technologies and protect
interests of our citizens. It will be of great
help if regulators are abreast with the
development of the GDPR compliance
in Europe and set in motion similar laws
locally to align to the new dispensation. achieving that will be to institute a Data
Residency and Sovereignty legislation
that will compel facebook and other
platforms to domicile the data generated
by our netizens within our borders.
Taxman The other option would be to craft a
taxation model that could be based on the
absolute revenues that facebook makes.
It’s becoming evident that locally we are
not capturing taxes on advertisements
placed on facebook platform.
Whereas there is a view to introduce a
subscription version of facebook that will
be free of ads, we are far from that reality
in this part of the world where even free
facebook in form of express Wi-Fi is
being deployed.
We hence need to figure a way of tapping
the growing revenues that facebook
mops from our market. The first step to
It’s time we start paying attention to technol-
ogy usage and application so as to lay in place
policies that will mitigate the abuse of the tech-
nologies and protect interests of our citizens.
It will be of great help if regulators are abreast
with the development of the GDPR compliance
in Europe and set in motion similar laws locally
to align to the new dispensation.
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Here’s a breakdown of how much ad
revenue Facebook generated per monthly
active user across the globe in 2017
(excluding revenue generated from
Instagram and WhatsApp):
• US & Canada = $82.44
• Europe = $26.94
• Asia-Pacific = $8.86
• Rest of World = $6.15
• Worldwide = $19.84
Kenya for instance falls under the rest
of the world bracket and from the latest
State of the Internet Report by Bloggers
Association Of Kenya BAKE it indicates
that we have an average of 8 Million active
users on facebook meaning facebook
makes an average of over US$ 48 Million
Dollars per month from advertising in
Kenyan territory which translates to Kshs.
Kshs.4Billion.
The Media
Local media has been hurt lately due to
decline of advertising revenues and this