This week saw Mark Zuckerberg face a two-day congressional-hearing convened by the Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees. The hearing was given the title “Facebook, Social Media Privacy, and the Use and Abuse of Data”.Mark Zuckerberg’s hearing came about after it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica, a U.K. based data analytics and political consulting firm that worked on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign had obtained data of millions of Facebook users.

Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) form the sixth largest economy in the world valued at US$2.5 trillion with a population of almost 630 million – 40 percent of whom are below the age of 30. Studies have shown that those within this age bracket represent a key demography of the growing landscape of Southeast Asia’s digital economy.

The Philippine central bank is beefing up its data tools to get a better handle on a fast-growing economy, which is starting to flash warning signs because of a rapid buildup of debt.Like central banks across Southeast Asia, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas is pushing to capture information from “big data,” drawn from sources such as online search engines, job websites and proprietary registers.