Fourteen months ago, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was hauled before a US Senate committee to explain how data from the social network might have been used to swing the result of the US election in favour of Donald Trump.

It was a spectacular breach of public trust, triggering myriad questions about whether the tech behemoth respected user privacy, and turning 2018 into an annus horribilis of mammoth proportions. Regulators all over the world, including in Europe and Australia, turned the screws.