HELD TO ACCOUNT
Facebook users are deleting their accounts in droves over news their personal information was harvested for use in Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, JENNIFER DUDLEY- NICHOLSON reports
FACEBOOK’S data leak that compromised the accounts of more than 50 million users could be its undoing, after the Australian Privacy Commissioner threatened to take action against the social network yesterday and thousands of its users joined a # Delete-Facebook protest on a rival social network.
Users of the world’s largest social network began deleting and deactivating their accounts in droves as part of the global trend that followed revelations Cambridge Analytica was able to harvest users’ personal information for use in Donald Trump’s 2016 US presidential campaign.
Fallout from the news and protest led to Facebook stock suffering its biggest plunge in five years yesterday, wiping $ 46 billion from the company’s market value and more than $ 6 billion from creator Mark Zuckerberg’s personal fortune.
Despite Facebook promising to launch an investigation into the unprecedented privacy breach and whether the firm was still using the data, the technology giant also appears set to face action from governments across the world, including Australia, the United States, and Great Britain.
Australian Information and Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim said he was investigating whether the privacy breach affected Australian users and whether his office should take further action, including court- ordered penalties against Facebook.
“I am aware of the reports that users’ Facebook profile information was acquired and used without authorisation,” Mr Pilgrim said. “My office is making inquiries with Face- book to ascertain whether any personal information of Australians was involved.”
Britain’s Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said that she would apply for a warrant to access users’ data used by Cambridge Analytica after the firm had proven “unco- operative,” and US Senator John Kennedy called for Mr Zuckerberg to answer questions before Congress about the privacy breach.
The data harvested from Facebook users came from a personality- testing app called “thisisyourdigitallife” created by Global Science Research in 2015, which sold the information about users’ likes and dislikes to Cambridge Analytica, a firm run by billionaire Trump backer Robert Mercer, so it could be used to predict users’ race, gender, sexual orientation and buying habits.
Whistleblower Chris Wylie, whose Facebook account was suspended over the revelations, said the data was used to target US voters with personalised ads, and was also offered to Brexit campaigners.
“We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people’s profiles,” Mr Wylie said. “And built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons.”
Many of Facebook’s 2.2 billion users are reacting to news of the privacy breach with their feet, threatening to leave the social network and posting angry tales and screenshots of their expunged accounts under the # DeleteFacebook trend on Twitter yesterday.
“We all moved on from MySpace, we can move on from Facebook too,” @ ecarpen wrote, while @ FinnDen added, “Facebook is not who we thought they were”.
“Dropped FB today. Been on it right from the start. No more,” added @ jmdsouza67.
Curtin University adjunct senior research fellow Dr Kate Raynes- Goldie said the # DeleteFacebook protest could lead to many more users flee the social network than the company’s last user revolt in 2010 as warnings about privacy intrusions and how personal information could be exploited had become a reality.
“The difference is now people can see the immediate con- sequences of privacy breaches that they couldn’t see before,” she said.
“Now there are all these issues like fake news and getting hacked that is making people rethink what Facebook is giving them.”
Many users taking part in the protest are choosing to delete their accounts entirely, though the process could take “up to 90 days”, the company warned, as it wiped information from its “backup systems”.
Users also have the option of downloading a copy of data shared with Facebook before deleting their account, or of merely ‘ deactivating’ their accounts, which would hide information from view.