'Fix Facebook, whether it wants to or not'
BRUSSELS: Eight months after revealing links between Facebook and Cambridge Analytica (CA), whistleblower Christopher Wylie is pushing for the web giant to be regulated – whether it wants to or not.
He is scathing about Facebook’s “man-child” chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and the arrogance of the company he runs.
“Facebook knew about what happened with Cambridge Analytica, well before the Trump election, well before Brexit, it did nothing about it,” Wylie said.
“They knew about Russian disinformation campaigns on their platform, but to preserve the integrity of their reputation, they place their company above their country.”
Last March, Wylie revealed data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica took millions of Facebook users’ data to build psychological profiles.
He knew because he worked as the company’s research director.
Targeted political campaign messages were used in the US presidential election and in the run-up to Britain’s 2016 Brexit vote, he said.
Zuckerberg in March acknowledged the data breach but said it had happened without Facebook’s knowledge and acted to ensure it never happened again, he added.
It is a complex story, but the important thing, said Wylie, was to stay focused on the key facts.
“You’ve got CA whose staff were working in Russia, whose contractors are indicted by Mueller and whose clients were meeting with (the) Russian embassy.”
US Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.
But Wylie’s real anger is directed at Facebook and Zuckerberg.
“They have a share structure which enables a ‘man-child’ to run a company like an authoritarian dictator and no one else can do anything about it,” he said.
Facebook admitted on Tuesday that its engineers flagged suspicious Russian activity as early as 2014 – long before it became public.
But Zuckerberg refused to turn up to hearings held by the British Parliament this week attended by lawmakers from nine countries.
Instead, vice president Richard Allan had to field questions on allegations the company was used to manipulate major election results.
For Wylie, Zuckerberg’s no-show in London spoke volumes.
“He built a platform that has created substantive risk to our society and democracy and he doesn’t even have one hour to give,” he said.
Facebook is now being investigated by several US federal agencies.
In Britain, it is appealing a £500,000 (RM2.66mil) fine handed down by the Information Commissioner’s Office for serious breaches of the data protection laws over the Cambridge Analytica revelations.
Earlier this month, it battled fallout from a New York Times report that it used a public relations firm to discredit its critics, including billionaire George Soros.
Facebook’s outgoing communications chief Elliot Schrage took the blame.
“I’m not surprised, having been on the blunt end of Facebook retaliation, that they go after people like George Soros and hire firms to make up anti-semitic rumours and fake news,” he said.
“It’s ironic that Facebook, in trying to defend itself as a platform that’s combating fake news, creates fake news in the first place.”
But he gets why people are reluctant to join calls to close their Facebook accounts in protest.
“I understand why people don’t want to leave,” he said.
“It’s now part and parcel of modern day living.
“This is why it’s so important to regulate, because just like electricity or water or roads, this is a utility, and that means people don’t really have a choice to leave.”
There must be a statutory code of conduct for data scientists and software engineers, just as there are for other professions, he argues.
Architects cannot decide to leave out fire exits on a whim, he says, so the specialists who create online “addictive spaces” need to be regulated in just the same way. —