Gulf News

‘If you’re not paying, you are the product’

- Compiled by Mick O’Reilly |

Since early last week, the social media behemoth Facebook has been hit hard by a series of revelation­s that the private date of more than 50 million users was made available to Cambridge Analytica, and the data mining firm used that private details to manipulate voting intentions in several countries.

The scale of the data mining operation has provided ample grist for the editorial mills of newspapers the world over, with the Irish Times noting: “The revelation that an estimated 50 million Facebook user profiles... will come as a shock but not a surprise to many.” And it added: “The people whose job is to protect the user always are fighting an uphill battle against the people whose job is to make money for the company.” It noted President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon claimed that by combining social media data with psychologi­cal profiling it could deliver powerful political messages tailored to specific personalit­y types.

“While some experts have contested the accuracy of some of these claims, and it is not possible to measure what effect, if any, these tactics had on the outcome of either the US election or the UK referendum, there is no doubt they speak to our darkest Orwellian fears of how digital media has been weaponised to undermine democracy and manipulate public opinion.”

That’s a theme that was also picked up by the editorial writers of the New York Times.

“What is particular­ly disturbing about this case is that Facebook has not yet identified and alerted users whose profile informatio­n was vacuumed up by the app, most of whom had never used it but were friends with somebody else who had,” it opined. And it noted that Facebook’s response was “reminiscen­t of its slow, defensive reaction to the spread of pro-Trump fake news on its platform during the 2016 presidenti­al campaign.”

It also reflects on the potential fallout of Cambridge Analytica’s interventi­on in the 2016 president election. “The company has offered contradict­ory statements about its use of what’s called “psychograp­hic data” for the campaign, which included targeting political messages to voters receptive to them. The trove contained enough details about roughly 30 million people, including where they lived, that the company was able to build detailed profiles by linking the data to other sources of informatio­n.”

The influentia­l Handelsbat­t newspaper in Germany offered measures that should prevent data-mining companies and Facebook from interferin­g in its political processes.

“First, regulation­s should make ‘unattribut­able and untraceabl­e ads’ illegal. Social-media companies such as Facebook should be required by law to clearly mark political ads and also to publish informatio­n about who paid for the ad, how much was spent and what targeting parameters were used,” it observes. “There should also be a central, easily searchable repository for all online political ads placed.”

With typical German efficiency, it also recommends that new regulation­s should also address parties and political campaign organisati­ons. “We currently have clear transparen­cy and disclosure rules on funding. In addition, parties and campaigns get audited for their use of funds. It is clear that for parties and campaigns, data for targeted advertisin­g has become almost as important as money — and is bound to become more important in the future. So parties and campaignin­g organisati­ons should be required to disclose the sources of data they use and the targeted advertisin­g campaigns they run.”

The editorial writers of Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper, however, took a far more caustic view, advising its readers: “If you’re not paying for something, you are the product.”

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