The internet is not free from the law
The Cambridge Analytica affair reveals far less about politics than it does about the social media business model. Data crunchers did not swing the EU referendum or the 2016 US presidential election. Compared with the 2012 race, when Barack Obama’s campaign was admired for its data mining, Donald Trump did less well among voters who use the internet. Mr Trump is a Twitter troll, it’s true, but he built his reputation as a manager on a TV show (The
Apprentice) and was given millions of dollars of free coverage during the campaign by the networks.
There’s quite a contradiction between saying, as the Left does, that Trump and Brexit voters are aged technophobes and claiming that they were persuaded by online disinformation – an insulting narrative that betrays the loser’s need to find excuses. Hillary Clinton has blamed her defeat at the hands of the most disliked Republican candidate since Herbert Hoover on “backwards” voters, the FBI, the Russians and “fake news”. It is time she took a look in the mirror.
That said, many readers will be astonished to discover what it may well be legal for social media companies to do. We enter a contract when we sign up for a free online service: to coin a phrase, “If you’re not paying for something, you’re not the customer. You are the product.” In exchange for being able to, say, share photographs, we have often agreed to share information about our lifestyles and likes. This deal can be convenient for consumers: supermarket loyalty schemes can track the popularity of items and offer discounts. The voluntary pooling of medical data might also assist in the development of public health policy and future treatments. But all of this has to be voluntary and transparent. In the Cambridge Analytica case, it is alleged that a quiz answered by one person was used to harvest the Facebook data of their friends and family, only to be passed on for political use. Both companies deny wrongdoing.
The question is, what laws, if any, have been broken? This is a potential test case that will help define legalities at the same time as the state carves out a regulatory framework that balances freedom of speech, privacy and adherence to the rules. The Government recently assured this newspaper that the “Wild West” days are over. The internet has the potential to improve our lives enormously, but it cannot – must not – operate free from the laws and ethics that govern the rest of society.