Facebook loses trust and shares of market
Social media site says it has restricted user data since mining incident
SAN FRANCISCO – Can Facebook be trusted with your personal information?
That’s the question many Americans are asking after revelations that a data- mining firm working for the Trump campaign improperly got its hands on the personal information of tens of millions of Facebook users and created detailed profiles that were used to target unsuspecting voters in the presidential election.
For many, the incident raises troubling questions about how Facebook manages third- party access to the sensitive information of its 2 billion users, including what safeguards the social media giant has in place to prevent apps from
sharing information.
Facebook said a researcher, Cambridge University’s Aleksandr Kogan, gained access to the data of 270,000 Facebook users in 2013 through a personality quiz app that required Facebook users to grant access to their personal information, including friends and “likes.”
According to Facebook, he gave that information to Cambridge Analytica, a firm that claimed it helped Donald Trump win the 2016 presidential election. Citing a violation of its rules, Facebook suspended Cambridge Analytica on Friday. Facebook announced Monday that Cambridge Analytica agreed to an independent audit by a digital forensics firm.
Facebook said it has restricted how much personal information outsiders can obtain since the incident.
“We actually reject a significant number of apps through this process. Kogan’s app would not be permitted access to detailed friends’ data today,” it said.
It’s unclear whether that statement will assuage worried users. It didn’t lower the heat in the USA and Europe.
Monday, the markets reacted. A nearly 7% plunge in Facebook shares led to a sell- off in tech stocks.
Cambridge Analytica “is another indication of systemic problems at Facebook,” Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser said.
He said he does not believe the latest public relations nightmare will dent Facebook’s advertising business.
That’s the problem, said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy.
“The Cambridge Analytica scandal gives us a glimpse of how Facebook makes billions of dollars off of our personal information without ever dealing with the consequences,” said Chester, a privacy critic of Facebook.
Tapping the personal information people freely share on the social network to aim advertising is what turned Facebook’s business into one of the world’s most powerful.
Over theweekend, U. S. and British lawmakers and activists slammed Facebook, some demanding chief executive Mark Zuckerberg appear at legislative hearings.
In 2007, Facebook gave third parties who created an app on Facebook access to users’ information.
Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the Cambridge Analytica incident was a textbook violation of the settlement Facebook reached with the Federal Trade Commission in 2011 that required that users give permission before their data are shared beyond the privacy limits they set on Facebook.