SOCIAL MEDIA AS POLITICAL WEAPON
Facebook has drawn us closer, but there have been negative consequences.
For more than a decade, Facebook has connected millions of us across the planet. It’s even a part of their mission statement, “Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.”
But drawing us all closer together is now having negative consequences and fundamentally reshaping society thanks to companies like Cambridge Analytica who are hijacking our personal data for political agendas we may or may not agree with.
Cambridge Analytica gained access to Facebook user data from university researchers. The researchers collected the information using a Facebook app that promised to give users a personality profile. The original agreement was to use that information for academic research, but that all changed when it was acquired by Cambridge Ana-
lytica who turned it into a digital political weapon by using it to influence voters in the 2016 presidential election.
The researchers from Cambridge University and Stanford found with just ten Facebook “likes,” the algorithm they had developed was more accurate than the average person’s friend. With 150 “likes,” it knew the person better than their family, and with 300 “likes,” it could outsmart that person’s partner.
That level of detail is both impressive and frightening.
Facebook’s mission to connect the world has resulted in them sitting on perhaps more raw data than any company in history. It’s a marketer’s dream. What foods you like to eat. What stores you frequent. Who is your best friend? It’s all tracked and stored in databases. Even your smartphone tracks where you’re at every hour of the day. Now Facebook knows where you live, where you work and what stores and locations you visit on a daily basis. This data is a goldmine for digital marketers.
The fundamental problem is social media companies like Facebook, Twitter and others have built their business model on the idea of capturing and breaking down your data and selling your attention to the highest bidder. Students will ask me, “Why doesn’t Facebook have a customer service number I can call with problems.” The answer is simple. You’re Facebook’s product, not their customer. Your data and online activity is what you’re providing. Facebook’s customer is the company paying millions a year to show you things on your Facebook or Instagram newsfeed.
We are living in the Wild West of limitless data collection on human beings, and no one seems to care. Now we’re realizing how robust these datasets can be and how they can be used for good or ill.
The data is generated just by being a user on Facebook. They track what pages you like, what you’re talking about with your friends inside Facebook Messenger and even track what websites you visit when you leave Facebook. Other datasets get purchased from third-party companies that monitor details of your offline life. One example is your grocery store discount card. That information gets sold to companies who use it for digital marketing purposes. By combining all of this data, we can get an incredibly detailed understanding of you as a human being.
This is powerful stuff. When used by sophisticated people this data can be used to manipulate and influence people with disturbing levels of accuracy and power. That’s why Facebook is in such hot water.
So Facebook knows your best friend — big deal right? Wrong. It’s a huge deal. So big that in Europe, individuals have gained the right to consent or not consent to the data being collected about them. That hasn’t happened here — yet.
Data juggernauts like Facebook and Google, are immensely powerful. We now see how they can manipulate us not just in our purchases but for political gain.
So what to do? Should we follow in Europe’s footsteps and demand more access to our own information? Or should we simply accept that our data will continue to be bought and sold by those who may or may not have our best interests at heart?