Data breach serves as a warning to Facebook users
What’s not to like about Facebook, a company that’s all about liking and friending?
Well, a lot, it turns out. Earlier this month The New York Times and Britain’s The Guardian disclosed that data the company collected, ostensibly to allow for more targeted advertising, was swooped up and used to try to help elect Donald Trump.
A company called Cambridge Analytica used (some would say weaponized) Facebook data to profile 50 million people without their consent. Those profiles were then used by the Trump campaign to bombard voters with content designed to promote Trump or disparage Hillary Clinton. Cambridge Analytica is said to have used similar tactics earlier in 2016 in an effort to persuade British citizens to vote for Britain’s exit from the European Union.
Political groups have long used social media to target voters. But never have they been able to harvest such detailed information that could be used to predict users’ political leanings and their likelihood of being swayed.
Cambridge Analytica did this by inviting users to participate in a personality test app. Then, for reasons that are not entirely clear, it was able to gather detailed data not just on the 270,000 people who answered the questions, but also their 50 million friends.
If nothing else, this episode should serve as a warning to users of social media that their data will be used for far more than generating more relevant ads. It almost certainly will be used again for nefarious political purposes. And it could be used to manipulate opinion on a host of issues.
If there was any doubt about the morals of those collecting people’s private data, it was settled when Cambridge Analytica’s CEO Alexander Nix was caught (ironically, on a hidden camera) offering to entrap rivals of potential clients by secretly videotaping them with women that Cambridge Analytica would provide. Nix has since been suspended.
The stakes are even higher for Facebook. If the social media site continues to maintain such a cavalier attitude about people’s data, enhanced regulation (particularly in Europe) will be the least of its worries. It will face a user rebellion.
After initially balking, CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to testify before Congress next month. And on Wednesday, Facebook announced a new policy designed to make it easier for users to change their private settings. That’s a start, but more will need to be done to repair what Zuckerberg acknowledged was “a major breach of trust.”
With episodes like this, Facebook users are quickly changing their views about personal privacy and will no doubt move to disconnect data-harvesting apps. This will make Facebook less valuable to marketers.
Over the longer term, users will begin to question why they are even providing so much free content that makes Facebook rich — while giving third parties a window into their lives.