No one should be surprised by the data mining on social media

CAN I suggest that anyone who is shocked by the alleged illegal use of Facebook data to influence voting patterns in the 2016 presidential election (“Chief of data firm is suspended in row over secret filming allegations”, The Herald, March 21) must have had their head buried deep in the sand? The claim by Facebook that its company policy had been compromised is laughable.

In 2013 Democratic senator Maxine Waters appeared on national US television and boasted that in the 2012 presidential election Barack Obama had a database of a scale and depth never before known. Subsequently a former member of the Obama campaign declared that once Facebook discovered what was going on it had a meeting with the campaign but did not stop the information mining because “they were on the same side”.

Profiling of voters is nothing new. After all, remember Tony Blair in 1997 used specifically targeted voter groups in marginal constituencies to influence the results of the General Election. The only difference is that the quantity of information available because of social media is vastly greater. There is also the suspicion that governments are desperate to reduce the impact of social media in sharing information they would rather keep hidden. It is more difficult to control information if everyone has a smartphone. In a coup it is no longer simply a matter of taking over the TV station to stem the flow of information.

The individual is responsible for the amount of information about themselves they make available online. People should be aware that they are much more easily manipulated if they rely on government controlled media or tycoon-controlled press with a specific agenda for their “factual information”

David Stubley,

22 Templeton Crescent,

Prestwick.

APPALLING (and sleazy) as Cambridge Analytica’s behaviour is – or was – I am puzzled by the hysteria over Facebook.

Not being a teenager or someone who thinks food needs to be photographed for posterity before it can be digested, I have never had a Facebook account. However, even a Luddite like me finds it odd that anyone using Facebook thought their data was not being harvested. Exposing the guts of your life online and expecting that a free-to-use platform is not gleaning something is like eating burgers six times a day and being surprised you get fat or smoking and being surprised that you end up with lung cancer.

How lovely it would be if the same politicians who are on the current slam-social-media bandwagon had shifted themselves over the decades while Joe Public was being fed bilge by the gutter press – paving the way for, among other things, Brexit. Amanda Baker,

Saughton Gardens, Edinburgh.