Facebook narrowly limits collection of user data
NEW YORK — Engulfed in a scandal over its users’ privacy, Facebook has opted to take little more than baby steps to fix the problem.
From the company’s perspective, that makes perfect sense. Stronger safeguards on user data might damage Facebook’s core business: using what it knows about you to sell ads that target your interests.
Facebook is proposing only narrow countermeasures that address the specifics of the furor over Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm that worked for Donald Trump’s campaign and is accused of improperly obtaining data from some 50 million Facebook users for the purpose of influencing voters.
Those measures, announced Wednesday by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, mostly involve new limits on what Facebook apps can do with the user data they collect. One such errant app was central to the Cambridge Analytica debacle.
But those steps don’t get at what many outsiders see as bigger problems at Facebook: its rampant data collection from users, its embrace of political ads that target individuals and small demographic groups with precision, and its apparent inability to end malicious use of its service by governments, corporations and criminal elements.
“They’re being very deft and creating the illusion of trust,” said Scott Galloway, a New York University professor of marketing. But by focusing on the mechanics of how apps work on its service, he said, Facebook is failing to take meaningful action to ensure it’s not “weaponized” by scammers, manipulators and other nefarious types.
Ultimately, Facebook is a data-collection company, and without user data it would wither and die. But how much data it sucks Zuckerberg in, and what it does with it, is a question of major public importance, privacy advocates say. It’s just not a question that Facebook shows any sign of wanting to address.
Facebook made $40 billion in advertising revenue last year, and that’s expected to rise 22 percent this year to $49 billion, according to research firm eMarketer. Wall Street analysts who follow Facebook don’t seem worried yet, despite the sharp drop in the company’s stock this week. That’s because analysts don’t expect it to have to change the way it does business.
Like its closest rival, Google, Facebook offers companies an unparalleled way to target people for advertising, right down to their most granular details. These companies can, for instance, single out users who live in Kansas and have listed Bernie Sanders and same-sex marriage as their interests — which is what some Russian-linked ads did as part of a propaganda campaign during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.
Special counsel Robert Mueller is scrutinizing the connections between President Donald Trump’s campaign and the data mining firm Cambridge Analytica.
Cambridge Analytica has come under fierce criticism from U.S. and British lawmakers over reports it swiped the data of more than 50 million Facebook users to sway elections.
Mueller’s investigators have asked former campaign officials about the Trump campaign’s data operations, particularly how it collected and utilized voter data in battleground states. That’s according to a person with direct knowledge who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile, Reps. Greg Walden of Oregon and Frank Pallone of New Jersey, the leaders of a the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said Thursday that they want Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify before the panel.