TechTheDay

Just this month, the Guardian has published a series of articles that tie in Donald Trump, the Brexit campaign, and a company called Cambridge Analytica. The articles stated that in 2014, Cambridge Analytica took information from Facebook and created a system that can analyze and target individual users with ads that are customized to persuade the targets to agree to a certain political agenda. Over 50 million user data was stolen from Facebook and was used to create the system. Christopher Wylie, the creator of the system and the “whistleblower” described the system as a “psychological warfare mindf**k tool.” He told the Guardian in an article how the system uses the data to build models that are used to persuade the targets. The system creates models of the targets’ psychological makeup and political profiles and targets them with political ads designed to work effectively on that person.

Facebook Is “Sorry”

Facebook, who was already in hot water after getting rapped at by the US for the role it played during the US elections that put currently elected President Of The United States, Donald Trump, into office, is back into the fray after the articles have been published. They released a statement after maintaining silence about the issue for five days since it came out. In the statement, they expressed that they recognized that there’s an issue with who and how they share their data to other companies when they shouldn’t have been doing so and instead should have been protecting it.

Mark wrote in the statement: “We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you.” He also said that they have made changes in the rules regarding the breach and added that there are more things that needed to be done.

In the past, Facebook seems liberal about the amount of personal data of its users that they share with 3rd party developers until 2014. However, before they were able to reduce the amount of data they shared, Aleksandr Kogan, a data scientist, was able to extract the data of more than 50 million people from Facebook and transferred it to Cambridge Analytica, but back then he didn’t know how that data will ultimately be used. Facebook has banned Cambridge Analytica from its platform. Cambridge Analytica has told Facebook in 2015 that it had deleted the data already, but just this March they received word that that wasn’t true and a lot of the data still exist.

The Fallout

Users from every political spectrum were not pleased that Facebook has indeed been sharing personal data with business and marketing partners. Many opted to delete their accounts in response to how Facebook mishandled their users’ information. Elon Musk’s companies, SpaceX and Tesla, has opted to delete their Facebook accounts, though he claims that the move isn’t to make any political statement: Facebook just creeps him out. Porn magazine, Playboy, has also deleted their Facebook account in response to the news. Due to the scandal, Facebook has lost $100 billion of its market value.

Is This The End Of Facebook?

Many ask if this is the end of Facebook. Experts believe that the answer is a no and that Facebook’s platform is too good for marketers and advertisers to just give up on. Some argue that social media has become a necessity to live.

If Facebook does come out of this scandal alive will it learn its lesson and stop sharing people’s data without people’s permission? Most likely not: other people’s personal data has always been Facebook’s product. It would be foolish to abandon the business model that made Facebook invincible these past years. Will people learn to stop putting too much personal information on Facebook? Maybe, maybe not.