The Facebook Scandal: What you need to know

Since the election of Donald Trump, there have been repeated claims of illegal meddling in the elections, mostly from the Democratic end. The claim that tools on the internet were used to influence the elections in favor of Trump and against Clinton, so Democrats are calling foul. It was later found that the Democrats were indeed right; an organization called Cambridge Analytica collected the information of about 87 million Facebook users before the 2016 elections and used its, “psychographics” team to determine their political inclinations and degree of vulnerability. This information was then systematically used to propagate anti-Clinton propaganda, which is believed to have played a role in influencing the voting decisions of their target audience. 

How was Facebook involved in this? A report found that Facebook had, in fact, facilitated the collection of this information because of its lax privacy laws, which indirectly allowed external meddling in the elections of 2016. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, was summoned before committees of the House of Representatives and the Congress in the US to provide answers to the increasing concerns for the privacy of Facebook’s users, with its facilitation of Cambridge Analytica’s information collection seen as a breach of privacy laws. 

In the 5-hour grilling session endured by Mr. Zuckerberg, there were three main takeaways. First, Facebook has a lot of personal data on its users. From locations to political opinions to the very intimate of relationships, Facebook has repositories that store this information and use it to micro-target individuals for specific products and services. Second, the House and Congress are developing an increasing concern for the privacy of its citizens and the hearing raised serious questions regarding the cost of the supposedly, ‘free’ service that Facebook provides. Third, and perhaps most importantly, the hearing reinvigorated debates about privacy and breaches of privacy, particularly with regards to how information along the likes of that collected by Facebook, can be used to achieve political ends. 

In totality, the hearings of last week seem to be the tip of a very, very large iceberg. Most technological companies collect a significant amount of data on individuals that can be used to pursue vested interests, which really brings the viability and neutrality of technology into question.