Don’t Blame Facebook; Blame Yourself.
Facebook is taking a lot of heat recently — blamed for Russian interference in the election, the rise of fake news, for handing Trump the presidency, and now for failing to protect its users’ data in the Cambridge Analytica scandal — so much heat that Mark Zuckerberg made an announcement last Wednesday, pledging steps to better protect users’ data. It’s easy to blame the social networking giant, but when it comes to Cambridge Analytica, the company just didn’t do anything wrong, and more importantly didn’t do anything illegal.
Some critics have cited that Facebook failed to notify users of a data breach. That’s because there wasn’t one. “This was unequivocally not a data breach,” Andrew Bosworth, a Facebook executive, tweeted. “People chose to share their data with third party apps and if those third party apps did not follow the data agreements with us/users it is a violation. No systems were infiltrated, no passwords or information were stolen or hacked.”
In 2013, Aleksandr Kogan did not breach Facebook data, but he did somehow get 300,000 narcissistic Facebook users to take a personality quiz app, which gave him access to all of their data and tens of millions of their friends’ data. All the users who took the personality quiz consented to having the app access their data. Now the problem isn’t that he accessed the data, but what he then did with the data.
We can’t glance over the importance of allowing apps to access Facebook data. Without the ability for apps to access their users’ Facebook data, these apps wouldn’t be able to create superb user experiences. Apps like Tinder wouldn’t be able to authenticate that their users are real people and wouldn’t be able to find their users better matches by showing them people who have similar interests. No users were complaining about apps accessing their data when they have the convenience of just clicking “log in with Facebook,” rather than having to enter their age, name, and other biographic data manually.
The whole premise of the popular dating app Hinge is that it matches you based on your Facebook data and friends. When you download Hinge and click ‘accept’ in the confirmation dialog box, you’re giving the app permission to mine your interests, details, friends of friend, and other Facebook data in order to uncover the best potential matches in your social network. Hinge claims that their process is more accurate than other dating sites because unlike apps, such as OKcupid, where you can skew your data to fit an idealized version of yourself, you can’t lie about your Facebook data.
Although Kogan obtained the data from users legally and consensually, he then shared the data with Cambridge Analytica, thereby violating Facebook’s data agreement. Kogan insisted to users and to Facebook that his interest in the data was purely academic i.e. he lied. Neither Facebook nor the 300,000 responders who took his personality quiz had any idea they were providing information to the Trump campaign.
When Facebook learned that Kogan violated the agreement in 2015, the company immediately banned his app from the platform, and demanded that he and Cambridge Analytica formally certify that they had deleted all improperly acquired data. Although they provided these certifications, there is reason to suspect the company did not comply.
Many critics have suggested that Facebook should have followed through to oversee exactly how Kogan and other app developers use the data that they collect from Facebook, but it should be users, not Facebook, that bear the brunt of the responsibility. Users need to be more careful about what apps and companies they click “accept” for and allow access to their data. Ultimately, it’s their data and they should be suspicious of apps, and take responsibility for sharing their data with bad actors.
Despite the fact that Facebook committed no foul play when it comes to the Cambridge Analytics scandal, they are still planning to implement major changes, proving that they’re taking the issue seriously. Back in 2014, the company changed its policy to prevent apps from accessing the data of a user’s friend unless their friends had also authorized the app.
Now Facebook pledges to investigate all apps and to conduct a full audit of any app that has suspicious activity. The company also plans to reduce the data a user gives an app when you sign in to only name, profile photo, and email address, requiring developers to not only get approval but also sign a contract.
“In the next month, we will show everyone a tool at the top of your News Feed with the apps you’ve used and an easy way to revoke those apps’ permissions to your data,” Zuckerberg wrote in his Facebook post.
Facebook should get credit for attempting to implement changes that show they’re taking the Cambridge Analytica scandal seriously, but at the end of the day, Facebook users should understand that their data has been mined, and will continue to be mined, from day one. That’s the implicit agreement users make with a company when they sign up, that’s what they’re not paying for and what they’re trading for in order to access all the benefits and services that Facebook provides.
No one should be surprised about how Cambridge Analytica used Facebook data because it was inevitable. Facebook makes money by selling data to advertisers, helping sell products, and manipulating users. When it comes down to it, Facebook is a company that exists to serve it’s two groups of conflicting clientele — users and advertisers. It’s true that Facebook, as well as Google and Twitter, worked closely with the Trump campaign by targeting hard to reach voters and refining its messaging, but so did the Obama campaign in 2008 and 2012. Clinton’s campaign turned down such assistance from tech companies. Trump flooded the network with targeted ad variations, and collected $9 million of donations by live streaming “Trump TV” on Facebook. Both Russian hackers and the Trump campaign deftly used the infrastructure of the network for their benefits, but that’s not the company’s fault.
We must remember that online target advertising is still fairly new technology and Facebook is bound to fumble as they try to balance serving their advertisers while protecting their users. When Facebook blocked ad targeting to users based on sexual orientation this month — in order to prevent harmful ads like the one made by an Evangelist Group trying to “cure” LBGT people that targeted LBGT people directly — LBGT communities lashed out against the network because LBGT organizations that offer services are now unable to target their audiences directly. Facebook gets censured for allowing the spread of disinformation, but no credit for taking steps to combat fake news.
Ultimately, Facebook is just a tool, yet we hold it to higher standards than we do any other company. We approve the company when they allow apps to use our data for our benefit — as the case with dating apps — but then harshly criticize the company when apps use our data for nefarious purposes — as the case with Cambridge Analytica. We need to blame Trump, blame Russia, blame Cambridge Analytica, blame the bad agents and advertisers that use Facebook, but not the company itself. Yes, Facebook’s evil, but not more evil than any other large corporation out there. When it comes to Cambridge Analytica, the only sin Facebook committed was existing.
