Digital Study
We have grown so used to hearing stories about corporations buying and selling our private information that it has become part of the typical 21st century day. Notwithstanding, it is one thing to hear about people’s information being distributed without consent, and quite another to realize Facebook is allowing hundreds of millions of user’s accounts to be accessed by private companies even without Facebook’s own consent. It is because of this that the recent Facebook scandal affects us all, and is an issue that needs to be addressed. One billion persons across the globe use the online service, which makes it Facebook’s responsibility to watch over and protect all of their data. Hence, having been negligent in their duties to protect said data, Facebook had their CEO and creator Mark Zuckerberg questioned by congress at Capitol Hill to defend Facebook’s mishap. The majority of the questions revolved around this most recent scandal, and whether or not Facebook was to receive ramifications, which is really the main issue on everyone’s mind right now. Is Facebook responsible? And if they are, are they reprehensible? To answer simply, yes, though no one at Facebook wished for this to happen, they have still allowed it to go on and have attempted to cover it all up, and are completely at fault. Though most people would agree with me on this point, many would go on to say that Facebook shouldn’t be punished, which I don’t believe to be morally or legally just. It is exclusively their responsibility to watch and protect data stored by anyone on their website, but people argue that they are still a private entity with user agreements, giving them the right to do just about anything with data posted on their websites.
To further expand on this whole issue and the scandal in question, it is important to bring up The Guardian’s article written in March of this year, which explains the far-reaching impact that this issue had on the U.S. In it, the scandal is stated very simply so there can be no confusion: Cambridge Analytica, a private data analytics company, “used personal information taken without authorization in early 2014 to build a system that could profile individual US voters, in order to target them with personalized political advertisements.” Basically, this company tapped into the profiles of more than 50 million americans in order to sway potential voters through personalized ads. This really helps put the whole situation in perspective, as well as outline its currents day importance. Because of their incompetence in protecting users, Facebook has allowed people to be brainwashed by corporations to side for political candidates, which could possibly have swayed the results of the past election.
Additionally, a whistleblower who formerly worked for Cambridge Analytica named Christopher Wylie has testified in regards to Facebook’s weak attempts at blocking the company from using all the information gathered, as well as stopping future privacy violations. This is also mentioned in The Guardian’s article, which states that Facebook “failed to alert users and took only limited steps to recover and secure the private information of more than 50 million people.” They also mention the information that the whistleblower (Wylie) supplied, which “included a letter from Facebook’s own lawyers sent to him in August 2016, asking him to destroy any data he held that had been collected by GSR, the company set up by Kogan to harvest the profiles.” To put it in simpler terms, Facebook had known for more than a year that millions of users were robbed of their privacy and had tried to sweep it under the rug. The problem is that they couldn’t even do THAT right, as they took minimal efforts to recover the data. Also, they literally asked the people who took said data to delete it, which to me really shows the incompetence and self-righteousness that makes up Facebook believing that people would just “hand the data back or destroy it themselves”
Moving on to the present, Zuckerberg now has to prepare for a hearing filled with congressmen and women who are well aware of the political turmoil that his site has caused. In an article by NPR.org, congressmen including Mark Warner and Ted Cruz were quoted in regards to these political effects, and they seemed extremely troubled: “Congress has grown increasingly worried about the role of social media sites in politics since it was revealed that Russia used platforms like Facebook and Twitter to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.” This is mainly because, like mentioned in my opening paragraph, Facebook is still a private company and is within its rights to promote political parties. However, what I like about his article more than anything is that they offer a rebuke to those saying that because Facebook is a private company they could never be legally punished: “There isn’t much Congress can do right now to change the way Facebook, a private company, operates. Some lawmakers, like Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, the top Democrat on the commerce committee, told reporters on Monday that Congress is thinking seriously about changing that, and Zuckerberg knows it.” Basically, having seen the power that a company like Facebook possesses, and having seen the poor management of people’s data, congress is deciding they need to strip Facebook of its power, or at least limit it. There is a general agreement that yes, Facebook is wrong, and that Facebook should be punished regardless of people having consented to this. It even seems as if Mark Zuckerberg himself is aware that this whole scandal has been managed poorly by Facebook when he said “We have a responsibility to not just build tools, but to make sure those tools are used for good”. Here he admits to a moral responsibility in this case, and helps further prove my point that Facebook holds moral and lawful blame for this scandal and should be held accountable.
Despite all the aforementioned admitted wrong doings by Facebook, it did seem that they would avoid any sort of consequence in the near future. For one, it was reported by Forbes.com that Facebook actually made profits through shareholders during Zuckerberg’s deposition, which to me says that the general consensus is still that Facebook will receive little to no repercussions. However, this Forbes.com article is key because it also shows that not everyone actually consented for their information to be taken. The process through which Cambridge Analytica took information is shown, and we can see that users whose friends info were taken were also victims by association. This is summed up when the article says “when people took the survey, not only was their information shared, but so was that of their Facebook friends.” So while some people did consent without knowing, there are millions whose info was taken that never consented for Facebook to do so, meaning for the first time in this argument Facebook is both legally and morally wrong.
Another article by cnet.com also backed this notion, however they noted the reasons for which we still might not see any repercussions for Facebook. First off, they emphasize the point that congress really wants to punish Facebook, but is handicapped in doing so because they don’t really understand how the internet works. Regardless, the article mentions that Facebook will be dealt with, wether by congress or another branch: “Even though Congress clearly needs to spend some time doing its homework, Facebook still faces threats from other parts of the government, including the FTC”. The article goes on to explain that the FTC are actually capable of fining Facebook due to violated censorship decrees. Like I mentioned above, Facebook was finally found out of their legal bounds because information was taken from those who didn’t consent. All in all, this could result in “fines of $40,000 a day since Nov. 29, 2011”, which would prove my point that Facebook should and will be punished.
When it comes to corporations, sometimes the term “Too big to fail” applies all too perfectly. Throughout this paper, there are multiple instances where we can clearly see wrongdoings in the legal and moral spheres with absolutely no consequence for Facebook. It is even reported by marketwatch.com that the worst is over for Facebook, which for a week suffered a big number of account deletions, but was back to operating like normal in no time. The article explains how you can always tell the economic direction of Facebook through the ratio of accounts made to accounts deleted, and that as of now the shift is minimal. “You’ve seen a lot of advocacy for people to delete their accounts, but it hasn’t translated into action. The worst is likely over for Facebook”. While my main purpose was to prove that Facebook was in the wrong and should be punished despite people believing that their status as a private company protected them, it has become clear that even though proven, little will come of it. Even if the FTC passes its fines, a company like Facebook wouldn’t skip a beat due to their huge amounts of profit. It is a sad conclusion, and very telling of the world in which we live in, but it does seem that sometimes corporations are beyond reproach, even with something as vital as our privacy at steak.
Sources:
Graham-Harrison, Emma, and Carole Cadwalladr. “Revealed: 50 Million Facebook Profiles Harvested for Cambridge Analytica in Major Data Breach.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 17 Mar. 2018, www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election.
Snell, Kelsey, and Alina Selyukh. “Facebook In Congress: What To Expect When Zuckerberg Goes To Capitol Hill.” NPR, NPR, 10 Apr. 2018, www.npr.org/2018/04/10/600917264/facebook-in-congress-what-to-expect-when-zuckerberg-goes-to-capitol-hill.
Aziza, Bruno. “Facebook Privacy Scandal Hearings: What You Missed.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 16 Apr. 2018, www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2018/04/16/facebook-privacy-scandal-hearings-what-you-missed/#7ebea2d7ab9c.
Sherr, Ian. “Congress Isn’t Ready to Regulate Silicon Valley, but It Wants To.” CNET, CNET, 17 Apr. 2018, www.cnet.com/news/congress-isnt-ready-to-regulate-zuckerberg-facebook-twitter-google/.
Mullaney, Tim. “This One Number Proves Facebook’s Data Scandal Is Already History.” MarketWatch, 16 Apr. 2018, www.marketwatch.com/story/this-one-number-proves-facebooks-data-scandal-is-already-history-2018-04-16.
