Cambridge Analytica
This scandal that you may have been seeing online or on the news, has recently become quite the hot topic. Since you may not know what Cambridge Analytica is, and why they are relevant, I will break it down a bit before voicing my opinion on the matter. Cambridge Analytica is a data harvesting company, and no they are not affiliated with Cambridge University in UK nor Cambridge, Massachusetts. Why they are relevant is an interesting and controversial topic. Cambridge Analytica went against Facebook’s privacy terms about data harvesting from its user’s profiles, and harvest data illegally. This company has been hired by Ted Cruz when he was running for the Republican nominee in the recent election, and by Donald Trump to work on his campaign (Quartz Media). They also have worked on influencing politics in other countries, for things such as presidential/prime minister campaigns, and with Britain during the times of the Brexit (they were pro-leave).
Recently, the executives of Cambridge Analytica, have been caught on tape admitting to use illegal ways to influence the outcome of their work in different countries. The link for the original article and video is shown below.
Now to where I stand on role it played in election. Relating to the current ideas connecting Cambridge Analytica to the Russian scandals, I believe that it is true that either the company as a whole or workers were involved with pairing with Russians to alter the outcomes of the 2016 presidential election here in America. Not only did they illegally sourced private information from Facebook users, but they were also probably involved with illegally rigging the election. However, the only way to prove this will be for Mueller to successfully find pressing evidence against the company in his investigations, then to bring this evidence to higher up powers.
It has been eight years since Facebook launched Open Graph API, which allows third party applications to access Facebook user data (Quartz Media). In 2011, they created a contract saying that they have to ask for user permission to source data. Ever since then, games and other applications have been asking for user permission to possibly access their timeline or photos, things such as that. Because of the issues created by Cambridge Analytica, accessing user data for “academic reasons,” but then actually sourcing other information not specifically requested from the users such as access to all of their friends, many people are quick to blame Facebook. Now if you remember from my first sentence, Facebook okay-ed this, and did not think of future companies collecting data in a dirty way. Because we create accounts on Facebook and control how much information we share with the public, we should be held responsible, not Facebook.
Fast forward to 2015, where Cambridge Analytica claims that they have deleted the data previously sourced from Facebook. Facebook never confirms this, which is why some may think that Facebook should be held responsible for this whole mess.
Facebook had previously insisted that all of the data obtained by Cambridge Analytica was destroyed. (CNet)
Come the presidential election, and they end up using this data to show specific ad campaigns and other propaganda to influence people’s thoughts and in turn, their vote for presidency.
Not only can we as users control how much private information we show to the public- and in return how much information is gathered from us from third party applications- we can also control how much we let propaganda, especially from social media, influence our lives and actions. Personally, if I were to see propaganda on social media, I fact check it against multiple websites, especially if it is a heavy claim. However, most people hypnotized by information on social networking sites do not do such thing.
On the other hand, in light to all of these happenings, I believe that we as a country should be regulating user privacy and data collection. Even though we can control what we share, companies should not be capitalizing on our choice to share. Facebook and other social networking sites have biographies, about pages or something related, thus giving us the choice to write personal information. Why should we be punished for using the website correctly?
As the alternate side for regulating user privacy and data collection, it makes complete sense as to why we should not regulate these things. Large social media sites basically sell our information to other companies and applications. Social media sites often do not require us to pay to use their site, so they use ad revenue and money from selling user data to fund their website and pay their workers. I am sure if you ask people if they would pay to use Facebook, they would say no and that they would rather not use it than pay. Users expect free use of the website all while not thinking of how these websites actually make their money.
In conclusion, I wonder what the outcome of this will be. Will it influence the United States laws on allowing social media sites to sell user data to third parties? Will the individual companies take action instead to prevent this from happening in the future? Was Cambridge Analytica actually involved with the Russian scandals involving Pres. Donald Trump’s winning? I hope to be able to update this post in the future with answers to these questions.
