Regulation of Social Media?

Cambridge Analytica did the unthinkable, they harvested millions of Facebook user’s data in order to sell that data to electoral campaigns. This was in order to use the data to influence voters at the ballot box, both were used in the Trump presidential campaign and the Brexit campaign as well. The big issue to come out of all of this is the use of user privacy and data. This comes in the question of whether or not we should regulate social media platforms in terms of our privacy and data. Our data and privacy are allowed to be used by these platforms in order to be shared on these platforms, however, this data is in no way to be sold to the highest bitter in order to gain an advantage whether it be for political advantage or even for advertisement purposes. Our privacy is highly at risk when it comes to this because that information is now out there for that organization to see. There have been a number of times that these organizations have been hacked, like the big fiasco with Sony being hacked and all their information being made public. This can happen to the millions of users of Facebook who have their private information on the site.

However there is something I noticed from all of this, I don’t see how Social Media is brought in all of this. Facebook, the platform that was in the middle of all this, has come out and spoke against knowing that this was going on with their user’s information. The main perpetrator of all this was Aleksandr Kogan, the develop of thisisyourdigitallife application. Behind Facebook’s back, Kogan sold the information gathered from this app to campaigns so that they can be used to influence voters. Facebook users trusted the app with their data and gave them permission to have access to their data. So how is it that social media should be regulated when they had no way of knowing that Kogan would turn their back on the agreement and sell that user information for profit. I believe that now Facebook will be better regulated by themselves so that this never occurs again but does not need to be regulated by outside forces like the government.

So should social media platforms be regulated, that is a yes and no answer. Social media should better regulate themselves so that this kind of breach never occurs but does not need outside interference in order to know how to regulate their own platform. This was shown by multiple politicians who needed to be educated on what Facebook was and how it worked. If they do not know how the platform is run then how can they regulate the platform? At the end of all this, all I can say is that people do need to be careful with who or what they give permission to. Especially in this digital age.