Strike 1..Strike 2..Strike 3..where those the last strikes?
After reviewing the Cambridge Analytica scandal, I realized how important our privacy is and how it may affect our routines and lifestyle if it breaks down.
Every time I pass by through a store, or I’m walking in a new neighborhood I receive emails, texts from different companies asking me to visit their stores or websites. At first, I believed that maybe someday I added my personal information into that specific store’s database, but later I realized that I’ve actually NEVER shopped that brand!
So, it’s true! Facebook has my information since I was 18 years old, they’ve known every pattern in my life, who am I friends with, what are my likes and dislikes, what type of brand I follow and which type of music I listen, they know absolutely everything about me. This company have managed into investigating everything about my habits and personality in order to sell that information to other companies.
Will privacy invasion ever stop?
My appreciation towards this situation is that the private information that Facebook owns that belongs to all of its users will never stop of being shared and that they sell to other companies in order to continue following us and trying to be in our top of mind in order to buy their products or services.
Another issue is that the American government is related with Facebook promoting elections within the Republican party and is causing that people disconnect and reject even more this social media platform since it’s not trustworthy. It’s been a struggle between the people, government and private companies by fighting for the reliability of Facebook and its protection on people’s information.
Can it be regulated?
I believe that this can be definitely be regulated, everything in the digital world is starting to create a pattern and being stricter with the content within every platform.
For instance, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) have increased security protecting consumers by reviewing the influencer’s content in their social media such as Facebook and Instagram and analyzing if they ad the hashtag “#Ad” in every story or picture they post, since they can be leading their followers to a wrong perception of whether the product that they are promoting is good or bad.
They usually say they recommend everything but nobody really knows if they are being paid by that brand or not, in this case by this regulation there should be no doubt that they are being sponsored by the company behind the advertisement. So basically, if those influencers do not accomplish that mandatory request from the CMA, they will get fined by a huge amount of money.
The interesting fact is that this is occurring throughout the world, not only in the United Stated but in most countries their own entities are asking for the same condition, influencers marketing is not the future, is our present, and that’s how advanced we are getting.
Is it too late?
In my opinion, it’s never too late to start making the situation a regulated aspect in Facebook terms, it’s never too late to start teaching users in the digital world to be more responsible and reading the terms and conditions of a website or social media platform before they register the personal information, it’s never too late to decide whether if that sharing of information is truly prejudicial to our privacy or if it’s actually our reality and future and we just need to accept that we are no longer people behind four walls, but people that are showing our lifestyle to the whole world in a open space.
Government entities against corruption should be behind these questions and supporting the user’s sake instead of political parties and big data companies such as Facebook.
