Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook’s scandal.

By now you would have heard about Facebook is unable to contain the fallout over a data privacy scandal.

Mark Zuckerberg finally addressed the story only after the #DeleteFacebook campaign gained momentum around the world.

So how did we get there and how does Facebook recover from this scandal?

First of all, let’s figure out what happened.

• So on March 16th, the New York Times and the Guardian reported that a data mining firm called Cambridge Analytica which had worked on Donald Trump’s Presidential Campaign, had improperly gained access to more than 50 million user profiles.
• Experts believe that this data could have been used to target people to get an unfair advantage in targeting voters.
• Despite this, it’s the biggest public relation crisis Facebook has ever faced.

So lets look what happened.

• It starts way back in 2014. A University of Cambridge researcher named Alexander Kogan created an app called “This is your digital life”, where about 300,000 people downloaded it, gave away their information and Alexander Kogan passed on these information to a data mining firm named Cambridge Analytica.

At that time Facebook’s API (Application Program Interface) let developers to access information about your friends and about you.

If you would have used Farmville, Tinder, and other dating and gaming apps in Facebook, those apps would ask you to login using Facebook profile.

• That’s where Kogan’s offer to Cambridge Analytica was something more cheaper, faster and of quality that nothing matched.
• They had apps on Facebook that were given special permission to harvest data from not only the person who joins the app, but also would go into the person’s entire friend network and collect the friends data as well.
• Now, Christopher Wylie who used to work for Cambridge Analytica, told news agencies that, that’s how this company had gained access to over 50 million users in Facebook.

Cambridge Analytica obtained this information in total violation of Facebook’s rules and didn’t tell anyone that their data was used without their knowledge

• Facebook then went to Kogan and Cambridge Analytica and demanded that they delete all of the data that they had obtained in violation of Facebook’s rules.
• But in reality, both of them never did delete the data they had, and Facebook never even bothered about investigating to see whether they actually deleted it or not.

This is the heart of the problem why some people are deleting their Facebook’s profile right now. Facebook made it so easy for people like Kogan to get access to millions of users.

Elon Musk took down his Tesla and SpaceX Facebook page.

The Solution Facebook had found for this.

Facebook had already stopped developers from gaining access to your friends data and your data in 2014.

Now its going a step further.

• If you go 3 months without using an app, Facebook’s is going to cut off developer access to any information about you.

And for developers that did have your information, including the information from back in 2014, Facebook’s going to demand to delete the data else they’d be kicked off the platform.

So will this fix the problem??

I’m not sure and this is just the start of these kinds of issues the world is facing.

Let’s hope world becomes a better place .

Thanks for reading.

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Until next time.

Peace, Love and Gratitude.

SS