THE USE of social media has always been double-edged.
On the one hand, people use social media mainly for communication. It is, by far, the easiest platform to connect with other people. However, its massive success may also be manipulated for personal or business agenda, similar to the ongoing brouhaha over the data exploitation of Facebook.
Based on the 10 principles of social science concerned with the efficient use of scarce and resources, the cost of something is what you give up to get it as people face trade-offs. This is almost the same argument as Mark Zuckerberg’s, the founder of Facebook.
Christopher Wylie, who once worked in Cambridge Analytica, recently blew the whistle on Facebook for “harvest(ing) millions of people’s profiles.” Cambridge Analytica (CA) is a British political consulting firm that combines data mining, data brokerage and data analysis with strategic communication for the electoral process.
“[The application] built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons,” Wylie told The Guardian. “That was the basis the entire company was built on,”
Wylie said the application was the work of Cambridge University professor Aleksandr Kogan, who had approached CA that obtained permission by Facebook to harvest data from its users. The test showed that the application would go into the user’s network and pull out all of their friends’ data and status updates, likes and in some cases, private messages.
Facebook confirmed that as many as 87 million profiles were involved in the data mining.
Wylie claimed CA used the data in behavioral sciences to help the companies connect with them on a “personal level.” This means Facebook sold the date to businesses to aid their marketing strategies.
People had no idea that their data were being taken but Kogan affirmed that everything he did was legal and Facebook granted him permission for his app.
Zuckerberg said they tried to prevent these tools from being used for harm in the form of fake news, foreign interferences in election and hate speech as well as developers and data privacy.
But now that the damage has been done, it is obvious that Facebook did not take a broad view of their responsibilities and that was a big mistake.
Wylie said CA itself was founded using Facebook data. This means that Facebook’s security measure were not that tight as third parties could always manipulate and exploit our accounts. Included in these third parties are the software, website and applications we signed up for.
The Internet is a very powerful tool that could control our whole life, especially now that we are living in an environment where we create digital data in everything we do. The controversy is a wake-up call that people’ privacy must be protected in the digital age.
This episode is a blot on the record of Facebook. Breached data could be deleted, replaced or fixed, but the damage and trust of people could not be repaired. At the end of the day, it will fall upon us on how we choose and use social media. We need to be responsible citizens on- and off-line because everything we post and put online will be taken against us.
