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Scrutiny falls on Facebook following reports of data harvesting for Trump campaign

Former Staff Member
Following The Guardian breaking this story over the weekend, concern has grown over how this happened and why nothing was done earlier to rectify the issue. #DeleteFacebook is trending with many users understandably angry over how their data was allegedly harvested and used to influence political elections.


What do you think should be done, firstly to rectify this issue and secondly to prevent things like this happening in future?
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    Facebook is free to the user. Facebook is valued at billions of dollars. The value of Facebook is in user data, and users enjoy the platform in this knowledge.

    I'm a big fan, I've got a lot out of Facebook over many years and never paid them a penny.
  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    Same here, Alex Barrett‍ 


    I use Facebook myself on a daily basis. Obviously I don't put anything on there which I consider to be particularly sensitive and I'm happy to accept the risk. I think most people are ...it's the media that love a good cyber security story like this
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    100% in agreenace. I think what people forget sometimes too, is that Facebook is a Business. Just as Alex stated, Facebooks value is in user data. We all know this, and accept it. 


    The issue is the media, like you said. On top of that, it is society. If Facebook shut down tomorrow, so many people would be outraged. If Facebook changed their system to stop allowing data to be on there, just a name, picture and post, it would become Twitter, and many people would stop using it. People use it for the data they agree to share, but when the data is shared, they do not like it.


    #MadWorld.
  • 0
    It's interesting that the hashtag didn't spread to Instagram (to the same extent at least) considering they are owned by Facebook and the same personal data will be extracted from there...
  • 0

    John Haith:

    Does anyone know the specific details on what Facebook data was actually leaked? I haven't found an article yet that explains exactly what was unwittingly shared




    From what I've read, it appears that the data was deliberately shared. Nothing I've read indicates it was unwittingly shared or due to some cyber-security breach. The university researcher, who built the quiz, based on a published API, to collect psychographic,demographic and firmographic data on many millions of people, as well as data on their friends, is reported as having transferred this data to Cambridge Analytica, which, if true, some would consider a breach of research ethics, at the least.  


    The rules of the game for most social network platforms are that users get the services they want, and platforms sell the psychographic data they need, to advertisers who are willing to pay for it, so they can develop persuasive messages psychographically targeted, ideally, to each user, based on their individual psychographic profile (psychological attributes). Psychographics has been applied to the study of personality, values, opinions, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles.  While psychographics is often equated with lifestyle research, it can also apply to the study of cognitive attributes such as attitudes, interests, opinions, beliefs and behavior.  As well as advertising, psychographic profiles are used in market segmentation, political segmentation, and for microtargetting messages or news stories to narrow constituencies or communities.  Pyschographic algorithms can either amplify or attentuate content that reaches users, which is where the vulnerability to society lies.  As with most technologies, this could be used for social good (public health messages) or socially corrosive agendas.  Are we inadvertently giving potential  adversaries the pychographic tools to manipulate our society? Is it a case of who pays, wins?


    So, how then can social networks eliminate bad actors, autonomous bots artificially promoting or suppressing content, posts, or fabricated news stories to manipulate, sow discontent, and divide constituencies? Social network platforms need to balance their commercial interests, society’s interests and user's interests. But how? 


    • Can Social Platforms develop standards that force transparency around who’s paying for advertisments or sponsored content?  

    • Should users have an opt-out option, where they can pay for the services they value, without any collection and sale of their usage or user data.

    • Should users  have the right to export data from existing social networks and import to new software platforms that would let them experiment with new services, while maintaining social contacts on existing ones?

    • Should industry regulate itself or is government regulation required?


    perhaps the scholars and policy makers among us can offer thier remedies!
  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    Here's an interesting read (although it doesn't clarify the fundamental problem...)

    ounews.co/.../


    ----------------------------------------------------------

    "Whenever personal data protection is discussed, we see comments along the lines of: “Well, if they want to know where and when I eat my favourite cheesecake, so be it. Why does that matter?”


    "It matters, because you should be asked what happens with information about you. We might not always know the value of our simple information which is why we need to be protected when we are sharing it. If only to be made aware that information about us is in the open.


    We might not always know the value of our simple information which is why we need to be protected when we are sharing it.

    "What if it isn’t cheesecake, but your daughter’s school? Your son’s whereabouts over the last few months? You or your partners spending over the past year? Information about ourselves belongs to us and the moment we share it we lose control over how it is spread, saved and put into context with other information

    ----------------------------------------------------------


    As I said previously, isn't the answer to simply educate people to not share anything sensitive online? After all, you wouldn't share personal data with a stranger in the street. The saga continues....
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    Thanks for sharing John Haith‍ Out of interest who do you think should be responsible for educating people - social media companies, the government, someone else? 
  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    I'm not sure Natalia D'lima. Schools? Parents? Workplace?

    Even back in the 80's when I was much younger, if someone randomly knocked at the door or phoned my house, I knew not to share personal information. But I don't know who taught me :)


    Slightly off topic, but I hear a lot of talk about targeted marketing. This is another one I don't fully understand. In Yorkshire, we receive different TV adverts to people in Cumbria. Isn't that targeted marketing just on a larger scale? Who makes the rules as to when the line is crossed and it becomes unethical? National? Regional? Local? Personal?
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    Schools/colleges/unirversities are definitely a good place to start John Haith‍ - though we might need something else for us over 21 years!


    That's a good point about targeted marketing - it's completely prevalant in society and has been for years. I suppose the line depends on the data that's being used to target us. Our age group might be okay (easy to find out, unchangeable), our weight may not be (personal, sensitive info)

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