Facebook scandal

 

Facebook’s biggest scandal hit in March 2018, when the Guardian and New York Times reported that a firm called Global Science Research had harvested data from millions of Facebook users in 2013 – without their explicit consent.

This was possible because a previous version of Facebook’s privacy policy had allowed apps to access data about users’ friends – such as their name, birthday and location. This had enabled Global Science Research to gather information about 87 million Facebook users even though only around 30,000 people had actually used their app. These details were later sold to Cambridge Analytica, who used it to create highly-targeted ads to encourage users to vote for Trump and Brexit.

The area surrounding this scandal was so serious that Mark Zuckerberg was called to answer questions in front of Congress in the US.

Even Netflix came out with a documentary on how social media can have huge impacts on the most important and crucial decisions anyone makes without even realizing that they are being coaxed by their mobile screens into making those decisions that have the ability to alter the lives of themselves and the people around them.

Whether or not the Trump election was biased or  not is a hugely disputed matter.

Not only Facebook but all technology companies who hold  our personal data share this data with each other and more. We the users of these platforms have transformed from being the customer to being the product, for advertisement agencies. 

Some say that the engines know what we want to see and read online better than we ourselves do.

With no strict regulations on these technology giants, there have been many such cases and they say they self- regulate, which as we can all guess isn't good enough.

Facebook is basically selling their users to the highest bidder with no regards as to how it will affect the user.