How safe is Facebook? More specifically, how safe is your data on Facebook? Last week the latest privacy scandal struck the world’s largest social media network when it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica, the shadowy conservative data analytics company credited with winning votes for Brexit and Donald Trump, got its hands on the data of 50m American Facebook users.
The social media giant was quick to point out that this wasn’t a "violation" of its policies because the data was legitimately provided to psychologist Aleksandr Kogan, who then sold it to Cambridge Analytica. It’s kind of like saying that a gun used in a murder was legitimately bought at a store before it was stolen, isn’t it?
Facebook’s value plummeted US$37bn last Monday after the news broke, while CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s wealth was shaved by $5bn. Within two days it had dropped over $50bn. Zuckerberg apologised five days after The Observer investigation broke, calling it a "breach of trust".
But it is so much more.
Facebook is a business based on exploiting its users’ data to sell them advertising
— Toby Shapshak
In the past year Facebook has fallen inestimably in the public eye for its many infractions. The spread of fake news, revealed to have been orchestrated by Russian Internet trolls and seen by an estimated 126m people, is one. Facebook’s responses have been as catastrophic. Its inability to get a grip on this misuse of its platforms, the ham-fisted reaction to cutting all news (which affected real news organisations adversely) and then the reports that it fuelled hate speech and violence against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar — about which the UN said "Facebook has now turned into a beast" — are other examples.
The extent of the data Facebook has gathered about its users is, frankly, terrifying. Last week people who downloaded their data after deleting their accounts discovered Facebook kept logs (called metadata) of their phone calls and text messages made from Android phones.
Facebook says its mission is "connecting people", but it’s ultimately about running a business — a business based on exploiting its users’ data to sell them advertising. This is all deeply worrying.
Cambridge Analytica’s offence has been to use Facebook user data to manipulate people according to their intimate likes and dislikes, interests and passions to make a political decision. We usually call that propaganda.
Kogan was only able to exploit its privacy settings because Facebook itself had such privacy options. Worse still, Facebook knew about this data breach in 2015 and didn’t tell anyone. That alone is negligence that is likely to be punished by US legislators.
We live in a surveillance economy — where our online lives are exploited to sell us advertising. We are under constant observation, not by the evil Big Brother of George Orwell’s 1984, but by self-serving, commercially focused online firms. As in the novel, the worst is still to come.
• Shapshak is editor-in-chief and publisher of Stuff magazine (stuff.co.za)
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