Just like your parents are baffled by snapchat, a lot of congressmen are confused on how exactly Facebook works. Senator Orrin Hatch, asked Zuckerberg, “How do you sustain a business model in which users don’t pay for your service?”. Marky Z struggled not to smirk to obviously as he responded, “Senator, we run ads.”(1)
Some of them don’t seem to know exactly what it means that there was a “data breach”. Senator Deb Fischer awkwardly asked, “How many data categories do you store, does Facebook store, in the categories that you collect?” The Zuck paused for a second before responding, “Senator… I-I’m not actually sure what that is referring to.” (2)I’m really not sure either.
The gap in understanding prevented the hearing from reaching its productive potential. Many members of Congress couldn’t fully or accurately address the issue because, clearly, they lacked a firm grasp of exactly what had happened. This is a major flaw that needs to be overcome in order to make the internet a safer place.
Let’s quickly clarify the basics:
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Data? : user’s public profile information and Likes, and the same information from the user’s friends if their privacy settings allowed it (3)
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Who? : Cambridge Analytica hired Aleksandra Kogan to collect this data. He did it through the app, This is Your Digital Life, which users could download and join through Facebook.(4)
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Steal? : The Terms and Conditions statement (a.k.a. that thing we all blindly agree to without reading) in This is Your Digital Life did actually inform users that their data and the data of their friends would be collected and potentially put to commercial use.(5) Is this still considered stealing? Sort of a grey area.
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Side-note: I am not defending Cambridge Analytica or sneaky Terms and Conditions. I’m just saying: “Wow, someone really should have caught this sooner!”
The internet is like the wild west: our laws have not caught up to our exploration. Technology is moving in amazing directions at a rate that baffles me. Computers are basically magic, right? But in all that confusion, we are left vulnerable. In this day and age, we need people in power who intimately understand how the internet works. What are the advantages and dangers that current technologies present? How can we exploit and avoid them?
Unlike Senators Hatch and Fischer, Marky Z does understand these things. He should have used this knowledge to protect the privacy of Facebook users, even if the government has not yet implemented regulations to that end (which we really probably should, right?). Because essentially, we got our data stolen because no one read the fine print. You always gotta read the fine print!
This article doesn’t hit all the facts, so if you’re interested, definitely check out these more extensive run-downs:
money.cnn.com/2018/04/10/technology/senate-mark-zuckerberg-testimony/index.html
fortune.com/2018/04/10/facebook-cambridge-analytica-what-happened/
Sources used:
1. KGO, n.a. “VIDEO: Highlights from Mark Zuckerberg’s Testimony on Capitol Hill.” ABC7 San Francisco, 12 Apr. 2018, abc7news.com/technology/video-highlights-from-mark-zuckerbergs-testimony-on-capitol-hill/3329728/.
2. Byers, Dylan. “Mark Zuckerberg Hearing: Senate Fails Its Facebook Test.” CNNTech, Cable News Network, 11 Apr. 2018, money.cnn.com/2018/04/10/technology/senate-mark-zuckerberg-testimony/index.html.
3. Bloomberg. “Facebook Cambridge Analytica Scandal: Here’s What Happened.” Fortune, 10 Apr. 2018, fortune.com/2018/04/10/facebook-cambridge-analytica-what-happened/.
4. ibid
5. ibid