Who hasn’t heard about Cambridge Analytica?
The scandal that exposed the shockingly low security of data, and how data is used as a tool for the benefit of companies and not consumers. While Cambridge Analytica was not the first to reveal the misuse of data, it has certainly cost Facebook a crisis. Over 87 million users’ data was compromised for political advancement in the 2016 U.S. elections. The information was used to create voter profiles that, rumor has it, aided in the current cabinet’s win. The repercussions of the exposure of the Cambridge Analytica scandal caused a ripple effect that caused users to blame Facebook and its lack of data security. The platform has been under fire since then. A campaign #DeleteFacebook went viral with users deleting (a permanent step unlike deactivating, but a painfully long one, of course) their accounts in protest.
Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder, and CEO of Facebook was summoned to court regarding the privacy scandal. Zuckerberg addressed the issue, explaining what led to the issue and how they would make changes to ensure that didn’t happen again.
In tune with that, recently, Facebook released an ad- or more accurately an apology.
Going back to the roots of Facebook and its origin story, the ad talks about the initial purpose of Facebook- to bring friends together, to connect. It goes on to say how it brought people together and therein made them feel a little less alone. However, with spam and fake news and data misuse, the experience of Facebook changed from a warm community to an unsafe space. Promising to change that, and make Facebook a safe space once more, the ad ends with the note that ‘when this place does what it was built for, we all get a little closer’.
While the ad does promise to make things better and address the issue there are arguments that state that the ad does not serve as an apology since it does not directly ask for pardon. Zuckerberg did, however, apologize in court. How much though does it count for in the mind of those who were victims of this lapse in data security?
Let us know what you think in the comments!
