Olivia Solon in San Francisco, London, 24 Mar 2018<\/p>\n
Revelations about the depths of Facebook\u2019s failure to protect our data has finally pulled back the curtain, observers say<\/p>\n
\u201cD<\/span><\/span>umb fucks.\u201d That\u2019s how Mark Zuckerberg described users of Facebook<\/a> for trusting him with their personal data back in 2004. If the last week is anything to go by, he was right.<\/p>\n Since the Observer reported<\/a> that the personal data of about 50 million Americans had been harvested from Facebook and improperly shared with the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, it has become increasingly apparent that the social network has been far more lax with its data sharing practices than many users realised.<\/p>\n As the scandal unfurled over the last seven days, Facebook\u2019s lackluster response has highlighted a fundamental challenge for the company: how can it condemn the practice on which its business model depends?<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the story we have been waiting for so people will pay attention not just to Facebook but the entire surveillance economy,\u201d said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia.<\/p>\n Since Zuckerberg\u2019s \u201cdumb fucks\u201d comment<\/a>, Facebook has gone to great lengths to convince members of the public that it\u2019s all about \u201cconnecting people\u201d and \u201cbuilding a global community\u201d. This pseudo-uplifting marketing speak is much easier for employees and users to stomach than the mission of \u201cguzzling personal data so we can micro-target you with advertising\u201d.<\/p>\n In the wake of the revelations that Cambridge Analytica misappropriated data collected by Dr Aleksandr Kogan under the guise of academic research, Facebook has scrambled to blame these rogue third parties for \u201cplatform abuse\u201d<\/a>. \u201cThe entire company is outraged we were deceived,\u201d said the company in a statement on Tuesday.<\/p>\n However in highlighting the apparent deceit, the company has been forced to shine a light on its underlying business model and years of careless data sharing practices.<\/p>\n Sure, the data changed hands between the researcher and Cambridge Analytica in apparent violation of Kogan\u2019s agreement with Facebook, but everything else was above board. The amount of data Cambridge Analytica<\/a> got hold of and used to deliver targeted advertising based on personality types \u2013 including activities, interests, check-ins, location, photos, religion, politics, relationship details \u2013 was not unusual in the slightest. This was a feature, not a bug.<\/p>\n There are thousands of other developers, including the makers of dating app Tinder, games such as FarmVille as well as consultants to Barack Obama\u2019s 2012 presidential campaign, who slurped huge quantities of data about users and their friends \u2013 all thanks to Facebook\u2019s overly permissive \u201cGraph API\u201d, the interface through which third parties could interact with Facebook\u2019s platform.<\/p>\n Facebook opened up in order to attract app developers to join Facebook\u2019s ecosystem at a time when the company was playing catch-up in shifting its business from desktops to people\u2019s smartphones. It was a symbiotic relationship that was critical to Facebook\u2019s growth.<\/p>\n \u201cThey wanted to push as much of the conversation, ad revenue and digital activity as possible and made it extremely friendly to app developers,\u201d said Jeff Hauser, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. \u201cNow they are complaining that the developers abused them. They wanted that. They were encouraging it. They may now regret it but they knowingly unleashed the forces that have led to this lack of trust and loss of privacy.\u201d<\/p>\n The terms were updated in April 2014 to restrict the data new developers could get hold of, including to people\u2019s friends\u2019 data, but only after four years of access to the Facebook firehose. Companies that plugged inbefore April 2015 had another year<\/a> before access was restricted.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are all sorts of companies that are in possession of terabytes of information from before 2015,\u201d said Jeff Hauser of the Center for Economic Policy and Research. \u201cFacebook\u2019s practices don\u2019t bear up to close, informed scrutiny nearly as well as they look from the 30,000ft view, which is how people had been viewing Facebook previously.\u201d<\/p>\n For too long consumers have thought about privacy on Facebook in terms of whether their ex-boyfriends or bosses could see their photos. However, as we fiddle around with our profile privacy settings, the real intrusions have been taking place elsewhere.<\/p>\n \u201cIn this sense, Facebook\u2019s \u2018privacy settings\u2019 are a grand illusion. Control over post-sharing \u2013 people we share to \u2013 should really be called \u2018publicity settings\u2019,\u201d explains Jonathan Albright<\/a>, the research director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism. \u201cLikewise, control over passive sharing \u2013 the information people [including third party apps] can take info from us \u2013 should be called \u2018privacy settings\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Essentially Facebook gives us privacy \u201cbusywork\u201d to make us think we have control, while making it very difficult to truly lock down our accounts<\/a>.<\/p>\n Facebook is dealing with a PR minefield. The more it talks about its advertising practices, the more more people join the #DeleteFacebook movement. Even the co-founder of WhatsApp, Brian Acton, who profited from Facebook\u2019s $19bn acquisition of his app, this week said he was deleting his account<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the biggest issue I\u2019ve ever seen any technology company face in my time,\u201d said Roger McNamee, Zuckerberg\u2019s former mentor<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not like tech hasn\u2019t had a lot of scandals,\u201d he said, mentioning the Theranos fraud and MiniScribe packing actual bricks<\/a> into boxes instead of hard drives. \u201cBut no one else has played a role in undermining democracy or the persecution of minorities before<\/a>. This is a whole new ball game in the tech world and it\u2019s really, really horrible.\u201d<\/p>\n Facebook first discovered that Kogan had shared data with Cambridge Analytica when a Guardian journalist contacted the company about it at the end of 2015<\/a>. It asked Cambridge Analytica to delete the data and revoked the Kogan\u2019s apps\u2019 API access. However, Facebook relied on Cambridge Analytica\u2019s word that they had done so.<\/p>\n When the Observer contacted Facebook last week with testimony from a whistleblower<\/a> stating that Cambridge Analytica had not deleted the data, Facebook\u2019s reaction was to try to get ahead of the story by publishing its own disclosure late on Friday<\/a>and threatening to sue to prevent publication of its bombshell discoveries.<\/p>\n Then followed five days of virtual silence from the company, as the chorus of calls from critics grew louder, and further details of Facebook\u2019s business dealings emerged.<\/p>\n A second whistleblower, the former Facebook manager Sandy Parakilas, revealed that he found Facebook\u2019s lack of control over the data given to outside developers \u201cutterly horrifying\u201d<\/a>. He told the Guardian that he had warned senior executives at the company that its lax approach to data protection risked a major breach but was discouraged from investigating further.<\/p>\n At around the same time it emerged that the co-director of the company that harvested the Facebook data before passing it to Cambridge Analytic is a current employee at Facebook<\/a>. Joseph Chancellor worked alongside Aleksandr Kogan at Global Science Research, which exfiltrated the data using a personality app under the guise of academic research.<\/p>\n Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic called for answers. In the US, the Democratic senator Mark Warner called for regulation, describing the online political advertising market as the \u201cwild west\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWhether it\u2019s allowing Russians to purchase political ads, or extensive micro-targeting based on ill-gotten user data, it\u2019s clear that, left unregulated, this market will continue to be prone to deception and lacking in transparency,\u201d he said<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Federal Trade Commission plans to examine whether the social networking site violated a 2011 agreement<\/a> with the agency over data privacy over its data-sharing practices.<\/p>\n In the UK, MPs summoned Facebook\u2019s chief executive<\/a>, Mark Zuckerberg, to give evidence to a select committee investigating fake news.<\/p>\n \u201cI think they are in a very bad situation because they have long benefitted from the tech illiteracy of the political community,\u201d said Hauser.<\/p>\n The backlash spooked investors, wiping almost $50bn off the valuation of the company in two days, although the stock has since rallied slightly.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, Zuckerberg finally broke his silence<\/a> in a Facebook post acknowledging that the policies that allowed the misuse of data were a \u201cbreach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it\u201d.<\/p>\n\u2018Extremely friendly to app developers\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018The biggest issue I\u2019ve ever seen\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Demand for answers<\/h2>\n