Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is back at the forefront of the American news cycle, and for reasons that are probably not ideal for him and his company. Facebook has made headlines after it was reported that the Trump campaign had harvested data from millions of Facebook users.
If you are not familiar with what exactly happened, NPR has a good explanation that you can check out here. But, basically, Cambridge Analytica took the information from users that had agreed to let the app run and took the survey offered, while also mining through information about their friends. As NPR stated, the Facebook rule broken was not the harvesting of information for academic use, but that it was given to someone else after the fact.
The only groups that should be under fire here are the British researchers, not Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. Honestly, the hearings are a waste of time. Watching any clip or extended video of senators trying to understand the internet is cringeworthy for just the sheer ineptitude exuding from our nation's leaders.
This one tweet that came across my timeline summed up what sounded like Mark Zuckerberg trying to explain technology to a nursing home.
Zuckerberg had to explain to a dumbfounded Senator Orin Hatch that the company makes money from advertisements since Facebook is free, which seemed to be breaking news to him.
Nobody should be regulating something if they do not even understand the very basics of that service, but that's just me and I'm not a senator. However, it is very evident I know infinitely more about technology than possibly all of our congressmen combined.
Besides the pure comedy show that this hearing has turned into, there are other reasons that this circus is absurd. Zuckerberg really is not at fault and has taken measures already to prevent something like what Cambridge Analytica did from happening again.
However, there are definitely people that are angry with Facebook and seem to not entirely understand what Facebook is.
Facebook is a service that is free, and NOBODY made you sign up for Facebook. That was your own decision. I was 13 or 14 when I created a Facebook, and pretty much from the get-go, it was evident who was using my information. Facebook has always been set up for people to know what they are sharing and who it is being shared with. Cambridge Analytica actually broke rules that Facebook had in place and has since been banned. So I personally am confused at the end goal of having these hearings in the first place.
If you are mad at your information possibly going to researchers or different apps, there is one solid solution that would completely avoid this shitshow we call a congressional hearing. Do not use Facebook, or simply pay attention and read what different apps say they can access. Cambridge Analytica did something very wrong, but at the end of the day, people ultimately have control over their information.
It is not Zuckerberg's fault that Americans are too lazy to read terms of service, or even pay attention to what they are letting applications access. Have you ever read the terms of service for anything you bought or signed up for? Unless you're a lawyer, I doubt it. I know I haven't and that's one reason I don't care about this "scandal." I have however read what each app can access every time I sign up for an app using Facebook.
One ridiculous CNN article suggested that Facebook should pay its users for their information. Huh? Have we forgotten what Facebook is? Facebook is a service that owes you nothing. At any time you can delete your Facebook if you would like, and with Facebook's stock going up after the first day of questioning, I doubt Zuckerberg will really miss you all that much.
Honestly, I am impressed with the amount of composure Zuckerberg has had being questioned by people that are clearly not as intelligent as him. He has to want to bash his head against a wall every time a senator opens their mouth. I have never seen a group try to regulate something they are so ill-informed on.
Facebook is fine and Mark Zuckerberg is doing a fine job running a service with more users than any one country on Earth. If you are outraged by other apps using your information with your consent, you should probably just stop using social media altogether. The internet by design is a very public and not private place.
I am rooting for Zuckerberg and his company. I hope that nothing comes of this and he gets to go home to whatever fortress he lives in and roll around in his money. The whole thing is a circus act attempting to make Congress look like they care about American people's privacy and in fact, it has simply made pretty much every senator that spoke look like an elderly imbecile.
