Facebook’s stock took a beating last month, falling nearly 7% following the admission that Cambridge Analytica illegally harvested data from more than 55million of their users in the U.S.
Facebook has now banned Cambridge Analytica from their platform and announced plans to hire a digital forensics firm to investigate, but the share market didn’t believe it.
As a result, the entire tech industry took a hit after the announcement, Google shares fell 4%, Amazon down 2.42%, and Apple dropped 2%.
WTF HAPPENED? Cambridge Analytica says they “use data to change audience behavior” -- for either commercial or political clients.
Working for the Trump campaign, the company -- partially owned by Republican investor Robert Mercer and formerly run by Steve Bannon -- dispatched a psychology professor at Cambridge, Aleksandr Kogan, to harvest data.
Christopher Wylie, who worked with Kogan and his team, says they used clickbait personality tests to secretly collect data from Facebook users and their friends, transformed likes and social data into 50m “psychographic” profiles -- and used them to influence voting behavior. For his part, Kogan says his actions were totally legal and that he had a “close working relationship” with Facebook.
PSYOPS - EVERYONE IS DOING IT Cambridge Analytica is part of a company called Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) that claims to have helped governments and militaries “conduct behavioral change programs in over 60 countries” for the past 25 years.
The defense wing of SCL specializes in psychological operations -- or “psyops.” The goal of psyops is to establish “informational dominance” by starting rumor campaigns, spreading fake news, and, allegedly, entrapping politicians.
WHO'S TO BLAME Facebook maintains that Cambridge Analytica’s data harvesting was not a user privacy breach because “everyone involved gave their consent.” Only later, they insist, did Kogan violate Facebook policies.
As Facebook nurses its $506B wounds and works to repair investor confidence, lawmakers around the world are opening a fresh round of investigations into Zuckenstein’s monster.
IS THIS THE END OF FACEBOOK
No, of course not. But it is officially the end to Facebook innocence. Users have now seen the previously regulated possibilities, the power of fake news and Facebook's laissez-faire attitude to their responsibility as the platform. In essence, this decided an election of the power powerful office in the world.
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by Tony Ilbery
Founder Social Pulse
The above uses sections of an original article by "The Hustle" a great source of daily news