I’m not on Facebook. I’ve never been on Facebook. At first it was
simply a matter of not being a 14 year old junior high schooler.
Later, even adults started hanging out there but I still thought it
was silly and exhibitionist. That makes me an outlier, I know, but it
turns out I was on to something, if only fortuitously.
By now, almost everyone knows about Cambridge Analytica and their use
of Facebook data, supposedly to influence the election. But as Karl
Voit says, the issue isn’t Cambridge Analytica but Facebook.
Collecting and selling your data is their business plan and that’s
exactly what happened with Cambridge Analytica. Despite their demurral
and professed distress at what happened, Cambridge Analytica’s use of
the data was, in fact, well within Facebook’s guidelines and
apparently not uncommon.
Voit goes on to explain that Facebook collects that data whether or
not you agree to the collection and, according to others, even if you
aren’t on Facebook. Worse, you can’t delete the data. When you try,
it’s no longer visible on your Facebook page but Facebook still has it
and still sells it to anyone willing to pay.
If you want to be horrified, take a look at this tweet thread (click
on the tweet to see the whole thread) that details the type of data
Facebook and Google collect about you:
Want to freak yourself out? I'm gonna show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook and Google store about you without you even realising it
— Dylan Curran (@iamdylancurran) March 24, 2018
If that doesn’t scare you, how about the fact that Facebook captured
and retained the phone detail logs from users of their mobile app?
As Bruce Schneier points out this problem is pandemic. There’s no
longer any excuse. You can wait and hope someone else or the
government solves the problem or you get off Facebook and stop using
Google. Or you can continue to let them collect your most intimate
data and sell it to anyone interested.