Elon Musk last week dropped a bombshell by deleting the Facebook pages of his two big companies, SpaceX and Tesla. Why did he do it? He answered the call of Brian Acton, the co-founder of WhatsApp, who had added his voice to those pushing people to #DeleteFacebook. And why did Acton do that? Because the world had just been shocked to learn that Facebook had participated in a huge data scandal: 50 million people’s personal profiles being used for commercial and possibly even political purposes… without their consent or even knowledge.
How did that happen? To make a long story short, a political research company called Cambridge Analytica had commissioned a researcher to conduct personal profile surveys on Facebook in 2014; surveys that would be used to construct methods to politically influence voters. Cambridge Analytica later sold “services” to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, although the company insists the services were not based on those Facebook profiles. It further insists that the 270,000 Facebook users who participated in those personality surveys had all signed consent forms. However, and this is the main source of the scandal, the data that the researcher collected included information about all the participants’ Facebook “friends,” a total of 50 million. For all we know, those could include me or you, since Facebook, which came to know about this in 2015, has never informed the affected users. Only a few days ago, well after the scandal broke, did Mark Zuckerberg apologize and promise to tighten the rules of data usage at Facebook. Too little, too late.
The collection and exploitation of our personal data is a huge issue that will resurface periodically until we find a good and balanced solution
Nidhal Guessoum
In a way, this was bound to happen. Social media companies — and it is important to always keep in mind that Facebook is a company whose sole objective is to make money — and most apps and digital products do their utmost to collect data from us in order to either sell it or analyze it in various ways to gain insights that would be worth money. It always amazes me when an app that is supposed to, say, help you keep track of your calorie burning, demands access to your contacts list, your photos folder, or other personal data; or when you launch a site or a program and it asks you to log on using your Facebook account — so that it can gain access to your friends list and a treasure trove of data. As a rule of thumb, I do not log in using my Facebook account or other social media profiles, and the more access to my smartphone data an app asks for, the less chance it has of my accepting it and using it.
Now, digital companies will counter that they are offering products and services to you and, since very little in life comes free, it’s only normal that they will want something in return. That something is your data. We are indeed in the era of “big data” and, whether we realize it or not, we are constantly being milked for data.
However, our data should never be obtained without our consent. That seems pretty obvious: Until you realize that it’s complicated. Indeed, when I accept a “friend request” on Facebook, am I automatically agreeing to my data (posts I’ve “liked,” links I’ve clicked on, etc.) being accessed whenever that “friend” completes a survey and signs a consent form? We need to discuss personal data usage and set some clear rules, or we’ll soon have bigger and bigger scandals.
Now, someone might retort that if I don’t want my data accessed or shared, I should simply not use Facebook, indeed #DeleteFacebook. When Musk deleted the Facebook pages of SpaceX and Tesla, he said his companies had never advertised on Facebook and never used its services other than just keeping a page for each company. In other words, there was little cost in deleting them, especially as they continue to use other platforms, such as Twitter and Instagram. One should note, by the way, that Instagram and WhatsApp are owned by Facebook, so if one is to start boycotting Facebook, then there’s more to delete. Furthermore, it is not just social media websites that collect our data, almost all apps do, and who knows where that data ends up? And, if that were not disturbing enough, there are cameras everywhere and our smartphones leave digital traces, with GPS and mobile phone towers giving away where we are, and with whom, at all times.
Leaving aside the problem of smartphone and social media addiction, which I’ve discussed before, I do not believe that deleting social media pages is the solution to the personal data issue that the latest Facebook scandal has highlighted. We need to thoroughly review and discuss how data is collected and used in various areas of society. This is a huge issue and one that will resurface periodically until we find a good and balanced solution. In the meantime, we all need to be extra careful about all our personal data.
Nidhal Guessoum is a professor at the American University of Sharjah, UAE. He can be followed on Twitter at: www.twitter.com/@NidhalGuessoum.
