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At a guess, I think they didn't really realize how serious this data is at scale. After all this was (I think, anyone know the actual details?) fairly mundane data. Name, age, last check-in date, pages you like, public figures you follow, posts you liked, friends, stuff you're interested in. MySpace/LinkedIn/etc made this stuff public, on FB it was mostly semi-private. The reason this whole thing became a scandal is because data is powerful at scale. To quote The Guardian's original article: "(Cambridge Analytica) used them (data) to build a powerful software program to predict and influence choices at the ballot box." Facebook now have a $50bn business based on using exactly this kind of data "to predict and influence choices" people make. That's why their ad system works now, and didn't just a few years ago. They got very good at using large quantities of otherwise mundane data to guess who will click an ad and sign up to a cookie subscription or who needs a mortgage. This is the same thing. If you know who's a maker and what seminar's they'll like, you know whos a Tory and what conspiracy meme they like. FB now know how powerful that is, but I'm not sure they did then. Still... this sounds only semi-tangentially related to privacy. It is technically user data, but IDK if individual users were violated that much, at least relative to other breaches. It's not like the icloud breech, or Ashley Madison. Generally not data that people are horrified to find someone knows. I think the meat of this issue is "power got into the wrong hands." At least that's what The Guardian was concerned with. User privacy is just the only violation. Power is the problem. On that note, is FB the "right hands?." Incidentally, all this is interesting in the context of Zuck running for office, or even just being involved in a politics. Whatever Cambridge Analytica could do, Zuck could day a lot more. On top of that, he heads the biggest and most influential news/media company that ever existed. He should probably be banned from political involvement. |