[Retric]

Scandals linger far longer than 3 years.

A great example is M&M’s dye choice became controversial due to customer confusion over which red dyes where harmful. So, the company couldn’t simply change the dye because what they where using wasn’t problematic. In the end they had to flat out stop selling red M&M’s for over a decade, and their reintroduction was surprisingly controversial.

[joe_the_user]

If you read my gp, I'm not arguing the Cambridge Analytica scandal didn't influence Facebook. I'm arguing the real, larger frame is that Facebook can't help but be porous and it's acknowledge that truth for their self-interest. That helps them avoid scandal, yes but contrary to the earlier poster "it's cause of scandal" or "it's cause Facebook bad" is a bad, distorting frame. And that isn't saying Facebook is good, it's saying the entire framework of social networks and things propagating on the Internet creates a certain kind of "playing field".

I would speculate, in fact, that Facebook acting now make the obvious point that of course people are going to be scraping the data of their site because after X many scandals, it's becoming obvious that people will do that, that they will do that to any site like Facebook and that they'll have much clearer cover if they "normalize" thing that are ... fricken normal.

I'd further speculate that they couldn't act when Cambridge Analytica was fresher because then they'd be seen as being self-justifying and then they had to be seen as humble and apologetic.

[perl4ever]

>customer confusion over which red dyes where harmful

Never heard of that; is that cochineal?

[meepmorp]

Some red azo food dyes have been shown to be carcinogenic.