Facebook: the right to privacy in the Digital Age

The growth of social networking platforms in the early 2000’s drove such sites to expand their operations, increasing server capacity, ramping up the costs of service. 

But the development of a radically new business model saved Facebook from bankruptcy… and obscurity.

Facebook makes money by selling the private information of its billions of users to third-parties, who then, through the help of algorithms, advertise to users based on their accrued ‘digital footprint.’

“If you aren’t paying for it, you’re the product.”

However, the revenue model was criticised heavily by pundits and media watchdogs alike, noting its capacity to be abused for political or monetary gain. Sandy Parakilas, a privacy consultant for Facebook, asserted a continued ‘uphill battle’ between protecting users’ privacy and increasing company profits. This struggle would come to a head with the Cambridge Analytica scandal of early 2018; an oversight on Facebook’s behalf allowed for the private information of 87 million unconsenting users to be sent to Cambridge Analytica; a political consulting firm that was hired by the Trump and Cruz presidential campaigns in early 2016 to provide data to help skew the election in their respective favours.

The Cambridge Analytica Scandal set a precedent of how online data could be used and abused, unbeknownst to consumers or the social media sites themselves. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg labelled the incident a “major breach of trust.”

Nevertheless, the onus fell upon Facebook to ensure that such an incident never be repeated. On April 10, 2018, Mark Zuckerberg testified before the U.S. Congress, taking responsibility on his part to not do more to prevent Facebook from being used for harm.  

The future of our online spaces; of internet privacy regulation depends on the hard lessons taught to us by such scandals as Cambridge Analytica.