Some weeks ago now, it was revealed that Facebook have been very liberal over who they allow to have access to all of your personal information – including messages and posts and pictures – in order to make a few easy bucks from a few data collection firms. The first of these to be outed publicly was Cambridge Analytica, a firm which represents clients like political candidates and uses your personal data to tailor their campaign ads to you and manipulate you for your vote.
The top brass at the Cambridge Analytica firm have been bragging about the hand that they played in the 2016 election of US President Donald Trump.
So, there’s not only the potential links with the Russian government to worry about – there’s also this new Facebook thing now. And that’s just one case in the midst of this data mining scandal. But how did all of this happen? How did they get the permissions to do that from Facebook?
Well, it all has to do with their privacy policies, and you know who is in charge of them – CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg has been making a few public appearances lately to try and fan the flames of the scandal, going for laughs instead of forgiveness, and it seems like the only people who have noticed this are our MPs, who have now threatened the Facebook boss with a summons. However, they will only be able to issue it the next time he comes to the UK.
The system at Facebook is flawed from the ground up
The system in place at Facebook is seriously flawed from the ground up. The social networking site has become a hive for “fake news” in the years that fake news has become a thing. The website was responsible for the Pizzagate scandal that put a lot of US voters off Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton as it alleged that she was running a child molestation and sex trafficking ring out of a Washington pizzeria, based on no evidence other than the fact that the pizzeria’s manager had shown slight support for Clinton’s party and the fact that they have an after-school special menu on some afternoons for kids coming out of their schools.
This fake news resulted in the harmless pizzeria’s staff and their families receiving death threats and angry messages from conservatives on a non-stop basis, and even led to a shooting incident in the restaurant. While Mark Zuckerberg himself is not directly responsible for this, it was a result of the lax rules and policies they have when it comes to promoting news.
At Facebook, as long as you have a couple of shekels to throw into their pot, they will promote whatever you’ve written as actual news. If you have no evidence for your claims, it doesn’t matter. If you’ve paid them, they will happily look the other way and let people believe that a Presidential candidate and an innocent family man who runs a small business are sex offenders.
Members of our British Parliament have taken a look at this, taken serious issue with it, and threatened to send an official order to Zuckerberg asking him to appear in a court of law in order to answer for what he’s done and face any necessary penalties for what the judge finds him to be guilty off. Just because the guy can turn up at Congress and crack a few jokes and win over a few millennials with his charm, it does not mean he can just be let off the hook for causing all this trouble with nothing but a website and a massive net worth.
If Zuckerberg doesn’t come to the UK, the summons is moot
The summons being issued by Parliament to Zuckerberg is only a hypothetical at the moment, since they can’t actually do it unless he comes back to the UK. Parliamentary Committee chair Damian Collins wrote in a letter to Facebook that while they can’t officially summon him to court until he’s in the UK, the options are either for him to “respond positively” and come over anyway to present evidence to a British court, or the MPs will either wait patiently for him to set foot on UK soil again.
