Okay, guys. We're going to have to have a chat about data and why we're all to blame for people like Cambridge Analytica having the power they do. I'm sorry, but I haven't seen anyone else pointing it out so I'm appointing myself the distributor of sad truths. (1/13)
Facebook has your data because you ticked a box that said they could have it. Then you put more data on Facebook and so it had that too. Then you installed it on your phone and said it could match your contacts for friends, so they have your numbers. (2/13)
Then you told it it could have location access so it knows your home address, your work address, your travel routes, where you are when you talk to people, where you liked to eat, what ads you click on when you're in specific areas. (3/13)
Facebook's user experience is based on this. As is Google's. As it every big tech firm's. They rely on you to weigh up the risks (or not understand them enough to weigh them up) and click 'accept'. And let's face it, the benefits are, to some degree, worth it. (4/13)
It's also what they use to sell highly effective ad space for pennies on the pound. Any company, charity, political party can use these Facebook algorithms to beam specific ads, developed for effectiveness on people like you, narrowed down to constituency level, to you. (5/13)
Then you click on one. And guess what? Your information goes into the stirring pot and they know not just what you like but how likely other people like you are to like it. If you allow the new app to read your FB data, they get a portion of everything you share too. (6/13)
And with UK laws like the Investigatory Powers Bill, this is the kind of information that government can collect without a warrant. Who you talk to, how often, which websites you visit, where you are when you visit them. (7/13)
This isn't new. It isn't surprising. It's what companies do every day and we accept it because chatting to someone you knew 10 years ago about life now seems like a decent trade off for information and data that isn't of any real use to you. So what's the harm? (8/13)
Bottom line is this: Cambridge Analytica did something new (but not that new) with the data. And they took it from where they shouldn't. But at its root, it's the same thing Facebook do every day. But because you ticked a box you didn't read the info on, they're allowed. (9/13)
Shutting down the sharing of info doesn't mean Facebook will stop collecting it - just that they'll use it for proprietary purposes and rely on market dominance to price people out of the advertising market. The price goes up, and privacy remains non-existent. (10/13)
This is what groups like @BigBroWatch @libertyhq @OpenRightsGroup have been telling us for years, to no avail. And why? Because it's super hard as a consumer to opt out of the pervasive collection of mass data and still live a normal life. (11/13)
I've ticked the box. I've shared information I know they'll just use for targeting. I let Candy Crush sync through Facebook because I don't want to lose my progress. I disabled the built-in Facebook app not because of data, but because it drains my battery to hell. (12/13)
My point here is that people are ill-equipped to deal with the issues of big data individually, and addressing the Facebook data leak is not even a small part of the much, much larger problem. So maybe start thinking about it. Don't just tick the box. (13/13)
