Amid #DeleteFacebook Fervor, Experts Say Time to Tackle Big Data Profiteers

While the pro-Trump data firm Cambridge Analytica has received a flood of media attention in recent days following reports that it harvested the personal information of over 50 million Facebook users, advocacy groups and experts are warning against allowing focus on this scandal alone to obscure the fact that major tech companies have been allowed to build an entire industry by exploiting the personal data of everyone who uses their platforms.

“The fact is that companies like Facebook and Google are the real malicious actors here—they are vital public communications systems that run on profiling and manipulation for private profit.”
—Yasha Levine

Judging by the popularity of the hashtag #DeleteFacebook—which went viral on Wednesday night, much to the dismay of CEO Mark Zuckerberg—many users of the social media giant agree that Facebook should bear the brunt of the criticism for a data breach that it did nothing to stop and that its “data-fueled” business practices made possible.

Though Cambridge Analytica is easy to revile, as one commentator put it, “the real bad guy in this story” is Facebook.

But as investigative journalist Yasha Levine argued in a statement on Thursday, the entire “present-day freakout over Cambridge Analytica needs to be put in the broader historical context of our decades-long complacency over Silicon Valley’s business model.”

“The fact is that companies like Facebook and Google are the real malicious actors here—they are vital public communications systems that run on profiling and manipulation for private profit without any regulation or democratic oversight from the society in which it operates,” Levine added.

The explosive Cambridge Analytica scandal—just one of many in Facebook’s relatively short history—comes at a time when privacy advocates and critics of corporate power are more concerned than ever about the growing concentration of data into the hands of just a few tech giants like Google and Facebook. After it is gathered, this personal data is then used by businesses to run targeted Facebook ads based on users’ location, relationship status, and dozens of other metrics.

“What do these companies know about us, their users?” asks Levine. “Well, just about everything.”

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