Zeynep Tufekci on Facebook’s surveillance machine: It’s true that the Cambridge Analytica incident wasn’t a security breach — it was something far worse. Cambridge Analytica offered to blackmail politicians with prostitutes. Josh Constine on Facebook and the endless string of worst-case scenarios. Facebook facing an existential crisis over privacy and data. Facebook’s chief information security officer Alex Stamos planning to leave company amid disinformation backlash. Banks have to know their customers — shouldn’t Facebook and Twitter? Banks have a lot of regulatory oversight — the tech industry doesn’t. Mark Zuckerberg should spend $45 billion on undoing Facebook’s damage to democracies.
The most important thing to understand: Cambridge Analytica was using Facebook exactly as Facebook is designed — and that’s the problem. Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg need to come clean about 2016 — now. Lawmakers want Mark Zuckerberg to testify about the Facebook data breach. Four simple questions Facebook should answer: The social network has great power, but takes little responsibility. Follow-up questions for Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and Trump campaign on massive breach. This time, Facebook really might be fucked.
Cambridge Analytica and Russian bots used the same strategy. While it is important to curb the abuses of social media as much as possible, it is also important to challenge the message that has been weaponized to divide us with a culture war. Thread: “Computer science is a field which hasn’t yet encountered consequences”.
