Mark Zuckerberg, the 33-year-old chief executive of social media giant Facebook, faced US lawmakers this week over allegations of privacy violation involving 87 million of its users worldwide.
The issue started when it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica, a consultancy firm with ties to the campaign of US President Donald Trump, harvested personal information not only of the Facebook users who took a seemingly innocuous online quiz, but of the friends of these users. Needless to say, the data was used without their permission, even as they willingly posted this on Facebook out of their own accord.
Zuckerberg apologized during the hearing and said that his team’s priority now is fighting election interference not only in the US but in all democracies around the world.
He said one of his greatest regrets in running the company was being slow to uncover and act against disinformation campaigns by trolls during the US elections.
The company initially maintained that it was a mere platform and thus could not exert censure over what appears on people’s walls. That seems to have turned now, with Zuckerberg acknowledging that they are, indeed, responsible for content.
He also said they would probe every application that gains access to users’ information and ban those who are doing anything improper.
While Zuckerberg is an American citizen facing US lawmakers, Filipinos should follow developments given our high stakes in the Facebook issue.
It is likely that when it was conceived, Facebook was just really a tool to connect with friends and family.
But because technology evolves in a way that people do not expect, even the best of intentions are trumped by increasingly creative and sophisticated minds. They push boundaries to their advantage because there are no rules yet to govern how they act.
The ordinary user should be made aware that one can tend to lose control over any information volunteered to the site, however harmless that information appears. Worse, they can be swayed into something—buying a product, availing of services, or voting for an individual—they did not quite bargain for.