What do you guys think about Facebook selling your user data to companies like Cambridge Analytica? Are you motivated to delete your account?
Facebook was not the one to sell to Cambridge Analytica. Someone wrote a quiz app on Facebook that prompted users for access to their profile info, under the guise of academic research. The individual who wrote that app was then the one who sold this info to CA.
Like many people said, Facebook making money off of you is nothing new. Targeted and creepy ads have been around for a while and Facebook is not the only player in the market (though it's certainly one of the biggest and most influential).
The problem was with not enforcing a policy on collected data
after it left Facebook, and not following up with the third-parties involved to make sure that everything was actually deleted after being requested to do so.
It kinda worries me, and while I think my data may have flown under the radar when it comes to Cambridge Analytica's endeavours, I don't particularly want to test how long I can fly under that radar. I'm motivated to delete my Facebook account, it's just so useful for keeping in touch with people. Tough spot to be in. :\
The overload of crap that Facebook has been pulling and continues to pull on its users over the years, including this news, is one reason why I deleted my Facebook account four years ago.
Just a sidenote: no one should carry the assumption that Facebook will actually delete any of the information they have on you right now if you delete your account, nor that deleting your account will have any real impact on Facebook's ability to track you. And there's no guarantee that Cambridge Analytica is the only group of people to have thought of doing something like this.
What really irks me is that these tech giants like Facebook, Google/YouTube, Amazon, Microsoft, and Twitter loudly complain about ISPs selling customer details, yet these aforementioned companies sell user info themselves and somehow it's perfectly okay for them to do so. They also loudly complain about how ISPs are allowed to throttle and block lawful content without Soros-backed "Net Neutrality" classification of ISPs as landline telephone "common carriers" (like the old Ma Bell from decades ago), yet these web platforms (especially Google/YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter) themselves censor lawful content that they deem to be "fake news" (e.g. anything that isn't pro-Obama, pro-Hillary, pro-gun control, pro-globalization, anti-Caucasian, and whatever else is the 'in' thing), even going so far as to terminate accounts that they don't like for "TOS/community guidelines violations".
I'm not sure where to begin with this, but I'll try with this: this has nothing to do with net neutrality and net neutrality is completely unrelated to explicit and enforceable privacy policies, which is what this story is about.
But since you managed to somehow loop net neutrality into this, you're also assuming that net neutrality applies to content of private companies. Net neutrality is important because ISPs are the
only point of internet access in today's world. ISPs should therefore not be favouring particular types of content because they are the
only way to access information on the web.
Private companies like YouTube and Facebook are
not the only websites on the internet, do not enforce a monopoly of their service in any particular region or country, and are free to control content hosted on their platform in whatever way they see fit. If YouTube suddenly decides to ban videos about puppies, that is 100% within their right as a private platform and nothing stops someone else from creating a platform that allows puppy videos. This is, contrary to popular belief, not a violation of
free speech or as you say, "lawful content".
It's interesting that you mention 'fake news' when your rhetoric is entirely based on misinformation and mixing up concepts.
