Facebook is in the hot seat on Capital Hill this week as congress takes its shot at the head of the beast Mark Zuckerberg over individual privacy rights.
From what I’ve seen of the Senate committee hearing it was a joke. The big issue is the transfer of personal data of Facebook’s 87 million users to Cambridge Analytica. Most of the time the media refers to it as a hack or they say the data was stolen, which I feel is so far from the truth. Cambridge Analytica didn’t steal that data they bought it from Facebook. That’s right, surprise surprise Facebook is in the business of selling the personal data that it’s users freely give up when they accept the user agreement when signing up for a Facebook page.
It should be no surprise to anyone that personal information is sold to companies that use that information to target you with specific advertising. It’s the world we live in today. I do however have a sneaky suspicion that the reason that our Senators are not asking Zuckerberg questions about the money that most likely changed hands… they don’t want it to come to light that their own campaigns used the same personal information gathered by social media as a blueprint for their own election campaigns.
Try this little experiment… google and browse a few web sites that sell a product that you have never researched and sit back and watch all the ads pop up on all your other information and social media web sites for that particular product. Wake up folks we live in a world now where nothing is private!