Facebook Faces Intense Scrutiny Over Massive Data Harvesting Scandal
Facebook is under heavy fire after a political consulting firm improperly obtains the personal data of up to 87 million users. The social media giant claims the researcher involved lied about his intentions for the harvested information.
Facebook is experiencing one of its most severe public relations crises as news breaks that the personal data of up to 87 million users lands in the hands of political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. This revelation intensifies the immense pressure already facing CEO Mark Zuckerberg regarding how the platform is manipulated to spread disinformation during political campaigns. In response to the massive data leak, lawmakers in the U.S. and U.K. increase their scrutiny of the social network, and a growing number of frustrated users delete their accounts entirely.
The controversy originates in 2014 when researcher Aleksandr Kogan creates a personality quiz app called This Is Your Digital Life. About 300,000 users download the app and agree to share their basic profile information and likes, but the app also silently pulls data from their friends, expanding the reach to tens of millions of people. Kogan operates under Facebook's existing developer rules at the time, which allow third-party apps to gather information on a user's friends if their privacy settings permit it.
The core conflict centers on what Kogan actually does with the harvested information, as Facebook asserts he violates their policies by handing the data over to Cambridge Analytica. While Facebook claims Kogan lies by stating the data is strictly for academic research, Kogan points to his app's terms of service, which explicitly permit commercial use and data licensing. Facebook states it demands the destruction of the data upon discovering the breach in 2015, but questions remain about whether those data wipes actually occur.