TECHNOLOGY


Just a few months ago, Facebook was in the middle of a full-blown existential crisis. The causes of the crisis were many, but the straw that broke the camel’s back was the Cambridge Analytica scandal.


Just to recap, this is what happened. Cambridge Analytica (CA), a political marketing company funded by conservative donors, launched a quiz app on Facebook’s US platform. Although the quiz was only completed by a few hundred thousand people, it also harvested the personal data of all their Facebook “friends.” In total it is estimated that 87 million people had their data collected via Facebook, quite legitimately as it turns out.


Cambridge Analytica then profiled and segmented this data and used it to target political advertising supporting the Trump campaign in 2016. It is believed that this political advertising was so effective that it tipped the balance in Trump’s favour. There is some evidence to suggest that CA was linked to Aggregate IQ, a Canadian political marketing company that performed a similar service for Vote Leave in the UK’s EU referendum campaign. It became clear that Facebook not only didn’t protect the privacy of its users, it believed it had a God given right to do whatever it wanted with their data.


Now Facebook is making a concerted effort to pull itself back from the brink and regain the trust of its users. The first part of this process happened virtually unannounced back in 2015. Facebook changed its API, a software platform used by third party developers, so it was no longer possible to access the data of friends of people using the third-party app. It also asked developers who had harvested data in this way to delete those data sets. CA claimed they had deleted their data set, but they hadn’t!


Last year, Facebook asked all its users to update their accounts. This update gave users much more control over who can see their profiles and what data they can access. For instance, users can choose whether facial recognition software can


analyse any photos they upload to the site. Although most users either don’t know how to control their privacy settings or don’t care, at least they now have the option.


Perhaps the most significant change came into effect in October 2018. All UK political advertising on Facebook is subject to new rules. The person or organisation that is placing the ads will have to provide ID and prove they are resident in the UK. Every ad will have to carry a message stating that it is a political ad and saying who paid for it. There is also an online archive available to anyone, not just Facebook users, which details all ads published by that person, how many people each ad has reached and roughly how much was spent on it. If Facebook deems an ad to have political content and the advertiser has not provided proof of ID and residency, the ad will be taken down until the ID has been provided. There is also a facility for members of the public to report “fake news.” If Facebook concludes that an advert is factually incorrect, it will be taken down. This new system is already in use in the US and Brazil.


Facebook has brought some much-needed transparency to political advertising. Before, adverts could be sent and paid for anonymously, enabling political groups to circumvent campaign spending limits. Adverts which promoted blatant lies and misrepresentations were targeted at people who were susceptible to their message by organisations with a hidden agenda. In the 2016 US presidential election millions of Facebook ads were paid for by Russian groups attempting to influence the election result.


The jury is still out on how effective social media advertising for goods and services is compared to more conventional media, but it has been shown to be extremely effective at influencing voters. In cleaning up its act, Facebook has also helped clean up the murky world of political campaigning.


Graham Iek 38 When responding to adverts please mention the ‘North Devon Insight’


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