on Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, and perhaps goofing up

Facebook done goofed.

— Will Silberman, March 2018

I like to assume that those who have time to read something like this blog take the time to read up on more important things, like…I don’t know…the news? If you’re unaware of the current Facebook debacle, don’t worry—I got you. If you think you have read enough about it, then perhaps you should skip a few paragraphs. Matt Coblentz’s approach to discussing the debacle is much more lighthearted than mine, that’s for sure.

In light of the Cambridge Analytica (CA) scandal in which members of this “company” (used lightly, of course) were recorded saying that they have intervened in political elections all across the globe, including the 2016 Presidential Election, it was revealed that much of the data Cambridge Analytica received came from…Facebook. Facebook’s API (basically, the tool for third parties to use to export Facebook data/integrate it onto other apps/websites/platforms) allows for data to be collected by academic entities, but it does not contain any rules about what these academic entities can do with the data after collection. A professor collected data from 50 million Facebook users (270,000 of those provided consent) and shared this data with CA, who then used this information to target individuals who aligned with certain political ideologies.

One of the controversies associated with this news story is that much of this data was publicly available. In other words, Facebook users who weren’t aware of (or perhaps, indifferent to) their own Facebook use were analyzed without consenting. It seems as though Facebook users might not know how to use Facebook and maintain their privacy, or perhaps they do, but lack the wherewithal to do so.

As many tools we currently have relating to proper Facebook use, many of these rules regarding “proper” use are implicit. Over time, Facebook users have constructed a set of rules to separate Facebook use from Facebook abuse similar to Collins’ (1974) notion of an Invisible College. We know not to like every single post a person makes in a single sitting (to avoid bombarding them with notifications). We know not to go through older posts (e.g., posts which are many years old) and comment on them, as much of the context associated with the original post will have been lost. We know not to add every single person we see unless we interact with them in some other capacity (or perhaps we don’t). There is no single place where this information is publicly available, it’s learned through making mistakes online. Although Collins didn’t necessarily have Facebook in mind at the time, much of the discourse regarding the complexities of social media (ab)use is applicable to earlier thought experiments involving social circles and knowledge transmission.

This does not take into account proper privacy management on Facebook, however. We are clearly still learning how to manage our privacy in mediated settings. We do not have a set of rules surrounding proper Facebook use to maintain privacy other than the colloquial “don’t post something offensive or else you won’t get a job.” As noted by Bharati, Zhang, and Chaudhury (2015), social media use is tied with social capital acquisition. That is, one who uses Facebook is more concerned with displaying the quality of what they know. While the authors advise organizational bodies to take advantage of this notion, they lack discourse specifying the conditions under which organizations are to interact and respond to their customers on social media. For the case of Facebook, I cannot help to wonder what these authors would advise Mark Zuckerberg to do to rebuild the trust of Facebook’s user base as a platform of social capital acquisition.

Facebook is clearly in the process of saving their image in the wake of the CA scandal. If anything, Facebook is still trying to define the role of their customers (or perhaps, their course of income, since Facebook users technically are the product when they use the free social media platform that is Facebook). With regard to this notion of the customer’s role, Facebook has room to improve. Starbucks kept the customer in mind when it came to redesigning their menu (Chua & Banerjee, 2013). Facebook, in this case, needs to keep their customers’ privacy in mind when it comes to using the website itself. While the tools Facebook has already implemented in terms of audience management and password security are a step in the right direction, they were not created from listening to their users. The deafness from Facebook is striking, as millions of users’ information was used for election meddling (and perhaps other nefariousness currently unknown to the public).

As much as I criticize Facebook for not keeping these things in mind in light of the CA scandal, perhaps Facebook should be given some benefit of the doubt. If users are still unsure about knowing their own privacy, how can Facebook know how to respond to the needs of their population in any way but a retroactive fashion?

Song du jour: Marian Hill – Differently

References

Bharati, P., & Chaudhury, A. (2015). Better knowledge with social media? Exploring the roles of social capital and organizational knowledge management. Journal of Knowledge Management, 19, 456-475. doi:10.1108/JKM-11-2014-0467

Chua, A Y. K., & Banerjee, S. (2013). Customer knowledge management via social media: The case of Starbucks. Journal of Knowledge Management, 17(2), 237-249. doi:10.1108/13673271311315196

Collins, H. M. (1974). The TEA set: Tacit knowledge and scientific networks. Science Studies, 4, 165-185.