The furor over Facebook's implication in the Cambridge Analytica data scandal has led to calls for an investigation, but some are wondering whether the company's being treated as a scapegoat for ulterior reasons. Mark Zuckerberg's brainchild was reportedly abused by the shadowy UK-based firm to clandestinely collect personal information about millions of users in order to build so-called "psychographs" that its representatives supposedly claimed could help political campaigns hone their messages to prospective voters. Critics allege that Cambridge Analytica was the secret behind Brexit and Trump's surprise victories in 2016, and they say that none of it would have happened had Facebook implemented more robust privacy policies.
Zuckerberg has since apologized to the public and vowed to get to the bottom of everything, but it might be too late because Facebook has already been in the frying pan for the past year and now seems set to be thrown into the fire by angry politicians. The "deep state" and its mass media supporters have long accused the company of passively enabling Brexit and Trump, but while circumstantial claims might never hold up in the court of law, the documents that Cambridge Analytica founder and whistleblower Christopher Wylie purports to have in his possession might remove any reasonable doubt that Facebook broke some law or another on at least one occasion, whether deliberately or due to neglect.
That said, it remains to be seen what punitive consequences might be leveled against the company with time, but the unofficial aftereffect has been that some users are fleeing from the platform and going elsewhere. This decentralization of social media from one main platform to many might cynically be taken advantage of by the elite as a divide-and-rule stratagem against the masses. After all, the calls for a Facebook exodus are somewhat naïve, since the company does in fact have a privacy policy that all users consent to by using its services, and apps inform people about what parts of their account they're trying to access. Another point is the general knowledge that if an online product is "free" to use, then it's the individual's data that's being sold to subsidize the service.
Whatever Facebook's future may ultimately be, it's fitting to wonder whether certain forces are conspiring to pin the blame on the company for the Cambridge Analytica scandal for reasons that they're not entirely forthcoming about.
Christopher C. Black, international criminal lawyer with 20 years of experience in war crimes and international relations, and a commentator on international affairs, and Petri Krohn, Finnish political commentator joined our discussion.
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