Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) stock was down 7.5% in late morning trading on March 19. The plunge came in the wake of revelations that a data analytics firm that worked with the Donald Trump campaign and the Brexit campaign had harvested millions of profiles. The firm then used the data to build software that could predict voter behaviour and influence the election.
The whistleblower on the data scandal was a Canadian – Christopher Wylie – who revealed that the company involved was Cambridge Analytica. The firm is also connected with former Trump campaign chief and top advisor Steve Bannon. “It was a grossly unethical experiment because you are playing with an entire country,” Wylie said. “The psychology of an entire country, without their consent or awareness.”
Since the 2016 U.S. election Facebook has been fighting to protect its reputation after officials said it was at the centre of “Russian meddling”. Little has been uncovered in this regard, apart from a paltry $100,000 spent on advertisements by Russian nationals - almost half of which was spent after the election. However, Facebook took major steps to stamp out “fake news” and attempt to protect users from such campaigns in the future.
Facebook has argued over whether the recent scandal is indeed a “breach”, as data was extracted from the platform and used for purposes for which the company did not consent. The scandal comes after solid Q4 earnings from Facebook, but the company also reported sluggish numbers in North America for the first time. Whether Facebook will take more steps to secure its data and user privacy going forward remains to be seen.
