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Facebook Data Scandal


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Lawmakers and regulators across the US and Europe are calling for investigations into Facebook amid revelations that personal data from 50 million of the social media giant’s users was secretly harvested by a data analytics firm that worked on the Trump campaign.

The public outcry over the data breach, which includes demands that Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testify before Congress, could spark new calls for the government to monitor privacy rules and political advertising on the social media network. The company’s stock price, meanwhile, is in free fall, plunging by as much as 8 percent Monday afternoon and wiping away billions of dollars of Zuckerberg’s personal fortune.

US lawmakers in both parties are calling for investigations, and Democrats appear to be homing in aggressively on Zuckerberg in their criticism.

“They say ‘trust us,’ but Mark Zuckerberg needs to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about what Facebook knew about misusing data from 50 million Americans in order to target political advertising and manipulate voters, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) said in a statement.

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The Canadian whistleblower at the centre of an international scandal that allegedly helped the Trump campaign capitalize politically from private Facebook information got his start in politics with the Liberal Party of Canada.

But several senior Liberal officials from that time, about a decade ago, insist they have almost no recollection of then-teenager Christopher Wylie — if any at all.

The New York Times and The Observer of London have reported U.S. President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign hired a data-analytics company that harvested private information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users.

Cambridge Analytica, the company named by Wylie as being behind the massive leak, exploited private social media activity to help allow the Trump campaign to better target voters by profiling their behaviour and personalities ahead of the U.S. election, according to the reports. The firm connected with Trump's political adviser Steve Bannon, whom Wylie also met, the reports said.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/19/17138784/facebook-cambridge-analytica-trump-data-breach

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/christopher-wylie-canada-libeals-cambridge-analytica-1.4582190

 

So there's this company called Cambridge Analytica from the UK that worked on the Trump campaign and apparently took personal data from 50 million users on Facebook to monitor and learn their habits so that they can get votes. A Canadian is at the centre of this scandal as he is the whistleblower - Christopher Wylie - who worked with the Liberal Party of Canada. Anyways, Facebook's stock price reflected with this story, going down the toilet at 6.77%.

 

 

What do you think? Are you mad that this company and the Trump campaign could've taken your data in order to better target voters?

 

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