It does appear that the 250 million users that Facebook has in India are gasping collectively for breath because of that one Hash tag that says “ delete FB”. It’s not like its an instruction that needs to be taken to heart or anything, but it most certainly talks about the importance of the subject, that’s in all of our drawing rooms, living rooms, whatever it is that you call it .
So on Moneycontrol we’ve decided to dig a little deeper and get you all that you need to know on the data breach scandal that FB is trying to make sense of .
Well the rest of the world is also trying to make sense of it and towards that end we are doing our bit on this podcast that’s called WhatsApp with Facebook. Listen Up!
Hello and welcome my name is Rakesh, we start our deep dive down into rabbit holes unknown with the man call Brian Acton. Brian Acton may not be a name that most was immediately recognise, but he may be single handedly responsible for you waking up with annoying messages of good morning and unverified UNESCO statistics about the Indian National Anthem .
He is the man who gave that uncle or annoying aunt of yours, whom you only see at weddings of funerals the opportunity to talk about the benefits of haldi or worse, send weird poetry in Hindi.
Brian acton with a few others was a man responsible for what is essentially Catnip for the elderly, something they simply cannot do without. If being stuck to the phone was a stereotype attached only to the young and the millennial, well this contribution of Brian acton changed it all together . He gave to us the digital equivalent of the gossipyest aunt or uncle in your vast circle of relatives... WhatsApp!!
Now why do I bring up Brian acton? He is one of the growing number for voices which is calling for what is trending across the internet, “hashtag delete Facebook “.
Why delete Facebook? Why are you hearing about Facebook so much these days?What are these whispers of something called Cambridge analytica that you keep hearing about ?Who is Robert mercer?Who is Alexander Kogan? who is Alexander Nicks? Are we looking at Greek Legends? Or is this the modern catastrophe all of our own making ?And how on earth does all of this add up to Donald Trump? This is the big question that is floating all around and that is what we are going to be exploring on this podcast, right here.An insight18 explainer and on all things related to Facebook, Cambridge analytica and the data breach heard across the world.
As we go down the rabbit hole of what’s happening with Facebook, it's only fair that we recall the question that Alice asked, what is the use of a book without pictures?Well Mark Zuckerberg thought exactly the same ,which is precisely why he made a book full of faces are we all bought it, like it was kool aid.And now we are at a point of questioning what’s happening..let’s dive right in!
Late on Friday last week, Facebook made an unexpected announcement, the data from Cambridge analytica,which was hyped as integral to president Donald Trump’s election, was suspended from the social network for using data collected improperly from Facebook users. Given the timing of the announcement , which was late on Friday, obviously well timed many people did miss it . But the story being quite as large as it,it could not be contained. And here are some key elements that you need to know. But first up what is Cambridge analytica and what is it’s connection with President Donald Trump?
What is Cambridge analytica? Cambridge analytica is a company that offers services to businesses and political parties who want to, quote unquote change audience behaviour,that on its own sounds dubious enough.What the company claims to do, is to be able to analyse large amounts of consumer data and combine them with behavioral science, to identify people whom organisations can target with marketing material and sometimes this marketing material could well be fake news which is gone on to be established as one the main reasons for the way the US presidential election turned out. Now cambridge analytica collects data from a wide range of sources including social media platforms like Facebook . They have their own polling as well but FB also happens to be one of those platforms where get their data. Their headquarters in London it was an offshoot of another company called SCL group, which also offers similar services .So Cambridge analytica is essentially a data form..From Cambridge analytica emerges a man called Christopher Wiley, joining the ranks of Edward Snowden and Chelsea manning who are the whistleblowers of our times. This new kid on the block is a 28 year old Canadian data genius who has a crewcut which is dyed pink and a septum piercing, he's all that you would expect from a tech hacking genius, something you'd expect straight out of Mr robot. Wiley was one of the men responsible for arguably the biggest scandal in Facebook’s 14 year history.The observer in London on Saturday released a set of explosive articles and videos in which Wiley spoke about the techniques that he and Cambridge analytica used to harvest millions of Facebook profiles.Now Cambridge analytica is associated with yet another organisation that has occupied the news cycle, it is itself a news organisation, that is of course breitbart. Breitbart is ofcourse the famously right wing news organisation that has support from Robert mercer a millionaire who also was one of the great supporters of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.Associated with Robert mercer and Cambridge analytica was also Steve bannon. Steve bannon was of course Trump’s former advisor , was associated with breitbart and is close friends with Mercer. Now Christopher Wiley is the whistleblower from Cambridge Analytica which is associated with Robert mercer who is a prominent conservative donor who not only funded breitbart and Citizens United ,which are both conservative organisations but were also very firmly behind the election of Donald Trump, which in many ways was facilitated by Steve bannon who was on the board for Cambridge analytica between 2014 and 2016 and went on to work in the White House for Donald Trump. I hope we have the cast of characters firmly in our mind now.
Starting in 2014 Cambridge analytica developed a technique to use Facebook data from personality quizzes which was provided by another company called Global Science research. Now what are these personality quizzes?These are the kind of quizzes that we very unwittingly take on Facebook saying what kind of Pizza are you what kind of dog breed are you, how well do you know Lady Gaga, if you were a city which city would you be.So this kind of seemingly harmless personality quizzes also ask for you to divulge a lot of personal data about you.This quizzes were devised by another company called Global Science Research and the data that Global Science research received that we unwittingly gave was harvested by Cambridge analytica.
This is where we turn to Global Science Research and another name called Alexander Kogan, not to be confused with Alexander Nix who is the CEO of SCL election as well as Cambridge analytica UK.Now what did Alexander Kogan do? Alexander kogan is a Cambridge University professor and developed an app called “this is your digital life” which utilised Facebook’s login feature.So some 270,000 used Facebook logins to create accounts and thus opted in to share personal profile data with Kogan.Now you just heard me say 270,000 people but we are now talking about 50 million people.How did that happen?
That happened because FB also allowed developers such as Kongan to collect some information on the friend networks of people who used Facebook login.So mayby just 270,000 used Facebook login to access this is your digital life, but in the process they may also have agreed to handover their data so that developers could access some data about their friends as well. so that is one degree up.This is not a secret, Facebook says it was documented in their terms of service but it has since been updated so that it's no longer possible at least not of the same level of detail.So through those 270,000 people opted in, Alexander Kongan was able to get access to data from some fifty million Facebook users according to the New York Times.The data trove could have included information about people's locations and interests and very granular stuff like photos , status updates and check ins. So you’ve obtained all this information from about fifty million people,what would you do with it?You do something called psychographing, as Christopher wiley the whistleblower says, we exploited FB to harvest millions of peoples profiles and built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner Demons, that was the basis the entire company was built on.Your profile could have been harvested without your knowledge, like I said all it took was for one person whom you are friends with to have logged in using the Facebook login feature to also incorporate you as part of the data pool.The data included things you’ve liked from the site and any public information users may have permitted in their privacy settings. You didn't even require photos or status update or comments to build up a picture of any one users race, gender or sexual orientation.The observer of London even went on to say that it could predict even intelligence and childhood trauma or vulnerability to substance abuse. Christopher Wiley the whistleblower actually gave an example who said, people who liked “I hate Israel” on Facebook also tended to like Nike shoes and KitKat .So by working out what people were likely to like and dislike based on the quiz results and the data, Cambridge analytica were able to craft detailed profiles based on limited Facebook data and were able to match it with voter records because to take this specific quiz that Kogan had designed you had to be an eligible US voter.The company knew who you were likely to vote for but also knew how to adapt it advertising to change your mind.Now I mentioned something about this particular quiz and how you had to be an American voter this is done using something called a “ mechanical turk” which is a tool that allows developers to hire humans sometimes referred to as “turkers” to do simple tasks for small feed .The Intercept had reported last year on how Amazon’s mechanical Turk works.The task posted by Global Science research that is Alexander Kogan’s organisation appeared quite ordinary at least on the surface.The company offered turkers $1 or $2 to complete an online survey. But there were a couple of additional requirements as well, first Global Science Research was only interested in american turkers, second the turkers had to download a Facebook App before they could collect payment, this is ofcourse “this is your digital life”. Global Science Research said the app would download some information about you and your network, basic demographics and likes of categories,places,famous people etc from you and your friends.So it was kind of vague but also very telling.During the building of this application Kogan of Global Science Research had pledged that his data collection is only for research purposes and that it would remain completely anonymized not to be able to link to specific people.But The Guardian did report in 2015 that there was a link between Kogan and Cambridge analytica and that's what prompted FB to promise to investigate the situation.Which brings us to Friday, in its statement on Friday announcing its suspensions FB carefully put the entire blame on Kogan and said that Alexander Kogan and Global Science Research had misused the tools available on Facebook and also went on to say that back in 2015 they had demanded that Kogan,SCL and Cambridge analytical delete the Facebook data.The suspension which happened only last week was prompted by learning last week apparently after being contacted by The Times that Cambridge analytica was still in possession of some of the Facebook data.The company of course denies that. So there we have it , an Alexander Kogan of Global Science Research and Cambridge University who using the 270,000 people who logged into his app “this is your digital life” using Facebook login, and therefore gave access to the data of fifty million people ,who’s data he harvested and apparently shared with Cambridge analytica.He also in the process has violated FB terms of service and is now at the heart of what is being called a data breach. But does Facebook call it a data breach? The answer is in emphatic “no”. It has insisted that what Cambridge analytica did was not a databreach, because it routinely allows researchers to have access to user data for academic purposes and users consent to this access when the create a Facebook account. But Facebook prohibits this kind of data to be sold or transferred to any ad network, data broker or other advertising of monetization related service.It says that was exactly what Doctor Kogan did in providing the information to a political consulting firm and therefore has placed the blame directly on doctor Kogan.And what did Doctor Kogan have to say in response ? Well he said that what he's done was not illegal and he's also declined to provide the New York Times any more information citing non disclosure agreements with Facebook and Cambridge analytica.What is Cambridge analytica have to say about this? Well after denying that they had obtained or used Facebook data. they changed their story last week.In a statement to The New York Times Cambridge analytica had acknowledged that it had acquired data though it blamed Dr. Kogan for violating FB rules and said it had deleted the information as soon as it learnt of the problem 2 years ago. And as it turns out in the middle of all of this British Television station channel 4 has secretly recorded a video that seems to show the head of the company of Cambridge analytica that is Alexander Nix, an old brit and very hoity toity brit, talking about how they used bribery and sex workers as tactics to achieve success in campaigns around the world.This ofcourse unrelated to what we’re talking about ,but we are talking about a company that has acknowledged that they’ve used techniques such as those to achieve success and this was the company that was also behind the victory of Donald Trump.
Which brings us to that very question, where does the Trump campaign fit into all of this and is this special investigation being conducted by Robert Muller looking into all of this? Well Trump’s digital team was run by man called Brad Parscal who last month was named campaign manager for Trump’s 20-20 effort.Trump’s general election campaign was slow to get geared up after the primary, and by mid 2016 there was a debate about how to invest in digital marketing.And it was during that time that they hired Cambridge analytica and also because Cambridge analytica by then had proven its success by being behind the successful brexit campaign in which they worked for the leave campaign. There was a slight shift in loyalties though Robert Mercer whom I mentioned earlier had always been a supporter of Ted Cruz but Ted Cruz did not get the Republican nomination it went to Donald Trump and it was then that they shifted their loyalties and focused on Donald Trump campaign and it was the Mercers that is Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebecca mercer who actually recommended the hiring of both Steve bannon of Brietbart and Kellyanne Conway, who went on to become of course the campaign manager for Donald Trump.During the last few months of the campaign when the Mercers shifted their focus on Trump, Parscal who was the head of Trump’s digital team started investing heavily in Facebook advertising even hosting a Facebook employee at their Texas war room who helped to guide their work. The advertising the campaign deployed was informed by Cambridge analytica’s data which was obtained with the help of Dr Kogan who had harvested the profiles of about 50 Million users.And that begs the obvious question, was Trump’s election unfair? Well that is not for us to decide. How much does Cambridge analytica help win elections and how much of the rhetoric about psychographics is just hype and how much is the truth, all of that is still very much up for debate.Is special counsel Robert Muller looking into the whole thing? Well apparently yes , given that the Trump campaign and Cambridge analytica invested so much in targeting people online and given that we know that Russian actors tried to leverage Facebook ads and social media to influence voters, that is a natural question as to weather those two efforts had any coordination.So apparently Rober Muller is looking into it.What is funny and if you ask some conspiracy theorists,really suspicious is that while at Cambridge Dr. Kogan also accepted a position at Saint Petersburg State University and took Russian government grants for research on social media.When asked about it he laughed off the suspicions that he is linked to the Kemlin,and said that its pretty funny anyone who knows me knows I'm very happy go lucky and goofy guy and am last one to have any real link to espionage.He has also gone on to say that he is being used as a scapegoat and has disputed Cambridge analytica’s claim that he had approached them with the idea of harvesting and psychographing.He went on to say , and I quote “ they approached me in terms of the usage of Facebook data. they wrote the terms of service for the app, they provided the legal advice that this was all appropriate, so I am definitely surprised by their comments and I don't think there are accurate. I have never profited from this in any way personally this money was paid mostly for the participants, each person like I said “the turkers” was paid by 3 to $4, so that's really where the money went.” He also went on to say that one of the great mistakes he did was that he just didn't ask enough questions. Which brings me to the last two points I want to discuss on this deep dive podcast on Facebook and the state of affairs of privacy.One, what is Facebook doing on this as we speak? And number two, in light of all of this should I delete my Facebook account?
Let’s tackle the first part,where is fb? Fb two most prominent executors that is Zuckerberg and Sheryl sandberg haven't said anything about Cambridge analytica yet and have been notably absent from Q&A session for employees on Tuesday which was intended to help explain the situation internally.It was notable enough that a company’s spokesperson issued a statement and it said.Mark,Sheryl and their teams are working round the clock to get all the facts and take appropriate action moving forward, because they understand the seriousness of this issue. The entire company is outraged , because we were deceived,we're committed to vigorously enforcing our policies….” . But how are insiders feeling about this? Here we might also recall that when Zuckerberg spoke a few days after the election, where it was alleged that the fake ads on Facebook were probably slash partially responsible for Donald trump’s election.He said that it was crazy that fake news could have impacted in the elections , but we now know that it was in some way, tow hat degree we dont know, but at least to some extent responsible for people changing their minds. This was also the same man who 14 years sent a series of instant messages in which he marveled at the fact that 4000 people had volunteered their personal information to what was then “The Facebook”, the nascent social network. He went on to say and I quote “ people just submitted it I don't know why, they trust me, dumf****”. Well the 4000 has now grown to 2 billion.
Facebook has displayed the remarkable lack of contrition in the immediate aftermath of the revelations by both The Observer and The New York Times. Instead of accepting responsibility many of its top executives have argued on Twitter that the social network has done nothing wrong. Facebook’s vice president Andrew Bosworth said this was unequivocally not a databreach, people chose to share their data with third party apps and if those third party apps do not follow the date agreements with us or users ,its a violation.No systems have been infiltrated,no passwords or information was stolen or hacked, this is not a data breach, is what Andrew Bosworth, the vice president went on to say.Many people have argued that the company's business model is to collect, share and exploit as much user data as possible all without informed consent. Cambridge analytica may have violated FB terms of service but FB had no safegaurds in the first place to stop them.So while some facebook executives have been busy defending their honor on Twitter, we’ve heard news that FB’s chief security officer , Alex Stamos,is planning to leave the company amid all of these disagreements over how Facebook is handling it response to the Russia and fake news incidence post election. As CSO, Stamos lead the team in charge of hunting down Russian ads on platform,making his departure a prominent one.It’s one of the first times we’ve heard Facebook executives clashing internally over how to handle the fake news issue and now comes this. Well almost at the time of publishing, we have received word from Mark Zuckerberg .The CEO and co founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg did say he was open to testifying before members of Congress regarding the scandal with Cambridge analytica.He also went on to say that he was really sorry that this happened and wished that the company had changed its policies to make sure that user data was protected and that is probably the biggest mistake that we made here, he went on to say.Zuckerberg said Facebook plans to alert everyone who’s data was accessed by Cambridge analytica but he added that he wishes the company hadn’t waited so long to tell people what had happened, that's definitely something that looking back on this I regret that we didn't do at the time. I think we got that wrong. I started this when I was so young and inexperienced I made technical errors and business errors, I hired the wrong people, I trusted the wrong people. He went to say. But ultimately he says he has also learnt from his miststeps, that's the commitment that I try to have inside our company and for our community , Mark Zuckerberg went on to say.
Facebook has also had a sort of dual existence , they downplay their significance when challenged by the media, about for example there influence on the election which is precisely when Zuckerberg went on to call it crazy, that fake news could change the course of an election. They downplayed their power to deal with online harassment or the spread of fake news but if you’ve got an advertising budget and you want to advertise on Facebook and want to know how facebook can persuade your target consumer to buy your product,it’s a whole different story, suddenly FB is this all knowing entity which is suddenly opened its information corpus to you.It can get almost anyone to do almost anything.In this regard some name writing for The Guardian on facebook went on to say and I quote “ while FB presents itself is a public as a social network when addressing the advertising industry it is very clear about the fact that it is surveillance system”.So am I recommending that you delete your Facebook account?Well that's not what I am saying, in many ways being able to say I don't use Facebook these days is a privilege. Sophia Noble, who is an assistant professor information studies at University of Southern California and who also wrote a book called algorithms and oppression has gone to say and this resonated with me she said for so many people FB is an important gateway to the internet and information, in fact it's only version of the internet that some people know and it plays a central role in communicating, creating community and participating in society online, all of are good reasons, all of which we must pay heed to, but if the corollary and other side effects of these good thing is also that my life is being shaped by online advertiser's and my information is being used to properly turn me as a pawn in a political game.well that's where the troubled lies.What is the risk reward ratio in this particular situation.
The recent revelations about Cambridge analytica and Facebook is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how our data are being used and abused.This cannot be stressed enough.The internet is increasingly a world wide web of coporate surveillance and its impossible to piece together complete picture of have your personal information both your online and offline data are being utilised.But what it has done, is that it has opened an important conversation about how we choose to deal with our social media how much housekeeping are we willing to do, how much are we willing to give away and what are some areas that we say absolutely no no to.Do we take into account the risk reward ratio and do we come to a conclusion that you know what I'm ok with divulging some information A B C or I'm not.Is the way of modern living a complete resignation to the fact that your information will somehow be obtained by third party and will be used maybe against your fevor, is this a scenario that I have any say in?Iis this just how modern living is going to be?Or am I just kicking and fighting trying to avoid what is inevitable? These are some of the big questions that we have to ask ourselves atleast in the way we engag with social media.It is of course true that whatever Google search you might have made,that whatever you might have liked or expressed an interest in,turns up as an advertisement on Facebook.It is of course true, but how much of it are you willing to take and how much of it gets to be part of a larger larger thing like the election of a President the perhaps wasn't going to be elected.
These are some of the big questions that we have dealt with.Tto summarise the entire saga Cambridge analytica a group based in Britain and which has the backing of conservative donors went on to harvest the information of about 50 Million American citizens and based on the data that they obtained from Facebook,went on to target them specifically which may or may not have altered the cause of American politics. What we are also asking is how much has the Facebook stocks suffered in the way of all of this.To give you a sense of that this is Seetal.
“Muh dikhane ke kabil nahin rahein hain hum,muh dikhaiye, face palm , face in the mud, no face to show,face down” I don't know all kinds of phrases are coming to my head, but this part of the podcast is all about the numbers associated with the whole saga, how much FB as an organisation has lost in the last few days and how much Mark Zuckerberg as an individual stands to lose, not stands to lose but has already lost because who knows what the future holds.Just to put things in perspective, Facebook we already know has lost a bit in market value over the last two days, 60 bilion US dollars, if you were to put a number to it.Now that like I said to put things in perspective is more than the market capitalisation of Tesla inc. at around 52 billion or three times that of Snapchat owner, Snap Inc at about 19 billion US dollars . So that is the route that FB market value has seen in the last 2 days . Well the route really started on Friday, when the news broke and then Facebook shares tumbled at 6.8% on Monday, this is the most by the way in 4 years,and if that wasn't bad enough, things took a turn for the worse on Tuesday, with reports of the US Federal trade Commission initiating probe into this data breach.And also on the back of the report that their Chief Security Officer would be putting in his papers. So on Tuesday FB stock fell another 4.7 % to stand at $164.51 at midday in New York.And this two day erosion that FB witnessed over Monday and Tuesday was the worst that has seen since July of 2012,and if you're wondering what is the significance of this particular date,well that when Facebook launched its initial public offering at $38 a share.And as expected the sordid saga dragged down some other tech and social media companies. Twitter stock tumbled 10% and snap Inc for example lost 3%, with that said this is of the first time the Facebook stock has seen a slump, in fact about 2 other occasions, specifically related to incidents, where obviously shareholder concern gave jawab to the Facebook stock in the US markets.So July 27- 2016 was the first two these instances when Facebook went out and said that it was running out of room to show ads.Obviously this didn't make shareholders very happy.Then cut to this year,in february of this year, special counsel Robert Mueller said that FB had been infiltrated by fake russian accounts, supporting Donald Trump and then the stock price on that particular day fell to $162.87.So yes it has happened in the past ,but to come back to the story, what about the man himself Mark Zuckerberg,well it turns out that Mark Zuckerberg holds around 400 million shares of Facebook, I don't even really know how many zeros there in that at this point but that's not the point. The value of a stake has lost about 6.8 billion since friday.He still now owns 70 billion worth of shares in the company and his job is kinda safe because he controls the majority of Facebook’s shareholder vote.So that really is Mark Zuckerberg and where he stands in the scheme of things.But you know if you think about it if someone put a jhaadu in your tijori that's worth some 70 billion or something and takes our only 6 point something billion, would you really be that worried..? I'm not very sure.Sochne ki baat hai..but the bigger sochne ki baat, is what happens if delete Facebook becomes a reality?Well that's a question we won't have answers to any time soon, or..then maybe we will.
Well we’ll end with what is trending across the internet # delete Facebook .Is this something that you’re going to do?Is this something that you are discussing among your friends. I spoke to a small set of people with whom I work here, and the opinions seem to be divided, some people seem to be of the opinion that they would safeguard their privacy a little bit more, but they wouldn’t giveup Facebook all together, simply because it is a window to learning about friends that they have lost touch with long ago, it is a way of keeping in touch with a lot of people, it is a way of keeping oneself informed and educated. And another set of people, an equal number I must say, went on to say that the data breach was the last straw on the camel's back and they would be getting rid of Facebook.Because Facebook does tap into one of the most primal needs of human behaviour ,Yuval Noah Harari in his book Sapiens ,which I recommend that you read,which any way ,half the world has already read ; goes on to say that one of the most important reasons how society is formed, and one of the most important glues that keeps the societies together, was gossip! And Facebook if nothing else feeds into that gossip and look where it is brought us, what we can do the hot or not saying that 14 something years ago in Harvard is now causing tremors across the world.
This has been a deep dive into Facebook and the larger question of privacy online on social media.
Thank you for joining me, this is Rakesh saying goodbye on a deep dive into the situation that FB finds itself in.We of course hope to bring to you more such explainers.For all of that and then some, stay with us. This has been an Insight18 special on Moneycontrol .
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