Facebook under scanner for using users' data to manipulate the way they vote

The key to this question lies in the statement that we are not the customers to Facebook, we are rather products. Facebook is more an advertising agency than anything else. Facebook's revenues are generated through the advertisements Facebook serves us with.

One's Facebook likes tell much more than we think they do. Our preferences, our tastes, the things we enjoy, the people we admire, Facebook knows it all. The social networking website is under the scanner after The New York Times and The Guardian newspaper reported that former Trump campaign consultant Cambridge Analytica used data, including users' likes, inappropriately obtained from roughly 50 million Facebook users in a bid to influence the US Presidential elections.

Zeynep Tufekci, in a Ted Talk, talked in all the lengths and breadths the way online advertisements have influenced our lives. She says that the advertising companies are building a dystopia in order to make people click on ads.

“Monday was a wild roller coaster ride for Facebook, whose shares plunged 7 percent in its worst one-day decline since 2014. Officials in the EU and the US sought answers, while Britain’s information commissioner said she will seek a warrant to access Cambridge Analytica’s servers because the British firm had been ‘uncooperative’ in her investigation. The first casualty of that investigation was an audit of Cambridge that Facebook had announced earlier in the day; the company said it ‘stood down’ that effort at the request of British officials.” The Indian Express reported.

The advent of social media has seen changes in the society never witnessed before in the human civilization. The volumes of fake news that are regulated and shared on the social media also have been a concerning issue. Facebook has announced to introduce corrective measures to improve this situation.

Facebook has brought to our lives very significant and fundamental changes. With the changing technology, our lives are more exposed, our privacy more public and our data more open to exploitation. We need to be more vigilant than ever and Governments need to take steps to ensure data safety and privacy of individuals.