Yes, we should be outraged about Facebook
Any campaign can acquire your listed landline number. But no campaign is permitted access to your hopes, fears, worries, passions or day-to-day business by way of a phone tap. Facebook’s accumulated information may not be quite like a tap. But the company sure knows a whole lot about you.
.. Far from obviating his need to testify, Zuckerberg’s statement Wednesday afternoon acknowledging “mistakes” and pledging to “work through this” largely repeated what we already know. He’ll have to do much more.
.. properly cautious about connecting the Cambridge Analytica story to Russia. But as Justin Hendrix, the executive director of NYC Media Lab , argued on Slate, there is evidence giving plausibility to the idea “that Cambridge Analytica helped spur the Russian disinformation operation during the 2016 election.” And the close ties between Cambridge Analytica and the Trump campaign, beginning with Stephen K. Bannon’s role as vice president and secretary of the company, mean that inquiries into such links are inevitable.
.. Are they unduly blocking transparency about how political campaigns are conducted and who is financing them? Were they indifferent to their manipulation by foreign powers?