Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) demanded that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testify before Congress because the Cambridge Analytica data theft that Facebook did nothing about may have swung the election to Trump.
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Sen. Markey said on MSNBC, “Here, you have the greatest compromise of privacy history in our country. It could have led to in fact the compromise of the length of we don’t know fully yet what Cambridge Analytica did with all this information, that the relationship was with the trump campaign or the Russians. We have to get to the bottom of it. Steve Bannon is part of that company. Michael Flynn was consulting for that company. Robert Mercer is the principal owner of this company. We need to get to the bottom of this and Mark Zuckerberg has to be the person who sits in front of Congress and explains how this happened.”
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Facebook allowed profiles of 50 million users to be stolen and did nothing. The bigger issue is that the company illegally obtained information that allowed it to target voters in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Trump won those three states by a combined roughly 80,000 votes. The data that Facebook allowed to be stolen was likely used to target voters in those three states.
It isn’t a stretch to say that when Facebook decided to protect itself, instead of its users, it got Donald Trump elected president.
Facebook has some massive problems that include public perception, an FTC investigation, and now a potential Congressional investigation. Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook leadership can’t hide from their problems, and throttling political content is not going to make this go away. All Facebook is accomplishing with their efforts so far is driving users off of their platform.
The fix is simple. Better privacy measures, and more privacy controls for users. Verification requirements for all accounts and businesses. Facebook needs to verify that a news organization is really a news organization and that users are who they say that they are, and there should be stronger oversight and controls of pages and groups.
Facebook could have fixed these problems years ago, but by putting stock price ahead of all else, the world’s biggest social media platform finds itself facing a crisis and fighting for survival.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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