“I'm sorry but this is bullshit! Because your friend took this dumb ass quiz, this company you never heard of got access to your account?
It's like your friend boned someone and you got the STD” ― Trevor Noah
“A Hurricane Flattens Facebook” wrote Wired Magazine, The Guardian went with a more poignant headline: “A Grand Illusion: Seven Days that Shattered Facebook’s Facade”.
Rivers of digital ink have been spilled in the last few of days to cover the epic blowback that social media giant - or personal-data collecting company - has received as their stocks fell 14% and losing billions in a matter of days. Oh and the tag #deletefacebook started trending worldwide.
Who could’ve seen that day coming?
Before we dive into our story, let’s rewind a little bit to get more context.
Back in 2014, a data company called Cambridge Analytica paid a group of users to take a personality test on Facebook.
Thousands of unsuspecting users volunteered to take the test, but never had they imagined the sheer magnitude of the very trap they’re about to step in.
Landmine Goes Click
The biggest mistake they've probably done is to assume that Facebook was protecting them. After all, it's just a social media site where you connect with your grandma and old friends. Isn't that what they tell you?
And so they clicked, and with a simple click they fell right into the trap.
The problem however is that they took fifty million of their friends down with them, and they did it without even realizing it.
But at the end of the day, you can’t really blame them.
Putting ourselves into their shoes, the first question that comes to mind is probably this one:
So... I play “What type of Pizza are you?” and then I get some cash to buy an actual pizza?
It’s hard to argue with the logic, I know. But then again, this is precisely the classic case of: If something sounds too good to be true…
Hello Trojan, Come on in!
As it turns out, the “social engineers” were less interested in knowing what kind of Pizza you supposedly are, and more interested into sneaking their Trojan horse right into your Facebook account.
This way, they can slip in behind the curtains and so collect all your personal data, as well as all the personal data of the people in your friends’ list.
Trevor Noah was right, it’s like your friend has sex but it’s you who gets the STD.
At this stage, you would think that stealing your info and tracking your behavior is creepy enough, but it gets much darker than that.
Exploiting the personal data - taken without permission - was just the first step. Soon after came the psychological profiling as they began to create all sorts of psychographic profiles for the users based by the “likes” and the comments history as well as a host of other factors.
Then they started organizing people by 5 factors: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.
And finally, they started to inject different pieces of news to each specific type of personality, and lock them into a feedback loop they can’t escape from. The Feedback loop from hell.
And believe it or not, it’s divided by classes.
I don’t know about you, but I think that neurotic people are prime targets for politicians.
News Feed Manipulation: The True Nature of the Beast
“Cambridge Analytica was founded on misappropriated data of at least fifty million Facebook users.
This Data was used to create profiling algorithms that allowed us to explore mental vulnerabilities of people, and then map out ways to inject information into different streams and channels of content online.
What Cambridge analytica does is that it works on creating a web of disinformation online so that people start going through the rabbit hole of clicking on blogs and websites etcetera that make them think that certain things are happening that may not be”.
― Christopher Wiley, Cambridge Analytica Whistle Blower
Now let’s take a moment to fully digest this: “A web of disinformation that makes people think that certain things are happening that may not be.”
If this isn’t propaganda I don’t know what this is. And if you don’t believe me, look at what Cambridge Analytica managing director has to say about the use of fake news:
“You didn’t know that there was a fear until you saw something that just evoked that reaction from you.
… It’s no good fighting an election campaign on the facts because actually it’s all about emotion.” ― Mark Turnbull, Managing Director of CA Political Global.
The Merchants of Fear
The crazy part about this whole story is that all of this illegal data harvesting, this injection of fake stories, exploiting of people’s fears for voter manipulation.. All of these factors combined, that’s just is the vanilla part.
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post where we dive a little deeper into the rabbit hole, as well as explore Facebook’s part which is truly mind-blowing.
Image Sources: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6
