CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS
Mark Zuckerberg Can Still Fix This Mess.
The news about Facebook is not getting better. The company has sharply increased the number of users whose data was improperly shared with an outside company connected to President Trump’s campaign, to possibly 87 million. Amid an outcry, Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, is expected to testify before Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday. EXPLANATION
n 2014, 270,000 people were paid by an outside developer to install a Facebook app and answer questions like “Do you panic easily?” and “Do you often feel blue?” They weren’t told that their answers would become part of a psychological profile used by a voter profiling company, Cambridge Analytica — first to assess how they might vote and second to design personalized advertising for the purpose of changing their political views or their likelihood of voting, all to favor the agenda of Cambridge Analytica’s funders and clients. The app also scooped up information from the typically nonpublic profiles of the quiz-takers’ friends — turning 270,000 people into 87 million. ARGUMENT
On the policy front, we should look to how the law treats professionals with specialized skills who get to know clients’ troubles and secrets intimately. For example, doctors and lawyers draw lots of sensitive information from, and wield a lot of power over, their patients and clients. There’s not only an ethical trust relationship there but also a legal one: that of a “fiduciary,” which at its core means that the professionals are obliged to place their clients’ interests ahead of their own. ARGUMENT
Facebook needs to do more than just identify political ads and who’s behind them, a change it announced on Friday. All of its ads, political or otherwise, should be available for anyone to peruse, not just those targeted to receive them. Most of us won’t spend a Sunday looking through Facebook ads, but public interest groups and consumer protection officials will, and they’ll publicize and be in a position to act on the troubling things they find. DISAGREEMENT
n 2014, 270,000 people were paid by an outside developer to install a Facebook app and answer questions like “Do you panic easily?” and “Do you often feel blue?” They weren’t told that their answers would become part of a psychological profile used by a voter profiling company, Cambridge Analytica — first to assess how they might vote and second to design personalized advertising for the purpose of changing their political views or their likelihood of voting, all to favor the agenda of Cambridge Analytica’s funders and clients. The app also scooped up information from the typically nonpublic profiles of the quiz-takers’ friends — turning 270,000 people into 87 million. ARGUMENT
On the policy front, we should look to how the law treats professionals with specialized skills who get to know clients’ troubles and secrets intimately. For example, doctors and lawyers draw lots of sensitive information from, and wield a lot of power over, their patients and clients. There’s not only an ethical trust relationship there but also a legal one: that of a “fiduciary,” which at its core means that the professionals are obliged to place their clients’ interests ahead of their own. ARGUMENT
Facebook needs to do more than just identify political ads and who’s behind them, a change it announced on Friday. All of its ads, political or otherwise, should be available for anyone to peruse, not just those targeted to receive them. Most of us won’t spend a Sunday looking through Facebook ads, but public interest groups and consumer protection officials will, and they’ll publicize and be in a position to act on the troubling things they find. DISAGREEMENT
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