The Cambridge Analytica Scandal and Its Impact on Facebook

Social Media Campaign Against Facebook

Social media has shaped the way people react to the ongoings in business firms as well as governments. One of the latest organizations affected by social media campaigns is Facebook Inc., arguably the largest social media network around the globe. The primary issue that prompted the social media campaign against the company was grounded on concerns about the privacy of users. The reservations arose in the wake of Cambridge Analytica’s compromise of information of up to 87 million Facebook users (Segarra, 2018)

The “DeleteFacebook” Hashtag Campaign

Amidst the concerns, users launched a campaign through the hashtag “deletefacebook,” which saw some high-ranking personalities delete their profiles from the social media platform (“Cambridge analytica: Impact and backlash”, 2018). The campaign enabled users to get insights into the extent to which their data might have been misused by Cambridge Analytica, a company that relies on the behavior of social media users to influence marketing activities. The issue went viral, which prompted many people to stop using Facebook.

Efforts to Safeguard User Privacy

In the face of the social media campaign against his company, Mark Zuckerberg came out to explain what the firm was doing to safeguard the privacy of its users. In response to the data breach, the CEO announced a myriad of measures the company was implementing to protect the security of customers’ information and prevent future dangers. Facebook resolved to restrict the access for their party organizations of the private information. Third-party applications will need authorization by Facebook staff to get some data about users. Additionally, the social media company has decided to delete logs and other information that it receives from Android users (Segarra, 2018). As such, due to the use of social media, Facebook users were able to influence the privacy policies of the company.

References

Cambridge analytica: Impact and backlash. (2018). The Street Times. Retrieved from https://www.straitstimes.com/world/cambridge-analytica-impact-and-backlash

Segarra, L. M. (2018). Facebook says millions more users were affected by the Cambridge Analytica scandal than previously reported. Fortune. Retrieved from http://fortune.com/2018/04/04/cambridge-analytica-facebook-scandal-2/