The whole Facebook-Cambridge Analytica debacle can be read as a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth
from people who like to see the internet as a wild west awaiting their control.
But there is an important lesson for anyone using data.
First - why the fuss? There are already plenty of laws and
forthcoming rules to prevent the misuse of data.
The General Data Protection Regulation explicitly states that someone's data
cannot be used or stored without their express permission, for example.
So, even if you were to grant a company permission to use your
data, you can't grant permission to them to use your friends’ data. A company
can't ask for that or use that. Even Facebook realised this was a share
too far in 2014 and ended the practice (which had until then been employed by
'abusive apps').
However, the argument is that all that data has already been
hoarded by the bad guys. But GDPR will make every item they hoard subject to
compliance. So even in the case of old data (which loses its salience by
the second in any event) the hoarder must make it easy for anyone to remove
their consent and retrieve their data.
That's going to be a challenge for bad actors. And when the
auditors come calling they will face fines for every single data point. And
these are fines at the scale of 'put you out of business'.
The short term issue for Facebook and, therefore, for much of
digital marketing and communications, is the breach of trust. This is based on
the notion that we didn't understand the scale of what could be done with the
posts and likes and comments we gave away in exchange for better connection
with people and information that was useful or interesting to us.
Facebook could act on this, at least re the instance of Fake News.
They could set their engineers to work creating an algorithm to automatically
add links to fact-checking or cross-checking validated sites.
They could of course do the same for their adverts. Imagine the
potential to cut through the lies...
However, these are only solutions if you have difficulty filtering
truth from deceit. In reality we humans have a brilliantly well-developed
ability to see through bull.
Large parts of our brains are dedicated to sorting the trustworthy
from the cheats. (Martin Novak's Super Co-operators says this was essential to our
ability to live in co-operative societies). Target me with all the propoganda
you like, I won't be voting Nazi.
So we do have a responsibility in this as individuals. We choose
what we are willing to believe, and we must ensure we apply our innate
abilities to spot the fraudulent at all times.
And naturally - any business or organisation handling data must do
so with care and with all due respect for the owner. It is this respect for the
owner that points to the most critical learning.
If the digital industry takes one thing from Facebook's woes, it
should be this:
Since the value of data rapidly decays, the relationship with the
human behind the data is always going to be of far greater value than the data
assets themselves.
Data is not the relationship. It is the output of a relationship.
Get one.
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