In: Economics
Researchers at Cambridge Analytica were able to use data about people to determine their personality types and then influence them with targeted ads including political ads. This was significant and reported on back in 2017 (as seen in this article), but Cambridge Analytica actually didn’t hit the news big time until a year later when we discovered that they illicitly obtained the Facebook data. Which do you think is the bigger story and why?
The bigger story is the first one in which researchers from Cambridge Analytica were able to use data about people to determine their personality types and then influence them with targeted ads including political ads.The second story about illicit acquisition of data is not as important since security protocols can be put in place as a countermeasure to prevent that from occuring either through an internal policy change at Facebook or through stricter government regulattion. But the first story means that legally available data can be used to influence people to an extent which could potentially be used for political manipulation by foreign agents across the world since Facebook will keep selling ad customizations and so will other data based ad companies.As more and more people begin to use social media around the developing world compunded by the low literacy rates in those countries means we could be looking at an age of disinformation.