Despite Facebook’s claims to the contrary, everyone involved in the Cambridge Analytica data-siphoning incident did not give his or her “consent” — at least not in any meaningful sense of the word. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that you had explicitly consented to turn over your Facebook data to another company. And Cambridge Analytica employees are claiming that the data formed the backbone of the company’s operations in the 2016 presidential election. The problem here goes beyond Cambridge Analytica and what it may have done. A business model based on vast data surveillance and charging clients to opaquely target users based on this kind of extensive profiling will inevitably be misused.

Source: New York Times March 19, 2018 19:07 UTC