A for-profit competitor to Facebook called MeWe emphasizes total privacy and makes its money by offering optional services. “People don’t appreciate that Facebook is a data company, not a social network,” Weinstein said. Our democracy is further debased by the use of social media to create micro-targeted negative ads, not to mention entire fake organizations. The company allowed third-party clients to mine data not just of Facebook users but of their “friends.” This is basically what happened, on a far larger scale, with Cambridge Analytica. But skeptics are convinced that Facebook will find workarounds that preserve its basic ability to tabulate and sell users’ data.

Source: Huffington Post March 25, 2018 22:18 UTC