“Believe me, it’s not as bad as it looks,”said the spider to the fly. “Who is your favorite celebrity?” a friend asked me earlier this year. “Mark Zuckerberg,” I answered, without any additional introspection or forethought. Even with all the highly esteemed actors, socialites and billionaires crowding the stage as we know it, I couldn’t help being fascinated by the Facebook CEO’s statesmanly charm. Whether it is his keen political acumen or his unrivaled vision for the future, the billionaire genius always struck me as someone worth admiring. And yet, when I come across things such as this, I cannot help realizing that there is also another side to Facebook, one that is not exciting or glamorous, but filled with deep, dark secrets hidden beneath the surface, designed to help the multinational corporation make the billions of dollars in profits it likes to boast about on business gatherings.
On May 1, The Australian published a news bite about a 23-page leaked document obtained from sources within the social media giant’s advertisement unit, one that revealed some dark secrets about how the company was misusing information obtained through people’s browsing habits to target 6.4 million users, many of them under the age of sixteen, in their moments of emotional weakness, such as when they feel worthless”, “insecure”, “stressed”, “defeated”, “anxious”, and so on. The document, prepared by company executives David Fernandez and Andy Sinn, serves as a presentation detailing to potential advertisers Facebook’s unrivaled accuracy in its ability to track status updates, public interactions and internet activity in real time to identify “moments when young people need a confidence boost”.
Aside from the myriad ethical questions raised by this dramatic reveal, there is also the inevitable legal dilemma, as the act comes very close to violating the Australian Code for Advertising & Marketing Communications to Children, which requires organizations to obtain expressive consent from a the guardians of a minor before extracting any personally identifiable data. In response to these questions, Facebook released the following public statement:
On May 1, 2017, The Australian posted a story regarding research done by Facebook and subsequently shared with an advertiser. The premise of the article is misleading. Facebook does not offer tools to target people based on their emotional state.
The analysis done by an Australian researcher was intended to help marketers understand how people express themselves on Facebook. It was never used to target ads and was based on data that was anonymous and aggregated.
Facebook has an established process to review the research we perform. This research did not follow that process, and we are reviewing the details to correct the oversight.
While their seasoned public relations team would much rather avoid these dire implications by calling it an oversight in their research review protocols, it takes no rocket scientist to figure out that the response chalked up by the social media conglomerate is evasive at best. Employees and supporters within Facebook have tried to argue that the information obtained was only to be used for productive purposes, for example, to uplift the emotional state of a depressed minor. However, that doesn’t exactly clear the social media giant for an obvious abuse of its massive surveillance capabilities.
A number of nonprofits realize that, and in an effort to get the company to take responsibility for the wrongdoings within their own ranks, they are urging Facebook to release the entire document in public so that the people may determine how deep these fallacies stem. Over two dozen organizations, including the Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Watchdog and Center for Science in the Public Interest, have now put together an open letter addressed to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, their demands being that the company release the entirety of the research for public viewing and offer explanations as to its “sentiment mining” program. Reportedly, they will soon be sitting across the table from company executives to discuss the issue at hand and mitigate potential concerns.
We live in a digitalized age wherein the price of data has well surpassed the price of gold, where owners of for-profit organizations will do anything to get their hands on public information. When you sign up for a free account with a media conglomerate such as Facebook or Instagram, you immediately sign off a bunch of your rights with regards to privacy and anonymity. However, targeting minors in their times of emotional vulnerability, not only does that come as a profound ethical violation, it sounds like something right out of a sci-fi dystopia.
