Shutterstock/Ollyy. All rights reserved.The Cam-Book gate is creating ripples across the world as both Cambridge Analytica and Facebook scramble to control the damage. The data extracted from Facebook without the informed consent of the users was allegedly used to influence the outcome of the US elections, which saw the rise of Trump and his acolytes to power. Suggestions are being made that Brexit was orchestrated by using similar tactics. Cambridge Analytica has maintained that it obtained the data legally.
There is noise coming out of India as well about data breaches. It is mere politicking and not a serious debate as it is a country with no robust privacy laws, and the state is more than happy to give corporations such as Facebook enough leeway as long as they toe its line. India has requested user data from Facebook more than every other country except the United States. In the recent past, Facebook has also blocked users from Indian Occupied Kashmir for expressing anti-India sentiments on its platform and so has Twitter. Were it not for the whistle-blower Christopher Wylie, how many Facebook users would have been aware of the pervasive data-gathering tactics of the social media behemoth?
It is disappointing to see that while it has been well documented how Facebook has been violating the privacy of its users, users seem not to care. The good old ‘I have nothing to hide’ argument is peddled left, right, and centre. People appear to have wholeheartedly embraced a disturbing ‘exhibitionism’, argues Bernard Harcourt in his must-read book ‘Exposed-Desire and Disobedience in the Digital Age’. This is not the end of the road: Facebook’s hunger for data has only grown regardless of how much its users provide willingly.
