I'm not too keen on talking about my job on my personal blog, but I feel that this information may be interesting to anyone who uses Facebook. Not long ago, Facebook came under fire, and rightfully so, because of a data breach that leaked the personal information and political preferences of more than 80 million Facebook users to Cambridge Analytica. I'm going to try my hardest not to get too political in this because I find that my more middle-of-the-road stance on some issues bothers both sides and that it might just cause more harm than good. But, since you may not know the history of this breach, it is said that the company that acquired the data worked with Donald Trump's election team and used the data to create software that would predict and influence voters. According to The Guardian, Facebook knew about the breach back in 2015, but they didn't inform any of the data breach victims. They may have thought they could have gotten away with it. After all, according to The Guardian, the "information was collected through an app called thisisyourdigitallife, built by the Cambridge University academic Aleksandr Kogan in collaboration with Cambridge Analytica." People were paid and gave consent to take a "personality test" and have their information collected. If the participant gave access, they may have also unknowingly shared their friends' information.
just be taken like that, but people did consent to this, and they were paid, so I don't know how bad I feel for those who were hoodwinked into offering up their information. Well, Zuckerberg apologized and promised to make things more secure. But how secure...? WHAT HAPPENED TUESDAY MORNING GAVE ME A BIT OF A SHOCK TO SAY THE LEAST...One thing that I do with my job is Facebook and social media marketing. I've had a number of people within my workplace come to me to create and publish these ads on Facebook and Instagram in particular. One of the ads featured a white male police officer. The content of the ad urged viewers to continue their education by obtaining a master's degree in Justice Administration. I had created five different ads with different people or groups of people. All contained the same wording and layout, the only thing that was different was the photo. The content was not approved because it was said to be "political in nature." As I said, the ad did not mention any political party, anyone running for office anywhere, and so forth. So, I decide that I need to look into how to fix this. The folks I created the ad for may be concerned when they see that one of their ads isn't running. So, the first thing it advised me to do was to appeal. I filled out the appeal form and still haven't heard back, although I'm writing this the same day this all happened. There was something else I could do. I could have my account approved to post political ads. I said to myself, "hey, if this is what they think I'm doing and more of my ads will be marked political incorrectly, this might be the best thing to do." So I clicked on it and was astonished at what I saw. That's right, you aren't seeing things. Facebook, the company that allowed a political organization to go under the radar, the company where thousands if not hundreds of thousands of accounts are hacked each day, wants us to provide them with our address, a copy of our photo ID, and the LAST 4 DIGITS OF OUR SSN. I kind of sat back for a minute trying to absorb what just happened. I didn't provide this information of course, but it just seemed so extreme. Why would a company that lost the trust of millions of people then demand that someone who uses their account to boost their posts or post ads give them such personal information? What do you think? Do you think Facebook has gone too far? Let me know in the comments or send me a Snap, Tweet, or DM! I want to know. LEGAL: All photos are my own or come from Pixabay.com, a creative commons website that requires no attribution for photo use. Video sharing is copyright friendly as the original creator gets all views and ad revenue from views on this site.
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