So.
A bunch of ‘well intended people’ had somehow laid their hands on a ‘trove of personal data’ and used it, commercially, to influence electoral processes.
The data was gathered by ‘creatively’ exploiting the ‘opportunities’ put in place by the very existence of Facebook and by the manner in which so many people chose to use the said ‘social network’.

And most of us blame it on ‘Zuckerberg’.

OK, I can understand the psychology of all this.
I can also understand those who put the entire blame on anybody but ‘Zuckerberg’…

Let’s gather some facts.

“Facebook has lost nearly $50 billion in market cap since the data scandal”. recode.net, Mar 20, 2018
“In one day, Zuckerberg’s net worth fell $5 billion”. qz.com,  Second day it had fallen a further 4 billion…
Anyway, some 31 ‘missing’ billions used to belong to some other people but Zuckerberg.
Weren’t they supposed to take good care of their property? Weren’t they supposed to check what Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, was doing with their money?

 

“In Hidden-Camera Exposé, Cambridge Analytica Executives Boast Of Role In Trump Win” npr.org, March 21, 2018
“CA’s CEO wrote that the firm had “teamed up with Leave.EU” — then furiously backpedalled”
Impossible to say how much influence Cambridge Analytica’s efforts had over Trump becoming the 46-th American President or Brexit. If any at all.
Yet who bears more responsibility for these developments?
The guys who came up with those ideas in the first place? Trump and Cameron?
The guys who made them possible? The Republican Party Convention who had nominated Trump to run and the British House of Commons who had voted 544-53 in favor of the “United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, 2016”?
The guys who had campaigned above the board, in any direction?
Those who had exerted their influence ‘under the radar’? ” “We have already helped supercharge Leave.EU’sial media campaign by ensuring the right messages are getting to the right voters online, and the campaign’s Facebook page is growing in support to the tune of about 3,000 people per day.”

Or those who, through their daily decisions, had created the premises for so many people to convince themselves that Trump was good enough for President and that it would better for Britain to ‘leave’?

Yeah, it’s only normal to blame others for our own mistakes.
But how sustainable is it?

Advertisement