Best of BTB: Privacy Lost and Found

Privacy, as we once knew it, was sold down the digital river a long while ago, says author B.J. Mendelson

This time, there was no need for any hackers. Data on the personal interests of as many as 50 million Americans flowed freely – and legally – from Facebook’s open online platform to a psychology professor at Cambridge University, who said he was conducting academic research.  Then, the information allegedly landed at a data mining firm in London where it was used to shape advertising and messaging in the 2016 US presidential campaign.

In the wake of revelations over Cambridge Analytica’s “data harvesting,” Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has faced calls from elected officials in the US and the UK to answer probing questions about his social media company’s data gathering and data sharing practices. The heat under Zuckerberg has cooled off Facebook share prices sharply and raised tough questions about the dilemma at the heart of social media: a handful of private businesses hold a vast treasure trove of information about billions of people around the world.

Data hoarding has made good business for Facebook, Google and Twitter – as well as for a host of opportunistic data brokers and data dealers. Their financial gain is often your privacy lost, says B.J. Mendelson, author of the 2012 hit Social Media Is Bullshit, a debunking of the mythical powers of the Twittersphere. His new book, Privacy, makes the case that your personal life is up for sale; indeed, Mendelson declares that privacy, as we once knew it, was sold down the digital river a long while ago.

“The tech companies have done a wonderful job – fortunately for them, unfortunately for us – of painting themselves with a utopian brush as cuddly and friendly and promoting all these wonderful things,” Mendelson tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally. “But the bottom line has always been – your data equals a whole lot of money, and they’ll do whatever it takes to get as much of it as they can.”