Social Media! I know, I know, you can’t live without it, right? But do we ever think about what happens with what we post about ourselves? Like if I, say, post those pictures of our Ninja gang: Fontay, Lyriam, Ro-Ro, Matthew, Darrel, Broodie, and Jesh, that Jessie and Jhanine swore was fake lol?  Where do those pictures go? Could anyone see those pictures? What about our accounts and the information that we post on them? 

These thoughts are all in response to a problem that just hit the news: Facebook got busted! And I mean, a bad bust, an $80 BILLION DOLLAR LOSS! So what happened, you ask? Well, a report revealed that a British company called Cambridge Analytica had taken the personal information of 50 MILLION Facebook profiles. (Just FYI: Canada’s population is roughly 36.3 million people). Why did they do it? Apparently the information was used to track voter behaviour for both the Brexit campaign (British exiting from the European Union) and the US presidential election (where your totally…umm… favourite president was elected to power!) Now, you might ask, well how did they steal all of this information? They were super sneaky! A professor by the name of  Aleksandr Kogan who also has a company called, Global Science Research, built a personality app called “thisisyourdigitallife.” Before taking this quiz, Facebook users had to input personal information about themselves.  Take a guess what he did with the information? His company sold the information to Cambridge Analytica. In total, there were 270,000 Facebook users who signed up for the personality test. But!! The app stole information of each user’s Facebook friends… who could not have provided consent for releasing their personal information. How did we find out? A Canadian who was the Director of Research at Cambridge Analytica by the name of Christopher Wylie. (He is called a whistleblower. A whistleblower is someone who exposes anything that is illegal or unethical). 

So, what are your thoughts? Do you think that it is scary that these large corporations, have access to our personal information and can use it in any way that they see fit? Or, is it not that big of a deal? So what if our information is out there, that is the whole point of the internet! Also, please take a guess as to what you think our ‘digital footprint’ might mean and include it in your response. Why are your thoughts on this Facebook scandal? Will this issue cause you to be more cautious in the future when you are using apps or not really? Please write a detailed response of roughly 15-20 sentences!