Your Data is Being Weaponized

Like so many people (hopefully), I watched The Great Hack on Netflix. Without giving some spoilers, the documentary covers the British data company Cambridge Analytica and its involvement with the Brexit campaign in the UK and, more important to Americans, the Trump campaign. Let’s rewind to 2016. Facebook was a war zone and the divide on its platform is still thriving today. Cambridge Analytica designed a system that used surveys, ads and videos to access not only your personal data but also the data of your friends on your friends list. So, imagine how many friends each of us have on Facebook. All it would have taken for your personal data (likes, status updates, info and even messages) to be mined by Cambridge Analytica is for just one of your friends to participate in a personality test or survey, or you yourself participates in said survey. After your data had been breached, you then could have been subjected to a lot of fake news, political propaganda and campaign ads. Your personality as well as your political opinions were targeted to share fake news with your friends. Yes, your core political opinions are genuine. But what you did with those opinions were provoked and effectively displayed in a manner that could be influential to another person based on their personality that had been exploited by Cambridge Analytica. 

You may be asking yourself, how much difference did it actually make in our election? Well, when you consider that in electoral college terms, the election was decided by just a few hundred thousand people in three states, it mattered a whole lot.  Cambridge Analytica wasn’t the only offender in creating division online and influencing the democratic process. You have a liberal leaning news media, right wing leaning news and, of course, Russia was able to not only spread fake news but cause actual chaos and unrest at public events. Many politically based Facebook groups were set up by Russian operatives to invite and organize protestors to rallies held by groups with opposing views. Scary, huh? That Antifa group or that white nationalist group that you may think caused such a chaotic scene may have actually been blatantly provoked by Russia. For a while, I thought maybe it had become ridiculous to think that Russia is destroying us from within. But, I think it’s actually based in verifiable fact. What can we do? I wish I had just a straight-forward, specific answer. But it’s almost entirely unclear as far as physical action. I do know that I grew up in a household, thankfully, that showed great importance to the democratic process of choosing leaders in government. And we have to decide is it important enough to regain control of. Are we going to continue to be divided? Or are we going to come together and fight to regain control over one of our most fundamental rights, the right to vote? It’s not about Trump or not Trump. It’s not about left versus right. It’s now about not allowing our information to be exploited and violated. We have to change the way we talk to each other, debate issues and share information online. History is not going look favorably upon how things are going in America right now. That first word in the name of the country is being rapidly tainted....United.