Tip Of The Suckerberg

- Arindam Mukherjee

THE revelation that Facebook had allowed personal information from 50 million user accounts in the US to be used by British data analytics company Cambridge Analytica shook the world. It took a toll on the stock prices of many companies including Face­ book, whose value tanked significantly, and created a trust deficit in social media worldwide. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg will face the US Congress next week to answer questions about how his social media behemoth has been sharing the confidential inf­ormation of its users for profit.

In India, this has led to a bitter debate and mudslinging between the BJP and the Congress over the latter employing the services of Cambridge Analytica to influence elections. While the slugfest between the two big parties continues, this has led to a larger question: how safe is personal information and data in the hands of social media companies such as Facebook and WhatsApp? Indians routinely open up their hearts on these sites to share information about them­selves and their families—do the sites then sell this data to others to manipulate buying and, well, voting?