Anyone who knows me, knows I’m a Luddite. I have no social media presence. No Tweety, no Facepaging, no Instascope, no Snapblab, no Linkedup, nothing.
The latest hubbub from the fake news media is about how Cambridge Analytica captured “personal” information of 87 million Facebook users, parsed the information, and using that information, coerced the gullible public into electing Donald Trump as President of The United States.
Now if we actually believe the hysteria, what does that mean?
It means you should invest your money into Facebook and Cambridge Analytica because they have obtained the holy grail of the advertising world!
Since caveman Og had extra wheels that he wanted to sell to his fellow Neanderthals, people have been trying to figure out the “best” way to get others to “buy” their goods. Obviously Facebook and Cambridge Analytica have figured this out, according the the talking heads in the fake news media as well as those of the liberal left.
According to the Federal Election Commission, the “Donald Trump for President” campaign paid $5,912,500 to Cambridge Analytica. For some perspective, a 30 second Superbowl ad this year cost an advertiser $5,000,000, about the same price
An investment equivalent to a single 30 second spot during the Superbowl, overcame the will of the people to elect Hillybob and forced the zombie voters to elect Donald Trump. Damn that was money well spent compared to the $1.4 BILLION spent by Hillybob, to lose.
Of course if we take the flip side to the “common sense” reasoning and conclude that the collected data had little or no influence on the election, the implication is that you should get your money out of Facebook. This would indicate that their business model is flawed. Facebook’s value is all of that personal data AND the linkages between users AND the links they maintain between the users and stores they shop at. Facebook sells this information to advertisers to generate revenue. The personal data and its utility to advertisers is the whole reason for the company’s billions in valuation.
No matter which side you care to believe, Facebook will be reviewing its image but little else will change. Mark Zuckerberg will testify to Congress in just a few days. My guess is that he will give a well scripted and moving mea culpa and say how naive they were and didn’t see the evil in the world and that they only had a vision of how they were bringing the world together. Blah, blah, blah. Zuckerberg will say that he would welcome regulation. Blah, blah, blah. Mark will give a list of how they will protect the public going forward. More blah, blah, blah. What will happen in the end is nothing. No new regulations will be written.
If Facebook implemented or was forced to implement stringent privacy rules then the treasure trove of data has little value. If advertisers can’t use the personal data to target ads, Facebook can’t charge as much for placements. You can’t make money just letting people post vacation pictures and cat videos, for free.
I suspect that Congress (and the fake news media) will have short-term theatrical outrage over the current hysteria de jour but will soon move on to the more pressing 2018 election cycle and Facebook will go back to business as usual. Anyone remember the huge stink about Russians planting fake ads on Facebook just a few months ago? Anyone still have outrage over that? Were any new laws written? As I said, back to business as usual.
I think I wasted too much time writing about this topic. “Move along nothing to see here”