Private Life for sale

Private Life for sale

By Mathieu Goulet-Côté

Peer-Reviewed By Léa Drolet-Roy

Except if you have been living under a rock for the past two weeks, you surely heard about the case surrounding Facebook. The CEO of the company, Mark Zuckerberg had a hearing in front of the Senate on Wednesday, March 9 to discuss the major privacy leak that happened on the platform, as well as other infractions.

The opening of the Hearing started with an apology from Zuckerberg, stating that “Facebook failed to take a broad enough view of its responsibilities. That was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and I’m sorry,” he says. “I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here.” The company has been held responsible for the widespread of so-called Fake News, foreign interference in elections and hate speech, as well as a breach of data privacy.

The president of the social media company was expected to make apologies, which he did, although, he remained concealed and evasive in answering some questions, such as concrete ways on how to fix the wrong usage of personal data.

However, the main subject of the hearing was the selling of user's personal data to third-party advertisement sites. One of the most shocking revelations that were made clear during the session, was that Facebook is planning on offering a paid service to allow users to be given the power to chose whether or not their data could be used for targeted advertisement. On the first line of the terms of service of the company, it is stated that you control and own the information and content that you put on Facebook, although with this new free-targeted ad or free ad (the CEO remained evasive on the exact nature of the possible new implementation on the platform) it would mean, you would have to pay, to be sure your data are not used by third-party, does that really seems like you own your data then?

Although Mark Zuckerberg did state he would work with his team and in association with the Congress to establish new online regulations about the use of personal data by companies.