The following article by Tracey Lien was posted on the Los Angeles Times website March 20, 2018:
Many Facebook users rely on the social network to figure out what’s going on in the world. But what if the world Facebook shows them is wildly distorted?
That’s the question raised after a former employee of a data mining firm that worked for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign alleged the company used Facebook to bombard specific individuals with misinformation in hopes of swaying their political views.
The accusations raised alarm across the Atlantic on Monday, sparking an investigation into the firm, Cambridge Analytica, by the United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner’s Office. In the U.S., Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) sent a letter asking Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg whether the social media giant was aware of other data violations on its platform, and why it failed to take action sooner. Continue reading “A data mining company allegedly used Facebook to distort users’ reality”