The controversy over the use of personal data by Cambridge Analytica has dominated news over the last few days. The influence that an organisation has been able to have access to Facebook data (albeit apparently gained illicitly) was shocking – being able to influence the US Presidential race to such a degree is mind-blowing.
The shock of this has got people thinking about the future of their Facebook accounts – should they go ahead and delete?
Firstly, it should not be much of a shock to Facebook users that the level of data that they are sharing with Facebook is massive.
Facebook users are only able to see a proportion of the posts that they should see (i.e. if they saw every post from every page that they liked), so Facebook prioritises the content that they see. Every time that they like a page, comment on a post, add a like or click on a link they are sending data to Facebook: ‘I have an interest in this content’. This trend can lead to Facebook users seeing more and more similar posts which support a particular viewpoint…
