In 2007, Facebook released the "Facebook Platform". Following the scandal where Cambridge Analytica used the platform to harvest data of some 87 million users and influence the US election and Brexit referendum, Deputy General Counsel Paul Gewal at Facebook confirmed that this was not a data breach - the system was operating as intended. That the system was designed to reduce user privacy and abuse user trust for the profit of corporate payers went almost unnoticed in the uproar over how the data was used, but it marked a fundamental shift in the relationship between software developers and their users. Until then, users could trust that software they used was designed and built for them. * Having begun with a promise "it is free and always will be", Facebook's model to fund via advertising dollars meant that their software would be built for advertisers - and their users would be the product. During that golden age of computing, millions of hours of the bes...
Exploring the moral and ethical implications of technology