There are two main issues as far as I am concerned.
Data Privacy - To provide information to a third party without consent, will be a very serious issue in the EU and UK from May onwards when the GDPR General Data Protection Regulations kick in. Fines can be up to 20 million Euros or 4% of turnover, which would be massive for Facebook, hence they are rapidly looking to engage and get on board with this. The position of Facebook is massively different to other large tech organisations. Apple for example are struggling with Siri right now, because they have chosen not to build their business model on mining personal data. Google and Microsoft have very clear positions on GDPR compliance.
The usage of such data for political ends. - In principle this is no different from any other targetted message and I get the argument what can they glean from a like of a picture of someone's kitten? but this isn't always so straight forward. Take the case of the pensioner who killed a burglar this week. How many messages were there stating he should never have been arrested, with varying degrees of strength. You can not draw any real conclusion around those who did not like such statements, but those who actively did are more likely to be more receptive to a message that a particular candidate or party would be tough on crime or indeed a negative message about an opponent.
None of this is particularly new, but there are two critical things here - Firstly in this country unlike the US there are strict spending limits on campaigns, so this stuff needs to be traceable and auditable under our current legislation.
Secondly and of wider significance this approach is open to non-attributable sources including foreign governments and wealthy individuals, who can influence political decisions to their own advantage and the key point here is that the targetted message does not need to be fair or accurate, it just needs to be well received.
Data Privacy - To provide information to a third party without consent, will be a very serious issue in the EU and UK from May onwards when the GDPR General Data Protection Regulations kick in. Fines can be up to 20 million Euros or 4% of turnover, which would be massive for Facebook, hence they are rapidly looking to engage and get on board with this. The position of Facebook is massively different to other large tech organisations. Apple for example are struggling with Siri right now, because they have chosen not to build their business model on mining personal data. Google and Microsoft have very clear positions on GDPR compliance.
The usage of such data for political ends. - In principle this is no different from any other targetted message and I get the argument what can they glean from a like of a picture of someone's kitten? but this isn't always so straight forward. Take the case of the pensioner who killed a burglar this week. How many messages were there stating he should never have been arrested, with varying degrees of strength. You can not draw any real conclusion around those who did not like such statements, but those who actively did are more likely to be more receptive to a message that a particular candidate or party would be tough on crime or indeed a negative message about an opponent.
None of this is particularly new, but there are two critical things here - Firstly in this country unlike the US there are strict spending limits on campaigns, so this stuff needs to be traceable and auditable under our current legislation.
Secondly and of wider significance this approach is open to non-attributable sources including foreign governments and wealthy individuals, who can influence political decisions to their own advantage and the key point here is that the targetted message does not need to be fair or accurate, it just needs to be well received.
