March 2018 was for Facebook is clearly not the best month: when the company needs to show growth, it loses $ 50 billion market capitalization. The reason for this was a huge data breach of 50 million users of the social network, which failed to hide. In the end, every “leaked” the user took with him the order of thousands of dollars capitalization giant. Last week it became known that the analytical firm Cambridge Analytica somehow secretly received data and used them to help Donald Trump win in the election race.
The most scandalous about this is that Facebook might know about the data breach, but did nothing. The result is a rapid fall in the value of shares of the company, the investigation in the United States and Europe, and universal contempt. All in good time.
A preliminary plot is as follows. In 2014, the Cambridge University Professor Alexander Kogan thisisyourdigitallife created an application in which after login through Facebook it was possible to pass a psychological test for a fee. Through the app have been about 270 thousand people, opening access to the data of 50 million users.
In 2015, Facebook app suspected of violating the rules: gather data about users and their social network allows friends provided that they will remain the owner of the application and will not be disclosed to third parties. We also found out that Professor Cohen just sold data Cambridge Analytica and Eunoia Technologies.
After the success of trump’s election, in early 2018, Channel 4 News showed a recording made covert shooting where the head of the Cambridge Analytica talks about the possibility of intervention in elections of any country (of course, with reference to the merged data). According to preliminary results of the investigation, Cambridge Analytica used illicitly obtained Facebook data to place highly effective advertisements and to influence the opinion of users of the social network.
By 21 March, Facebook lost more than $ 60 billion capitalization. The stock market has reacted well to the blow to the reputation brainchild of Zuckerberg. Most of these actions have harmed a personal fortune of Zuckerberg: Mark falls, and will continue to fall. Facebook investors sue the company; the authorities in the U.S. and Europe are conducting their own investigation. If it turns out that the social network gave users ‘ data, obtained illegally, and even hid it, it will be fined a tidy sum.
Twitter users spend an action to summon Facebook users in their ranks: the social network is gaining popularity hashtag “Delete Facebook” (#deletefacebook). The campaign supports and Brian Acton, one of the founders of WhatsApp, who left Facebook in 2017.
Waiting for an official statement of Mark Zuckerberg. With the onset of the scandal, neither he nor the press service of Facebook has not yet given official comments.
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#deletefacebook that struck the giant: Facebook “lost” 50 billion dollars
Ilya Hel