Questioning Facebook's “Fair Play” Policies and Biases

THE STORY BEHIND

Facebook's privacy and data handling practices have been under major scrutiny ever since the Cambridge-Analytica scandal came to light. Facebook sold off data of around 87.6 million users to the now defunct British political consulting firm Cambridge-Analytica, which was then siphoned off to Donald Trump's associates. Well, today we are writing about the other allegation that Facebook has come under fire for, one that completely contradicts the Cambridge-Analytica Scandal. It's the notion that Facebook has an anti-conservative bias, pushing aside pro-Trump content.

THE CATCH

Now Facebook's anti Trump bias isn't a pressing issue, made less evident since Facebook already has a preferences tab for ads you would be interested in. But where's the catch? The catch is the timing of the recent anti-conservative allegations. Far-right websites such as The Gateway Pundit and Brietbart News Network have claimed that they are being censored on social media. Donald Trump's gotten behind these claims too, going as far as hinting at a possible anti-trust relationship between Amazon, Facebook and Google.

THE TIMING OR TRUTH

While these claims have hit Facebook hard, they are hard to believe at face value.  But if you take the Cambride-Analytica scandal into context, can you really put it beyond Mark Zuckerberg and his team? More than that, these allegations should really raise some concerns for the next time you use FaceApp.

But you know what the scariest part is? It's how the Cambridge Analytica scandal played out. Aleksandr Kogan, a Russian American who worked at the University of Cambridge developed a simple Facebook quiz app called "thisismydigitallife" and the rest is history.

DOES THIS AFFECT US?

Facebook's basic algorithm focuses on your likes, viewed pages, videos and people you are simply "friends" with and feeds you content as such. To tie everything into a national context, you would not be viewing "gujob" if all the things stated above did not line up. But Facebook isn't supposedly filtering content here, or at least not to the extent that they have been accused off. Nonetheless, it's best to avoid quizzes and things on Facebook which gain access to your personal data for the time being.