NEW YORK
If you’ve made changes to how you use social media since Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica privacy debacle, you’re not alone.
A new poll from The Associated Press- NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that 7 out of 10 of online adults who’ve heard of the scandal — revelations that a data mining firm may have accessed the private information of some 87 million Facebook users to influence elections — have un-followed accounts, deleted their profiles or made other changes in how they use social media.
And since 9 in 10 Americans have heard at least a little bit about Cambridge Analytica, this means the scandal has led to widespread changes in the use of social media among Americans. What’s less clear is whether these changes are permanent, and whether they will affect business at Facebook, Twitter and other social media companies.
Facebook has said that it hasn’t noticed a meaningful decline in usage since the scandal broke and it doesn’t seem to have experienced much of an advertiser exodus, either. But that doesn’t mean the social media giant is in the clear. Some high-profile tech luminaries such as Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak have disavowed Facebook, and a “Delete- Facebook” online campaign — even if it didn’t lead to mass defections — has bruised the company’s already-battered image.
Cole Bearden, 26, a musician and liquor store employee in Nashville, said he soured on Facebook a while ago, after his parents friended him and turned his app into “a perpetual recipe video-sharing machine.” That, along with his concerns about surveillance and advertisements, convinced him to drop the app from his phone a year ago. He said in an interview last month that he checks his profile only occasionally.
Still, Bearden says deleting his profile won’t mean a lot unless many other Facebook users do the same. And even that, he says, may come too late.
“The real damage has been done. Our concept of open democracy has been undermined, subverted and potentially irreparably damaged,” he said.
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