In the fallout from the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica data mining scandal, Julian Assange has reminded his followers that it is highly unwise to trust all their personal data to a “megalomaniac” who calls his users “dumb f**ks.”
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Assange recalled an exchange with an unnamed friend immediately after the beta version of the social media giant was launched in 2003. He spoke of how Mark Zuckerberg was surprised that the first “dumb f**ck” users immediately trusted the newly-launched platform with their private data.
Some fifteen years later, Zuckerberg’s disregard for users’ privacy misfired, when it emerged how effortlessly data from over 50 million Facebook accounts was collected, analyzed and manipulated by London-based Cambridge Analytica. The scandal led to thousands of Facebook users deleting their accounts over belated “privacy concerns.”
Even SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk and WhatsApp founder Brian Acton distanced themselves from their high tech industry colleague’s calamity. They joined a chorus of skeptical Facebook users who shut down their accounts. On Friday, WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange proudly stated “I have deleted my Facebook” – before clarifying that he in fact “never had one” and explaining his own reasoning for that.
“Friends don’t put their friends into a giant intelligence database controlled by a megalomaniac who calls his users ‘dumb f**ks’ for trusting him,” he tweeted.
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