Facebook sells users as 'products' & lacks control over itself – Iceland's Pirate Party co-founder
The co-founder of Iceland's Pirate Party has told RT that there are "big problems" related to Facebook's selling of data, stressing that the social media giant is treating its users as products.
"You have companies that are forced, and they're so big, they're forced to give governments data and they also sell the data, or as you know they don't sell the data – they sell you. You're the product," Birgitta Jonsdottir told RT's Caleb Maupin.
"[When] you are not aware of how these things work and they're so big that they are not even in control over themselves, then you have big problems," she said, adding that it's a "complete lie" anytime Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says that users can control what they're doing on the site.
It comes amid the Cambridge Analytica scandal which revealed that the analytics firm had obtained user data on 87 million Facebook users and their friends and contacts through a third-party app. Further privacy scandals at Facebook have been reported since. Earlier this month, Zuckerberg was made to speak to a congressional panel about his company's data collection and censorship practices.
The Cambridge Analytica revelations prompted the hashtag #DeleteFacebook to trend on Twitter, with both regular users and major celebrities jumping on board. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak also recently joined the action. Meanwhile, Mozilla announced last month that it would be halting its advertising on Facebook until the site strengthens its policy on user data, while Elon Musk also deleted the Facebook profiles of his companies Tesla and SpaceX.
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