Facebook has received a ton of slack for some public admissions that have forever tainted the company's already shaky public representation. The Cambridge Analytica scandal has been the epicentre for all the vociferous opinions that have been raised against the popular social media network, as many cannot fathom the fact that their private information was mined without any staunch approval. New information is beginning to surface on just how intrusive the company's technologies have become, and the findings may be shocking for some.
Cambridge Analytica developed an app, which Facebook inevitably granted permission for, that would be able to mine data from a users "likes," which according to data scientists could be used to "automatically and accurately to predict a range of highly sensitive personal attributes."
This algorithm is highly sophisticated, and can apparently predict a person's race with 95 percent accuracy, their gender with 93 percent accuracy, sexual orientation with 88 percent accuracy, as well as political association with 85 percent accuracy.
According to Michael Kosinski, an accredited data scientist, as much as 300 simple likes on a variety of Facebook posts can present enough information for data mining companies to know an individual better than their spouse. Speaking with CNN, University of Maryland's College of Information Studies colleague Timothy Summers admits "if you're leaving digital breadcrumbs online and living a digital life, as all of us are, you're constantly giving data points. Our smartphones, our computers, our email, the big companies—Amazon, Google, Facebook—they're collecting data on us every single step of the way."