Variety’s new cover pays homage to the classic Gulliver’s Travels with the bold cover line, “In A Bind,” illustrating how Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook privacy crisis has angered users and panicked investors.
The mag’s cover story delves into how the recent Facebook data scandal could change big data forever.
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The cover story delves into the backlash confronting Zuckerberg as Facebook suffers a crisis in user and investor confidence over data privacy.
Last month it was revealed that Donald Trump-aligned political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had breached Facebook’s rules in accessing the private data of over 50 million users, and that Facebook had known about the breach for over two years.
“The Cambridge Analytica debacle has been the darkest chapter in Facebook’s 14-year history,” GBH Insights chief strategy officer Daniel Ives told Variety. “We view this as a seminal moment that’s going to change the nature of privacy, content and ad transparency.”
“Hundreds of billions of dollars [in digital ad spending] are at stake over the next several years over this issue,” Ives added.
Much of the focus has been on the huge role Facebook now plays in the lives of billions of people around the globe.
“Facebook is a gigantic business, and gigantic businesses have big responsibilities to the world,” NBC Universal chief Steve Burke said recently at an event for advertisers. “I think the problem is exacerbated by the fact that Facebook’s business model is based on capturing data that many, many times, people don’t know they’re giving. And then selling that data, very often electronically to a buyer who Facebook doesn’t even know is a buyer.”
Apple CEO Tim Cook also recently criticized Facebook, arguing in an interview with MSNBC that his company has always valued user privacy over making “a ton of money.”
Zuckerberg fired back at Cook in an interview with Vox, calling the claims that Facebook can’t run on advertising while also caring about users “extremely glib.”
