Despite the revelations surrounding Cambridge Analytica, Facebook users don’t appear to be leaving the platform. A recent Thomson Reuters survey found that more than a quarter of survey participants are actually using Facebook more, eMarketer reported.
In addition, 18 percent of users report using the service less, while only 1 percent reported deleting their accounts. Even so, some Facebook users appear to be thinking twice before posting. When asked why they were sharing less content on Facebook, 47 percent of surveyed Facebook users said privacy concerns were holding them back.
Facebook’s Vice President of Global Marketing Solutions Carolyn Everson knows these concerns. And, though user privacy and targeting can exist together, Everson believes that Facebook needs to educate users. It has to provide them with “full control of how that advertising experience — and the overall experience with their own data — plays out,” Everson recently told eMarketer.
The news comes weeks after news surfaced that Cambridge Analytica improperly collected personal data from Facebook users, which was reportedly used to help elect U.S. President Donald Trump. As far as Cambridge Analytica is concerned, the firm has made some pretty big claims — namely, that it can take raw personality data from a subset of voters and develop complex models of individuals, which campaigns can then use to target and micro-target voter communities to help move elections their way.
The firm’s most specific (and biggest) claim, however, is that it conducted this advanced voter modeling for the Trump organization during the 2016 election — and that it was on the strength of those data models that Trump was able to turn swing states, like Michigan and Wisconsin, from blue to red.
As those claims circulated, U.S. legislators asked Mark Zuckerberg to testify about Cambridge Analytica’s alleged misuse of the social media platform’s data. Zuckerberg appeared before the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce on April 11, Reuters reported.
Also, in May, it was reported that Cambridge Analytica was shutting down its business. According to news from The Wall Street Journal, Founder of SCL Group Nigel Oakes, Cambridge Analytica’s British affiliate, told the paper that the two businesses were shutting down.