Truth telling = race hate. The police investigated me for this crime. #TelfordGrooming pic.twitter.com/AH4ajkH0D7
— Katie Hopkins (@KTHopkins) March 19, 2018
Labour. The Police. The BBC. More interested in my (truthful) tweets than the rape of our ‘white whore daughters’ by Pakistani men. #TELFORD pic.twitter.com/zeWhwBWOpT
— Katie Hopkins (@KTHopkins) March 19, 2018
Exploiting Facebook data to influence voters? That’s a feature, not a bug, of the social network https://t.co/JlBUs1v4fB pic.twitter.com/qqCtXwqNBr
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) March 19, 2018
With each comment, like and share, users provide Facebook with a deeply personal window into their lives.
The result of that voluntary behavior? Advertisers looking to finely target their pitches can glean someone's hobbies, what they like to eat and even what makes them happy or sad — propelling Facebook's ad revenue to $40 billion last year.
This trove of rich information is now at the center of a rapidly growing controversy involving one of President Trump's campaign consultants, Cambridge Analytica, which reportedly took the advertising playbook and exploited it in a bid to influence swing voters.
Former employees accuse the firm, owned by the conservative billionaire Robert Mercer and previously headed by Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon, of taking advantage of ill-gotten data belonging to millions of unwitting Facebook users. News of the breach was met with calls over the weekend for stricter scrutiny of the company.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) demanded that Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Maura Healey, attorney general for Massachusetts, said her office was launching an investigation. And the head of a British parliamentary inquiry into fake news called on Facebook to testify before his panel again, this time with Zuckerberg.
The accusations raise tough questions about Facebook's ability to protect user information at a time when it's already embroiled in a scandal over Russian meddling during the 2016 presidential campaign and under pressure to adhere to new European Union privacy rules.
They also highlight the power and breadth of the data Facebook holds over its 2 billion users. Whether used to sway voters or sell more detergent, the information harvested by the world's biggest social network is proving to be both vital and exploitable regardless of who's wielding it.
"The data set assembled on people by Facebook is unrivaled," said Scott Galloway, a professor of marketing at New York University Stern School of Business and author of "The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google." "The bad news is, people are discovering this can be used as a weapon. The worse news is that people are learning how to detonate it."
The controversy began late Friday when Facebook's vice president and deputy general counsel, Paul Grewal, announced in a blog post that the social network was suspending Strategic Communication Laboratories and its affiliate, Cambridge Analytica.
Facebook said the companies failed to delete user data they had acquired in 2015 in violation of the platform's rules. The data were supplied by a University of Cambridge psychology professor, Aleksandr Kogan, who built an app that was supposed to collect details on Facebook users for academic research. Kogan was not supposed to pass that information to a third party for commercial purposes under Facebook guidelines.
Facebook said the data collection was contained to 270,000 people who downloaded Kogan's app as well as "limited information" about their friends.
In California's rural, conservative north, there are big dreams for cleaving the state https://t.co/bkiymKsR4d pic.twitter.com/xk2rdavGCb
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) March 17, 2018
The two young, blond women in figure-flattering ball gowns hoisted whiskey and shotguns.Pfft.
An auctioneer rattled off bids. Above the stage in the banquet hall hung a green flag for the 51st state of Jefferson, with its pair of Xs called a “double-cross” representing a sense of rural abandonment.
Hundreds of people packed into the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 9650 hall on this chilly Saturday night, ready to crack open wallets to help fund their dream of carving — out of California’s northernmost reaches — a brand new state.
Someone offered $350 for a state of Jefferson belt buckle. Someone else won a lamb, still in its mother’s womb, that should be born in time to be butchered for Easter. Outside, vehicles bore bumper stickers supporting President Trump and the 2nd Amendment.
“We Okies are fun, aren’t we?” one man quipped.
The scene last month in this small Shasta County city seemed like a perfect we’re-not-in-California-anymore-moment. That is, if you only knew California as the diverse, liberal bastion whose elected officials have tried to stymie the Trump administration’s moves on immigration, legalized marijuana, climate change and so on.
But the so-called Northstate is looking less and less like the rest of the Golden State. The vast, sparsely-populated region is whiter, more rural and poorer than the rest of the state — and residents are more conservative. While California has become the center of the resistance to Trump, a number of Northern Californians are waging a resistance of their own: against California itself.
Inside the banquet hall, the man many see as the founder of the modern Jefferson movement told the crowd that their gun rights, property rights, grazing rights and water rights were under siege by politicians who write them off as “country bumpkins.”
“You’re the ones being exterminated by a lack of liberty,” said Mark Baird, a Siskiyou County rancher.
The breakaway state of Jefferson is a decades-old idea, but it has been revived in earnest in recent years by residents who say they are fed up with their voices being drowned out in Sacramento, where outspoken urban Democrats hold a vise grip on the state Legislature.
Supporters say overregulation has hobbled rural industries such as timber, mining and fishing and that the state’s high taxes and cost of living are driving young people away, quickening the decline of small towns. They chafe under California’s strict gun-control policies and are infuriated by its liberal immigration laws.
They cite California’s new gas tax increase of 12 cents per gallon, saying it has an outsize impact on rural people who drive farther for work and basic needs such as hospitals, schools and grocery stores.
How likely is it that a new state will be broken off, like a piece of Kit Kat bar, from California? Not likely at all, experts say.
Eric McGhee, a political scientist at the Public Policy Institute of California, said that while you can “never say never,” there are too many legal obstacles to overcome.
“It’s easy to think that because there’s this large piece of territory, that it’s a large share of California in terms of the population," he said. “That’s just not the case. … It’s an absolutely minuscule portion of the state’s population.”
Supporters of a breakaway state say they are sorely underestimated and point to the number of passionate people who show up to their events. One man put it this way: “We’re not a bunch of dumb rednecks.”
But some Northern Californians have had enough of talk of breaking away from California. After several county boards began considering Jefferson proposals, Kevin Hendrick, a retired municipal employee from Crescent City, in Del Norte County, formed a political action committee in 2015 called Keep It California to oppose the idea.
“You’ve got a handful of residents that are grumpy and pining for the good old days, but that shouldn’t represent all the good people living in rural counties,” he said...
Elementary school walkout in Alexandria, Virginia. More than 65 kids, and they are totally silent. Look at those faces. pic.twitter.com/ThyzDtyGo5— Lois Beckett (@loisbeckett) March 14, 2018
Yes, look at them. These are the faces of exploited children who are being made afraid by adults. https://t.co/DOOrz7hoJG— Melissa Mackenzie 🌐 (@MelissaTweets) March 15, 2018
— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) March 13, 2018
