01/03/17 - The Guardian view on big data: the danger is less democracy

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/26/the-guardian-view-on-big-data-the-danger-is-less-democracy

The Guardian article puts forward views regarding the fact that a secret firm had been used to sway voters during the EU Referendum, possibly also during Trump's campaign. The article also highlights how the greater connectedness of society has led to a rapid erosion of privacy which in turn has a knock on effect and essentially erodes democracy. The article also makes a very valid point how Cambridge Analytica focused directly on Facebook users with specific right wing ideologies by creating falsehoods and fake stories which would not be challenged by other people in such an environment such as Facebook. This is essentially a new form of targetted campaigning and therefore it means that Facebook itself can be very easily targetted to greatly change the minds of its users.

• "Cambridge Analytica, has also been credited with helping the Trump campaign in a similar way"
• "political campaigns are certainly going to use Facebook because that’s where the voters are"
• "Our model of democracy is based on public campaigning followed by private voting. These developments threaten to turn this upside down"

Personally, I think the article makes very good points when it comes to the huge issue of Fake news. It is very interesting to note how much of a huge factor Facebook had been in the targeted campaigning during the EU Referendum. Especailly, from the perspective of a young person, it is clear that young people are not very active on the social media platform, it is essentially seen amongst the youth as the platform that everyone's parents use. This could arguably be another huge factor as many people with right wing ideologies tend to be of the older generation. Finally, I definitely agree that there needs to be some form of regulation from the government when it comes to political campaigns using external companies and subtle dirty methods in order to gain an advantage.