-New Urban TECH- The Facebook Data Mining Scandal: Mark Zuckerberg Testifies before US Congress, Describing Where the Company Went Wrong, & How He Wants to Fix It

From A College Dorm to Domination of Cyberspace:  A Boy Wonder is in the Hot Seat With Many Questions to Answer (Mark Zuckerberg photographed by Brian Solis/briansolis.com)

After  the world was rocked last month by news of a massive data-mining scandal by the company Cambridge Analytica, Facebook creator and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been called to task concerning that company's third-party usage of data from over 50+ million Facebook accounts, and faced US Congress this week in a 3-day hearing to investigate the gross violation members using his social media platform. Although it's common knowledge via a written "terms of use" agreement that Facebook user data is sold to third-party advertisers for marketing purposes (a common marketing process known as data mining), the global social media giant came under fire for specifically not protecting users against the unethical, nefarious practices of third-party firms who pay for Facebook user information under the guise of "marketing research, but with much darker intentions in mind.

The primary issue stems from Facebook's former client Cambridge Analytica, a commercial and political marketing firm that, in the words of their own data scientists, was paid by representatives of the Trump Presidential Campaign to develop programs that create psychological profiles of Facebook users. Data mining is not a new practice in political election strategy, but this case differs from others directly due to intention of those harvesting the information: according to company co-founder and former employee, Cambridge Analytica would later use that Facebook user information they mined to create complex algorithms that purposely target users' fears and psychological vulnerabilities- and would later engage in such unethical practices as creating false websites to appeal to religious & political views of those users- solely for the willful purpose of coercing their perception of the events around them. These programs were being credited by the scientists that created them as the force behind swaying public opinion on the EU Brexit "Vote Leave" campaign and the US 2016 Presidential election.

Below are the highlights of Zuckerberg's 3-day testimony before US Congress. The 33-year-old program developer & Facebook founder speaks candidly about the company's weaknesses in dealing with the third-party market researchers until now, and how he wants to remedy their gross failure to discern unethical market research firms from the rest. The Facebook Chairman is also forced to address if and how Facebook should be regulated by government institutions in wake of this scandal.  As of March 16th, 2018,  Cambridge Analytica was banned from Facebook, and their account from the social media platform suspended.