NEW YORK: Get ready to find out if your Facebook data has been swept up in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Starting Monday, the 87 million users who might have had their data shared with Cambridge Analytica will get a detailed message on their news feeds. Facebook says most of the affected users (more than 70 million) are in the US, though there are over a million each in the Philippines, Indonesia and the UK.
In addition, all 2.2 billion Facebook users will receive a notice titled “Protecting Your Information” with a link to see what apps they use and what information they have shared with those apps. If they want, they can shut off apps individually or turn off third-party access to their apps completely.
Reeling from its worst privacy crisis in history — allegations that this Trump-affiliated data mining firm may have used ill-gotten user data to try to influence elections — Facebook is in full damage-control mode. CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that he made a “huge mistake” in failing to take a broad enough view of what Facebook’s responsibility is in the world. He’s set to testify before Congress next week.
Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie previously estimated that more than 50 million people were compromised by a personality quiz that collected data from users and their friends. In an interview aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Wylie said the true number could be even larger than 87 million.
That Facebook app, called “This is Your Digital Life,” was a personality quiz created in 2014 by an academic researcher named Aleksander Kogan, who paid about 270,000 people to take it. The app vacuumed up not just the data of the people who took it, but also — thanks to Facebook’s loose restrictions — data from their friends, too, including details that they hadn’t intended to share publicly.
Facebook later limited the data apps can access, but it was too late in this case.
Zuckerberg said Facebook came up with the 87 million figure by calculating the maximum number of friends that users could have had while Kogan’s app was collecting data. The company doesn’t have logs going back that far, he said, so it can’t know exactly how many people may have been affected.
Cambridge Analytica said in a statement Wednesday that it had data for only 30 million Facebook users.
Facebook to send Cambridge Analytica data-use notices Monday
Facebook to send Cambridge Analytica data-use notices Monday
- All 2.2 billion Facebook users will receive a notice titled “Protecting Your Information” with a link to see what apps they use and what information they have shared with those apps
Lebanon’s official media scale back Hezbollah coverage after Cabinet ban
- Information Minister Paul Morcos instructs outlets to comply with government decision
- Journalists, social media urged to avoid content that could provoke hate speech, incitement
BEIRUT: Lebanon has begun implementing a Cabinet decision taken earlier this month to ban Hezbollah’s security and military activities by scaling back coverage of the group on official media platforms.
The measure, which was described in political circles as a significant and bold step, came after decades during which news about the party and the speeches of its leaders were published verbatim and broadcast live through official media outlets, like the state-run National News Agency, TV station Tele Liban and Radio Lebanon.
“No one is imposing censorship,” an official source told Arab News.
“Rather, there is a commitment to the decisions of the state. It is no longer possible for a speech that attacks the Lebanese government and the state to be published through its official media outlets.”
Information Minister Paul Morcos issued a circular instructing directors of official media outlets to comply with the government’s decision to ban the broadcast of speeches or statements by Hezbollah Secretary-General Sheikh Naim Qassem and statements issued by the group’s armed wing, particularly when they contain criticism of the state.
Morcos also ordered that Hezbollah statements be handled in the same manner as those issued by other political parties, meaning they should not be published verbatim. He further instructed media outlets to avoid using the term “Islamic resistance,” except when it appears directly within Hezbollah statements.
The first manifestations of the decision were Tele Liban’s abstention from live broadcasting a speech by Qassem and a statement made on Tuesday by lawmaker Mohammed Raad, who heads the Hezbollah parliamentary bloc.
The group’s supporters described the move as an attempt “to restrict the resistance, Hezbollah and its leadership in the official media.”
Some argued on social media that preventing the use of terms like “resistance” or “holy warriors (Mujahedin)” and replacing them with expressions such as “Hezbollah” and “fighters” was “aimed at brainwashing and stripping the party of its resistance identity.”
During a Cabinet session on Thursday, Morcos raised the issue of content circulating on social media that incites murder and sectarian strife. This comes against the backdrop of the war that Hezbollah waged from Lebanon against Israel on March 2, without state approval, which led to a sharp division in Lebanese public opinion.
Morcos, who is also Cabinet spokesperson, said after the session that what was being published “exceeds the bounds of freedom of opinion, the press and expression.”
Prime Minister Nawaf Salam considered it to fall under the penal code, specifically regarding crimes that harm national unity, he said, and that “we are against strife in all its forms.”
Morcos also urged journalists, influencers and social media users to remain aware of the sensitivity of the current situation and to avoid content that could provoke strife, hate speech or incitement.
He acknowledged, however, that, according to a legal study, he has no authority over social media, even on media-related matters.
“The Ministry of Information does not exercise a guardianship role and lacks judicial police powers,” he said.
“These authorities rest with the public prosecution offices, which are overseen by the minister of justice and fall within the domain of criminal law and criminal prosecution.”
The ban was agreed during a Cabinet session on March 2, after Hezbollah launched six rockets from Lebanese territory toward northern Israel, the first such attack since the November 2024 ceasefire, prompting retaliatory strikes.
The Cabinet reaffirmed that “the decision of war and peace rests exclusively with the Lebanese state and its constitutional institutions,” and called on Hezbollah to hand over its weapons to the state while limiting its role to political activity within the legal and constitutional framework.
