Facebook and Cambridge Analytica are two names that seem to have been in the news a lot recently although many of you may not understand why. Facebook is the social media juggernaut of the 2000’s and, Cambridge Analytica is a political consulting firm using the latest in privacy invasion technology to give politicians your votes and the firm who ran Donald Trump’s digital campaign in full. Using Facebook’s service to gather information on everything from what movies you like, to who your friends are, to what political party you lean towards. It is because of this massive breach of privacy on the part of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook lack of protecting the privacy they were entrusted with that Congress has now seen fit to summon Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, for a congressional hearing.

On Tuesday and Wednesday of this past week Zuckerberg testified before the Commerce and Judiciary Committees of the Senate and the House Energy and Commerce Committees. Around 44 senators where present at the hearing which makes up almost half of that house of Congress. The testimony was a spectacle to behold for any who are familiar with the workings of congressional proceedings. During the testimony before the Senate Zuckerberg was able to filibuster, meaning to talk for an extended period of time as only one person can speak at a time in the senate, his way through a large portion of  the questions without actually answering much. The House committees proved different beasts however. The Representatives did not allow Zuckerberg to simply go through his prepared statements and made sure to show to him and others that he was not in charge. While the house committee did do a much better job of displaying their anger towards Zuckerberg and in notching him down a peg both committees failed in one key area, knowledge of how all of this works.

It was overwhelmingly obvious that the congressmen and women while understanding the law, did not understand truly how and why what was going on matters so much. Zuckerberg made the argument throughout much of the testimony that while yes his company did have room to grow Facebook’s users do have the option to hide their privacy. While yes this is true the problem is is that the average user doesn’t have the technical know-how or forethought to do so which opens them up to massive breaches of privacy such as the one that took place here. It was only 270,000 people who took the test that Cambridge Analytica used to gain info but they were able to use those answers to gather info on 50 million people. In our knew age of tech and social networks it doesn’t even have to be you making yourself vulnerable that leads to having your privacy becoming compromised. It is for these reasons that people everywhere need to protect themselves and their privacy to the greatest extent possible and to think independently and not use social media as simply a sounding board. Instead look to the opposition’s point as well as your own so that you can make informed decisions and so breaches of privacy like these are not as effective in controlling and altering your vote.