REFLECTIVE READING

Direction: Read the article below and answer the questions that follow
Facebook says 87 million may be affected by data privacy scandal
APR 5, 2018 12:20 AM PHT
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSEGUILLAUME LAVALLÉE
WASHINGTON DC, USA – Facebook said Wednesday, April 4, the personal data of up to 87 million
users was improperly shared with British political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, as  Mark
Zuckerberg defended his leadership at the huge social network.
Facebook's estimate was far higher than news reports suggesting 50 million users may have been
affected in the privacy scandal which has roiled the company and sparked questions for the entire
internet sector on data protection.
Zuckerberg told reporters on a conference call he accepted responsibility for the failure to protect
user data but maintained that he was still the best person to lead the network of two billion users.
"I think life is about learning from the mistakes and figuring out how to move forward," he said in
response to a question on his ability to lead the company.
"When you're building something like Facebook which is unprecedented in the world, there are things
that you're going to mess up... What I think people should hold us accountable for is if we are learning
from our mistakes."
Zuckerberg said 87 million was a high estimate of those affected by the breach, based on the
maximum number of connections to users who downloaded an academic researcher's quiz that
scooped up personal profiles.
"I'm quite confident it will not be more than 87 million, it could well be less," he said.
To remedy the problem, Zuckerberg said Facebook must "rethink our relationship with people
across everything we do" and that it will take a number of years to regain user trust.
The new estimate came as Facebook unveiled clearer terms of service to enable users to better
understand data sharing, and as a congressional panel said Zuckerberg would appear next week to
address privacy issues.
Facebook has been scrambling for weeks in the face of the disclosures on hijacking of private data by
the consulting group working for Donald Trump's 2016 campaign.
The British firm responded to the Facebook announcement by repeating its claim that it did not use
data from the social network in the 2016 election.
"Cambridge Analytica did not use GSR (Global Science Research) Facebook data or any derivatives
of this data in the US presidential election," the company said in a tweet. "Cambridge Analytica
licensed data from GSR for 30 million individuals, not 87 million."
Zuckerberg on the Hill
Facebook's chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer meanwhile said new privacy tools for users of
the huge social network would be in place by next Monday, April 9.
"People will also be able to remove apps that they no longer want. As part of this process we will also
tell people if their information may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica," he said in
a statement.
Schroepfer's post was the first to cite the figure of 87 million while noting that most of those affected
were in the United States.
Facebook also said its new terms of service would provide clearer information on how data is
collected and shared without giving the social network additional rights.
Earlier Wednesday, the House of Representatives' Energy and Commerce Committee announced
what appeared to be the first congressional appearance by Zuckerberg since the scandal broke.
The April 11 hearing will "be an important opportunity to shed light on critical  consumer data privacy
issues and help all Americans better understand what happens to their personal information online,"
said the committee's Republican chairman Greg Walden and ranking Democrat Frank Pallone in a
statement.
The Facebook co-founder is also invited to other hearings amid a broad probe on both sides of the
Atlantic.
Deleting Russian 'trolls'
Zuckerberg told the conference call he was committed to ensuring that Facebook and its partners do
a better job of protecting user data, and that it must take a more serious approach after years of being
"idealistic" about how the platform is used.
"We didn't take a broad enough view on what our responsibility is, and that was a huge mistake. It
was my mistake."
He said that while "there are billions of people who love the service," there is also a potential for
abuse and manipulation.
"It's not enough just to give people a voice," he said. "We have to make sure people don't use that
voice to hurt people or spread disinformation."
Late Tuesday, April 3, Facebook said it deleted dozens of accounts linked to a Russian-
sponsored internet unit which has been accused of spreading propaganda and other divisive
content in the United States and elsewhere.
The social networking giant said it revoked the accounts of 70 Facebook and 65 Instagram accounts,
and removed 138 Facebook pages controlled by the Russia-based Internet Research Agency (IRA).
The agency has been called a "troll farm" due to its deceptive post aimed at sowing discord and
propagating misinformation.
The unit "has repeatedly used complex networks of inauthentic accounts to deceive and manipulate
people who use Facebook, including before, during and after the 2016 US presidential elections,"
said a statement Facebook chief security officer Alex Stamos. – Rappler.com

Name: John James S. Tabosares Course & Yr.: BSA-2

Instructor: Anamary L. De La Pina Date: _____________________
Journal No. 6
The Dangers of Technology ____
1. What is this data privacy scandal all about? 50
The scandal is all about the most widely used social media platform which is Facebook. The
Facebook data privacy scandal focuses on the collection of personally identifiable information of
"up to 87 million users by the political consulting and strategic communication firm Cambridge
Analytica. The Facebook data privacy scandal centers around the collection of personally
identifiable information of "up to 87 million people" by the political consulting and strategic
communication firm Cambridge Analytica. That company--and others--were able to gain
access to personal data of Facebook users due to the confluence of a variety of factors,
broadly including inadequate safeguards against companies engaging in data harvesting, little
to no oversight of developers by Facebook, developer abuse of the Facebook API, and users
agreeing to overly broad terms and conditions.
2. How this Facebook privacy scandal relate to Heidegger’s notion of revealing of modern
technology as a challenging forth?
Technology is technology. Modern technology is simply technology of the modern age, it is not
fundamentally different from technology of any other time. Facebook doing whatever they do
with privacy is no different from if they were sending around snoops and snitches to spy on
people in regular life.

3. How Facebook users “enframed” in this data privacy scandal?

People who use Facebook entrusts the company their personal data. They believed that these
information will remain private and that these information will not be leaked. There are a lot of
Facebook users who are affected by the issue since it raises privacy concerns to these said
users. Other companies have had access of the users’ personal information and these
information were used to curate the kind of ads that will appear on the user’s news feed. This
results to people worrying about their privacy’s state
4. Is technology an end (human goal) or and end itself? Why?

Technology is infiltrating almost every aspect of our lives. It has become such  an integral part
of our lives, most of us have come to expect it to be this way, or we have not known any other
way. Over time, many things that were once done by hand or in person have come to be
managed through the use of technology of one form or another. While many of these advances
have indeed made our lives better – print, electricity, airplanes, and untold numbers of
gadgets, to name a few, I’m increasingly concerned about the unforeseen negative impact
of communication technologies (com techs) on relationships and what makes us uniquely
human
5. Do you agree with the idea of Heidegger that technology should only be seen as one of
the approaches in perceiving truth? What other approaches we should consider?

It depends on what evidence would support his claim. Also, technology was perceived as the
advancement to the future. And it is likely that they would see it as the prediction of the future.
I don’t believe Heidegger claims that technology should only be seen as a revelation of truth,
or better, as an understanding of being. He admits that technological devices are usefully
described as instruments whose purpose is to enhance human agency. But this description,
although correct as far as it goes, doesn't go far enough, in Heidegger’s view. In fact, it
misrepresents a much more important dimension of technology. Heidegger is interested in
the essence of technology, which he insists is quite different from technological instruments
themselves. The essence of technology is the technological understanding of Being, which is
exhibited by the overall character of our shared practices for treating things, events, and others
in the world as a whole. The value of Heidegger’s concept of the essence of technology for
understanding the technological world is ambiguous. Its enduring value has to do with the role
it plays in Heidegger’s history of being. It brings his story about the forgetting of being to a
sharply focused climax, and throws into relief the question he insists on: whether or not we will
understand ourselves as receivers of meanings of being. The question of the value of
Heidegger’s concept of technology is downstream from the question of the value of his larger
understanding of the ontological history of the West.