Do you “like” Facebook? Is Facebook your “friend”?
Turns out your likable friend Facebook was going to approach hospitals and medical centers, asking for anonymous profile data on their patients. What was Facebook going to do with this anonymous data? It was a research project. Facebook was going to use its very own data to try and identify the anonymous hospital profiles.
The social media platform reportedly intended to compare the data, which included prescription information and illnesses, with its own data that it collected from users, in order to flag users that may need hospital care.
Saint Mark has always just wanted to do good in the world. And so much for confidential medical records, right, Mr. Zuckerberg?
But one question, Mr. Zuckerberg.
Dodgy Cambridge Analytical harvested private Facebook data through a sleazy, deceptive academic research request, remember? Saint Mark, were you just trying to do the same thing as Cambridge, trying to mine private data to make yourself richer, using the pretext of wanting to help?
Facebook discontinued the “research project” after news of the Cambridge Analytical scandal. Perhaps FB thought its “research project” looked too much like Cambridge’s?