How Big Did Facebook Screw Up This Time?

It was recently revealed that Facebook allowed data from 50 million users to be obtained by the firm Cambridge Analytica without users’ knowledge, and now the calls for the social media giant to be regulated are growing louder than ever. Facebook is in it for themselves – they don’t care if your data gets stolen, and that’s even more reason to put regulations in place to protect consumers. Ring of Fire’s Mike Papantonio and Peter Mougey discuss this.

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Yeah. It was recently revealed that Facebook allowed data from 50 million users to be obtained for the firm Cambridge Analytica without its users' knowledge, without anybody knowing what was going on, and now the calls for the social media giant to be regulated are growing loud. Facebook is in it for themselves, they don't care if your data gets stolen. You just have to know that. This idea that there's some higher meaning to Facebook in the social media crowd is nonsense. They're all in it to try to make money. They don't care if your data is stolen. That's even more reason to put regulations in place for ... through the effort of protecting consumers. This is not a minor ... This is a big deal for-

This is a big story.

Yeah.

The story's breaking, and the company that used the data started out with 270,000 Facebook users but then they scraped all of the data from their friends so that number just extrapolated. Cambridge Analytica's the same company that worked on the Trump campaign, so it's starting to tie together with some of the stories we're hearing about the Trump investigation as well.

Well, I mean, I don't see what the Trump investigation ... I mean, I see this as a separate issue. But I do think we're going to learn a lot about what Facebook was really up to, Peter. First of all, here's what bothers me about it. According to the stories, Facebook supposedly told Cambridge "Destroy the material. Take it out of your system. Don't use it anymore." Okay. Well, that was in 2015 that they did that-

Yeah, two years ago.

... and we just found out about a week ago.

Right.

So for two years, it's been hanging out there. Nothing's really happened in that regard, and so for Facebook to say "Oh, gee. We didn't know. We thought they were going to be honest. We didn't know how Cambridge was going to use it," it's just nonsense. I mean, you'd have to be in la la land to believe what this company is saying right now. But look, all you have to know is that they put this company on notice, they sent a written notice to them, and nobody followed up in two years? Nobody said "Hey, give us proof that you've destroyed this material," when you've got access to 50,000 names? So I'm not sold on this defense, and I think it unfortunately you're going to get the goobs up in DC now interested in having to regulate because somebody just gets greedy. That's all that happened. He made-

Well, and they can't-

... money on this.

Yeah, but-

They made a lot of money on this-

... we keep-

... Facebook did.

As we keep saying that these industries are going to police themselves and they're going to be able to regulate themselves ... It's called SRO, self-regulatory organizations-

Doesn't work.

It doesn't work. I don't know how many times we're going to have to figure out it doesn't work. I mean, the courts-

Well, you know what-

... are "Oh, we thought they would do the right thing," this is the wild west. That's where Facebook-

You know what's so-

... makes their money.

... amazing? When you hear people talk about this, they'd say ... It's almost as if we're looking at this social media bunch of corporate types like they're different than-

Wall Street.

... Wall Street corporate types-

It's the same playbook.

There's no difference. It's the same playbook. It's all about money. It's all about trying to get that bottom line as high as you can. The main thing is this. Look, if I'm handling the case, I'm looking at the concept of their actions being contrary to the expectations of users. Right?