Facebook is deep in hot water. Details about Cambridge Analytica's use of Facebook users' data continue to be revealed. Angry consumer backlash and probing questions from lawmakers has Facebook facing a massive loss of advertising money.

Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, pulled all its advertising from Facebook yesterday. In a blog post about the decision Mozilla reported that the Cambridge Analytica news "caused us to take a closer look at Facebook's current default privacy settings given that we support the platform with our advertising dollars. While we believe there is still more to learn, we found that its current default settings leave access open to a lot of data -- particularly with respect to settings for third party apps." On account of that, Mozilla halted all advertising on Facebook for now.

It looks as if Mozilla is the first major company to pull its advertising from Facebook, but many others are openly talking about doing the same. The scope of the Cambridge Analytica news and Facebook's long delayed response to it has muddied the water and tainted whatever reputation Facebook had left, to the point that it may be a long time till the dust surrounding this revelation even begins to settle.

Personally, given all we know now, I'm glad I pulled the plug on Facebook a long time ago..

Again no surprises. If you dabble in social media and do so for free the money is coming from somewhere. Does anyone ever ask where? I do have a fakebook account but haven't used it in several years.

My friend is diabetic and has joined a facebook group internationally on this condition. She says the information has been a HUGE help coming back from this community. Sad to see the good go bad.

I much prefer a small venue site like ours to bring like minds together. Funding comes from sponsors and not by whoring around people's data.

Per usual the market has a way of solving these problems.

Stuff like this always seems to happen when small companies experience huge growth and get too big for their britches so to speak. The only place to hit them is in the pocketbook.

About a week ago most had never heard of Cambridge Analytica. Now however, with the help of Facebook's fumbling, we discover it’s been a (if not 'the') central driving force behind social media dictating popular thought for many years.

In the effort to understand why the results of democratic elections no longer go the way the establishment wants, actors like Russia got this week off. Taking its place was Cambridge Analytica.

Harvesting data from millions upon millions of Facebook profiles, Cambridge Analytica made huge profits selling it, for example, to those trying to get Donald Trump elected, those pushing Brexit, as well as to Barack Obama who used harvested social media data most effectively during his own election campaigns.

Outrage that social media users could be and were targeted in such a way is pouring forth, leading to well based speculation that elections have been swung as a result. But when you get right down to it, isn’t this simply the same old sh!t that politicians and their spin doctors always pull -- carried on at a tremendously amplified level that's been kept largely out of sight till Facebook fumbled the ball?

'Merica!!!.. 'Love it or leave it..'

With a name like "Cambridge Analytica" I always assumed they were associated with Cambridge University, and had no idea the company was a front for the Mercers and Steve Bannon.

I destroyed my FB account out of disgust about 5 years ago, although I had to rejoin under a fake ID this winter in order to participate in a university course. Despite not posting anything or accepting any friend requests, I got one message that FB had automatically deleted a threatening comment, and last week I received a password change request after someone tried to login as me. FB is a cesspool.

pj - I agree and think that's already starting to happen. So many options with engaging the internet. Some really good ones and lots of crap out there. Choose wisely.

What I don't like is large tech firms dictating the who, what and where of an internet experience. Pretty brassy IMHO. I still support the 1st amendment, opposing views, level playing field, no thumb on scale and constructive debate. So many of our young folks are tied into "reality" through social media and this bias. What's sad is that reality isn't the real world reality. Allowing a small group of rich folks to influence how we think as a nation. A bit scary. Last I checked it isn't supposed to work this way.

The Facebook/Cambridge Analytica data mining scandal is producing an avalanche of fallout. Julian Assange, Wikileaks co-founder, reminds his followers that it's terribly risky to trust their personal data to a “megalomaniac” who calls his users “dumb f**ks.”

Assange revealed an exchange with a friend just after the beta version of Facebook was launched in 2003. His friend spoke of how Mark Zuckerberg expressed surprise when the first “dumb f**ck” users that signed up with Facebook immediately trusted the new platform with their private data.



Here we are, fifteen years later, and Zuckerberg’s disregard for his users’ privacy has finally backfired in his face. As the ease with which data from over 50 million Facebook accounts was collected, analyzed and manipulated by London-based Cambridge Analytica comes to light, a torrent of Facebook users are deleting their accounts, and a growing number of high profile advertisers are pulling their business from Facebook.

People like SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk, along with WhatsApp founder Brian Acton have distanced themselves from Zuckerberg, joining a growing flood of angry users who've shut down their Facebook accounts.

WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange stated on Friday, “I have deleted my Facebook.” Then he clarified saying that in fact he'd “never had one.”

Explaining his reasoning for never having a Facebook account Assange succinctly tweeted: “Friends don’t put their friends into a giant intelligence database controlled by a megalomaniac who calls his users ‘dumb f**ks’ for trusting him.”

What goes around comes around. Interesting to see who the dumb f*cks are now. Sad to see innocent people lose their jobs, however.

I've never had a bookface account, but my wife does. I can see and appreciate it's utility for keeping in touch with family/friends who live long distances away. But there's an overwhelming amount of "noise" on there that it's not worth the stress unless you've got a really good BS filter in place.

The FTC (US Federal Trade Commission) has opened an investigation of Facebook over revelations that Cambridge Analytica harvested and exploited tens of millions of users' data without their permission.

Facebook's stock price slide has accelerated to a loss of market value approaching $90 billion dollars since the scandal broke 10 days ago.

Tom Pahl, acting director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, explained: "The FTC takes very seriously recent press reports raising substantial concerns about the privacy practices of Facebook. Today, the FTC is confirming that it has opened a non-public investigation into these practices."