UK newspaper The Observer last month made the discovery that Cambridge Analytica, a firm 'which has 25 years' experience in military disinformation campaigns,' was in operation during the Brexit referendum. It worked to sway the voters, using their Facebook profiles as a basis for this and this is representative of how the impact the loss of privacy in our information also has an effect on democracy. The firm have also been associated with assisting Donald Trump in his presidential campaign. This use of political campaigns on Faceook, informing or 'disinforming,' hands itself to the simple fact that holds true now that voters can be found on Facebook. It's a platform unlike any other 'well adapted to changing people's minds.' Fake news is something that can be cited here, with its micro-targeted ad campaigns being of such a narrowcast nature that their falsehoods never end up getting challenged since no one actually brings them to light. Recent developments like this again, act as a threat to democracy making it so that although people's voting intentions are mostly known to the public, the actual 'arguments that influence them are made in secret, concealed from the wider world where they might be contested.' With this, there are two kinds of privacy really under threat. The first of these is the more innate understanding of it and this can range between things like embarrassment to blackmail. Technology has affected this type with things like embarrassment over the leak intimate photos of oneself in some cases leading to suicide. The other type is to do with the amount of knowledge that digital giants have obtained on us, lending to an area of vulnerability for us as people. What isn't realised is the sheer amount of data we've provided to these institutions both intentionally and unintentionally, and this is something that'll make things like manipulation a lot more easier.
This article takes quite a cynical outlook on new and digital media that is becoming more common as time has went on. Privacy is a privilege that we're seeing being eroded each and everyday due to technology. Information like where we live and who we associated with no longer belongs to the consumer solely, but rather also to the company who's device/search engine we input this into. If these vulnerabilities end up being exploited, then the 'democracy' that currently exists will crumble. With this it's imperative that they are controlled to such a level where they can't be accessed, however I doubt this is even possible, especially with the stage we're at now.
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