To a certain degree, this is a problem that Facebook has already taken steps against in the last years.

Remember that Facebook gives you zero access to users’ data just for being an advertiser. This scheme relied on users granting access to an app.

Data access by apps was curtailed two or three years ago to no longer include friends’ data. The permissions dialog has also become far more granular. From my observation, apps seem to mostly respect facebook’s rules on data scarcity, i. e. asking only for the data they actually need.

GDPR will enshrine this principle in law at least for European citizen, and it’s somewhat likely that it will have some effect far beyond the borders of Europe.

Regarding elections, first steps will likely align the law with that for TV advertisement. Clear information about an ad’s sponsor should be required, as well as the selectors used to target you. I’ve also heard some chatter about requiring a public repository for all ads. Right now, there might be waves of, for example, racists ads that never get reported in the news because the targeting never hits those people that would consider the ad problematic. The Atlantic is running a pilot program with a chrome extensions that records all advertisement you see on Facebook for such a repository.

In the current political climate, it’s unfortunately unlikely that the US will lead with new regulation. But there are a few decent agencies in the US that can squeeze a lot of mileage out of laws already on the books (the special prosecutor, and even the FEC). Social media companies are also quite scared, both because they fear a hit to their business, and because most of their excecutive do retain some humanity. You can also expect individual European companies to get out the big guns, seeing Trump and other Russia-backed populists rattling the core of the current consensus on liberal, open, civil societies.

> Remember that Facebook gives you zero access to users’ data just for being an advertiser.

As an advertiser you can target users based on very specific details, and track any user that responds to your advertisement campaign.

You get all the access (AKA, you know which part of your customer base resulted from targeted ad campaigns, so anything you can target on, you can attribute to that subset).

Regarding elections and digital platforms, a Dutch policy advisory states that the government should disallow non-transparent political advertisements (all advertisements should clearly state who sponsored them and to promote which political cause, if any), and to ensure that political parties can not hide their trade-offs, they shouldn't be able to micro-target people with a different message (increase taxes vs. decrease taxes, depending on what makes the user more likely to vote for you).

We are on a technical forum, thus I expect you to come up with a technical description on how can I use fb ads targeting to find out who is white and likes Arsenal in my neighborhood.

Arguing that only some advertisers get access to the tools required is bullshit: this is saying that Facebook won't tell you directly who is such and such, but will give you access to tools to bypass their own rules. I hope you see how idiotic arguing for such a case is.

FB has known all of this since it happened two years ago and only admitted it when a journalist asked them about it.

Yes. But the method that was used to siphon the data out of Facebook is no longer available.

Correct, and we now know the issue is that someone who had legit access sold the data.

The IETF's BCP#188 document is one of many consequences of Snowden, its title is "Pervasive Monitoring Is an Attack", and the text begins "Pervasive monitoring is a technical attack that should be mitigated in the design of IETF protocols, where possible".

Almost literally right now, IETF 101 is starting in London, and one of the things presented will be a series of proposals by people who claim they (or organisations they work for, the IETF is only for people, corporations can't participate they can just send people to it) have a legitimate reason to snoop on TLS traffic. TLS 1.3 is designed, following BCP#188, to make such snooping impossible without ongoing assistance from one of the endpoints (if the endpoint is co-operating with the snooping there's mathematically nothing anybody can do) and they would dearly like to return to an era when they could snoop with just a little one time assistance. Now, maybe this would have been stiffly resisted anyway, but BCP#188 means anybody who isn't sure has an existing IETF document telling them exactly why this is a terrible idea.

The first Ad Sales pitch deck for TheFacebook.com included a slide showing how advertisers can target students based on their sexual orientation, political bend, dating interests, gender, age, education, and social graph. All of which can be used to discriminate based on protected variables, like gender, sexuality, age, mental disability, and race.

This will not be the end, and has been like this from the very beginning. If foreign companies can get access to this information, then intelligence agencies certainly can too.

The problem is that regular people no longer have a place to communicate. It used to be that the workplace, church, neighborhood or union meetings were the place to socialize and discuss these issues and take collective action. Now we have nowhere to turn to. Modern nomadic culture alongside temporary jobs, low trust and personalized news all make sure that we cannot take collective action on anything.

We need to find a new way to communicate before this cancer becomes so widespread that the last bastillions are lost.

> It used to be that the workplace, church, neighborhood or union meetings were the place to socialize and discuss these issues and take collective action

People still socialize and discuss issues in the real world. Having a Facebook group for a church or neighborhood doesn't preclude anyone from going to church or physically interacting with their neighbors. People also still take collective action in the real world - Antifa, BLM and the Tea Party are three modern examples, but there are countless others which simply don't get media attention.

And, all else aside, social media is still perfectly adequate for enabling communication between most people.

I'm sorry, but your comment seems more rooted in hyperbole than reality.

If you include the word “privately” then some of the criticism you’re receiving may fall away. “Regular people no longer have a place to communicate privately”.

This is increasingly true. Actions are increasingly recorded. Privacy is increasingly undermined. We have a big problem on our hands.

> The problem is that regular people no longer have a place to communicate.

Have email, chat, forums, physical letters, meetings, etc gone away for some reason?