I have finished my first assignment in IT 🎉. Well, it is my first assignment submitted, not given. However, I have looked more at Cambridge Analytica and how people like things that are ethical, and get annoyed when they are unethical. This is also my last week left (of term 1) before holidays, so even more yay.

For better or worse, Cambridge Analytica misused the data access they had. The bad reason is that, it is using/collecting data for personal gain (in this case Donald Trump, and the other employees). The good part is that it has shed some light on ethical use of data (or in this case unethical), while the fact wasn’t the best, it has taught people a valuable lesson that should continue for years (if not longer).

The main reason that they were allowed to do the advertising for a long time could be because Facebook was earning money off them. Who knows whether Facebook knew about how bad the organization was before the media did, if they did the only reason that it stayed is because of money. But if they only found out when people got mad at them, then it must have been annoying as they probably were a good income sauce and high bidder. The bad publicity rather the money was probably worse though.

Following the news of the scandal, regulators around the world have scrambled to put laws in place to prevent something like this happening again. But they could have done better, they should have had laws preventing personal data being taken and misused without consent.

This week’s research had made my learn that lots of people actually want to use services that are ethical. This included responsible use of data, which includes not making profit off users even though “if you don’t pay, you are the payment”. I found Googling my questions was the best way for me to not have them anymore, however this didn’t work all the time. The better way I found was to search it, but if no conclusive response then deal with it later. I found my lack of time management frustrating, I kept on getting side tracked and not spending time on the assignment(s) I needed to do by today (when published). That lead me to not have as good of an outcome as I'd liked to have had. I think I also hindered others working in-class by distracting them, for some reason I kept on putting off the task and even in-class I didn’t do it much thus others might have been distracted by me. I will plan to not do that next time there is an assignment (as nothing next week really because of holidays). Likewise, I could also have elaborated more on my report, I am currently very factual, not much analyzing of my research. Can be fixed with more practice.

TL;DR: I finished the assignment, and found out people care about ethics. And exited for holidays.