[hitgeek]

facebook basically did nothing to ensure third party apps & developers were not violating its data access and sharing policies. most developers know it has always been pretty easy to harvest data from facebook by tricking users and once you have the data you can do whatever you want with it.

facebook probably didn't do anything illegal, but many people feel they failed to sufficiently protect user data from bad actors.

It the absence of laws or regulations to punish facebook, the only recourse is for users to leave the platform. this probably won't happen b/c most people don't know or don't care. but if we think its in the public good to protect this data we should seek to pass some regulations that require platforms like facebook to meet an acceptable threshold of data protection.

given the effects that harvesting facebook data can have on elections, its probably a good idea for regulators to step in.