Political – Current Issues In Media Management

Donald Trump is creating a new social media platform, called Truth Social, which he considers his newest endeavor to improve the United States. The article from NBC News focuses on the fact that it has potential to make millions of dollars and be a huge success, but at the same time, could flop and be a massive failure. Some major themes of the app will likely be promoting similar political messages from when Donald Trump was president, calling out other social media apps like Facebook and Twitter, and challenging big tech and media companies. The message being sent from the new platform is related to cancelling “cancel culture.” The app looks similar to Twitter and allows people to share a “Truth or Re-truth.” The plan is to make money through the social media platform, but Donald Trump has a history of failures in the business realm, which gives the impression that this platform could flop.

This is an interesting move by Trump and his team. It is very likely that almost all of the users on this social media platform will be supporters of the former president, which means that there will not be much political diversity. A large aspect of this platform will be people praising Trump and there will not be much pushback because many people who do not support him will not have interest in being on the platform, although there will be a few. Personally, it will be interesting to hear what happens on the app through other news stories or social media apps, but I do not plan on making an account because I do not enjoy debating on topic’s I am not extremely invested in.

An Australian watch dog is suing Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica data breach in 2018. An Australian privacy act set out a provision for penalties up to 1.7 million to be levied per infraction. It is believed that there were 311, 074 local Facebook users who’s data was in the cache of 86 million profiles lifted by Cambridge Analytica.

The Office of Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) has logged proceeding against Facebook in federal court for the companies repeated privacy interference. Facebook allegedly disclosed personal information to an application called, this is your digital life. This application used user data for purposes other than what the data was collected for. In doing so Facebook breaches an Australian privacy act from 1988. The creator of the app “GSR” was hired by Cambridge Analytica to obtain and process Facebook users’ data for politically targeted ads.

User data was syphoned off from March 2014 to May 2015 by GSR. Under contract with Cambridge Analytica they were working on United States political campaigns of Ted Cruz and later President Trump. Facebook failed to take responsible steps to protect its individuals’ personal information from unauthorized disclosure. Along with the fines, Australian and international regulators want to restrict information available to app developers. Which would imply new protocols for social media. This case is currently before the Federal Court.

Australia sues Facebook over Cambridge Analytica, fine could scale to $529BN