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Women’s Suffrage, Social Media-Style

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In their latest exhibit, The Valentine puts a new spin on the fight to gain women the right to vote by imagining it as a social media battle between famous figures of the early 20th century.

If you’ve ever wondered what Maggie L. Walker’s social media presence would look like if virtual communication had existed during the suffrage movement of the early 20th century, you’re going to love the Valentine’s new exhibition. #BallotBattle: The Social Struggle for Suffrage, opening Thursday, November 21, showcases suffrage-era public discourse in ways that are familiar and relatable to modern Americans.

To commemorate the centennial of the 19th Amendment’s ratification in 2020, #BallotBattle features plausible interactions via Facebook feeds and Twitter threads between five high-profile Richmonders from the suffrage era, who represent a diverse cross section of the Virginia Capital’s political discourse from 1909 to 1920.

“In 2019, there’s so much political and social debate, and it all happens on our phones,” said Christina K. Vida, the Valentine’s Curator of General Collections. “So we wanted to use our current social media to represent how social this discussion was 100 years ago.”

“With the founding of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia in 1909 and the formation of the Virginia Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage in 1912, there was an explosion of public debate in Richmond,” said Vida. “It was happening in newspapers, in the Jefferson Hotel’s auditorium, at the Woman’s Club of Richmond, and on street corners all around the capital.”

Of the five notable Richmonders selected are women suffragists Maggie L. Walker and Lila Meade Valentine, and black suffragist John Mitchell Jr. From the opposing side of the debate are anti-suffragists Mary Mason Anderson Williams and Henry Lee Valentine, Lila Valentine’s brother-in-law. The exhibition displays Facebook profiles for each of them that look just like ours, including their relationship statuses, employment and educational histories, and even places around Richmond where they’ve checked in.

The social media interactions are modernized translations of historical documents, complete with the language of today’s online discourse such as hashtags, emojis, likes, heart-reacts, and memes. The exhibition also features an array of other documents, pamphlets, photographs, and propaganda from the suffrage era, compiled from the Valentine’s collection, the Library of Virginia, the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, and the VCU Special Collections Library.

Though the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, the Valentine’s suffrage exhibition contains decades’ worth of history on the fight for women’s rights. There’s a selection of historical documentation about the Equal Rights Amendment, including one of Elizabeth Shoemaker Parman’s ERA ratification brochures that circulated in the 1970s, and a 1973 photograph of Adèle Clark controversially lobbying against the passage of the ERA with Delegate Eva Mae Scott.

“We wanted to drive home the fact that the ratification of the 19th Amendment wasn’t a foregone conclusion,” said Vida. “There was still a lot of work to do then, and there still is now. We’ll continue that work from 2020 and on.”

The ERA was first introduced to Congress in 1923, and is designed to guarantee equal rights for all Americans by eradicating sex-based legal disparities in areas such as employment, property, and divorce. While the ERA was ratified by Congress in 1972, technically the congressional deadline for the ERA expired in 1982 when only 35 states had passed it in their legislatures. Since three-quarters of the individual states must ratify an amendment before it is added to the Constitution, three states were still needed for ratification in 1982. But after the 27th Amendment was ratified in 1992 after being introduced to Congress a record-setting 202 years earlier, validity of ratification deadlines has come under scrutiny.

Virginia is now in the national spotlight because the long fight for the ERA could soon be over. In the recent 2019 elections, Democrats won control of both houses of the Virginia legislature, and many of the newly elected have voiced their intent to vote on the ERA. Nevada ratified the ERA in 2017 and Illinois followed in 2018, so if the ERA passes in the Virginia legislature in 2020, it will be the 38th and final state needed to add the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Thus, there is an unforeseen quality of timeliness to the Valentine’s #BallotBattle exhibition, in addition to its intended concurrence with the 19th Amendment’s centennial year. “We might have to change some of the exhibition’s taglines depending on what happens in the General Assembly,” said Vida, with a palpable tone of excitement.

#BallotBattle will close on September 7, 2020. The Valentine is open from 10 am to 5 pm, Tuesday through Sunday. For more details, visit their website.

Photos by Noelle Abrahams

UPDATE: Kenick El To Resign From Virginia Beach Human Rights Commission

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Virginia Beach Human Rights Commission member Kenick El called homosexuality “an abomination to the Human Race” and referred to trans women as “men in dresses” in a Facebook post last week, which brought widespread condemnation.

UPDATE, October 30: LaKendrick Coburn El, who also goes by Kenick El, announced Friday that he would resign from the Virginia Beach Human Rights Commission after the widespread public outcry condemning an anti-LGBTQ post he made on Facebook last week.

“Everybody’s human rights is to be respected,” El said Friday, according to WTKR. “We are to love one another, we are to show mercy and forgiveness to one another, and that’s why I am committed to resigning on October 31 at the end of the commission meeting after I share my views with my colleagues.”

The commission had scheduled a special meeting for Thursday, October 31 after news broke of El’s social media post. El says he will resign from the commission following the meeting.

During a press conference on Thursday, Virginia Beach Mayor Bobby Dyer addressed El’s comments, and called it inappropriate for him to continue serving on the city’s Human Rights Commission.

“We believe the public comments of Brother LaKendrick Coburn El are contrary to these base goals that are the core of the Human Rights Commission, and it is no longer appropriate for him to serve in this capacity,” Dyer said, according to WTKR.

The Virginia Beach Human Rights Commission also released a statement saying that El was speaking for himself, and that his words did not represent the commission. “The Human Rights Commission is a very diverse group of individuals who come together for common good and equality for all,” the statement read in part. “However, each commissioner has individual beliefs, and we do not always agree.”

Original October 24 article follows:

News broke yesterday that Kenick El, a member of Virginia Beach’s Human Rights Commission, made homophobic and transphobic comments in a Facebook post, calling homosexuality “an abomination to the Human Race” and referring to transgender women as “men in dresses.”

El’s post was in response to a news article posted in October of 2017 by Fox News, with the headline “Transgender Wyoming woman convicted of sexually assaulting 10-year-old girl in bathroom.” The incident involved a transgender woman named Michelle Martinez, who, according to the Fox News article in question, “is a family friend.” Fox News reported that Martinez “invited the girl into the bathroom of a home on March 23, and touched her breasts and genitalia before penetrating her.”

Now, of course, that’s ugly and upsetting, and nothing any self-respecting member of the LGBTQ community would want anything to do with. However, this incident has been used by right-wing blogs like Louder With Crowder and The Daily Wire as an argument against transgender people being allowed to use the appropriate bathrooms. Those blogs tend to leave out that the incident occurred in the bathroom of a private residence, and that Martinez had been a family friend — one with a prior record of violence, as she’d previously been charged with aggravated assault in an incident in which she beat her boyfriend with a metal broomstick.

In his facebook post, El was making the same argument — that this incident had some bearing on the safety of cisgender girls and women in public bathrooms used by trans people.

“This is why we need to stop giving men in dresses passes. I have daughters and I won’t accept them sharing a restroom with a grown man suffering from this mental illness. Men trying to be women and women trying to be men is really confusing our children and I’m tired of seeing this nonsense promoted to our children,” El wrote on Facebook. “Those that don’t make children can’t relate or understand the impact this behavior has on us with children and it’s really getting out [of] hand.”

He then continued on to a general condemnation of LGBTQ people, writing, “Homosexuality is an abomination to the Human Race and it corrupts the hermetic principle of gender by interfering with the laws of nature just to gratify the lower self. Enter the correct bathroom and stop pushing this agenda on our children.”

Usage of the phrase “hermetic principle of gender” refers to the religious tradition of hermeticism, which believes that there is, according to Wikipedia, “a single, true theology that is present in all religions and that was given by God to man in antiquity.”

Kenick El’s references to religion make sense in light of the fact that he is a clergyman himself. He’s currently Grand Sheik and Divine Minister of Unity Temple No. 14 — a Virginia Beach-based temple of the Moorish Science Temple of America. This offshoot of the Islamic faith is based on the principle that African Americans are descendants of the biblical kingdom of Moab, and shares common roots with the Nation Of Islam.

El’s comments have received widespread condemnation from political leaders and organizations around the Hampton Roads area. In a statement given to Outwire757, openly gay Virginia Beach City Councilman Michael Berlucchi stated, “The comments made by a member of our City’s Human Rights Commission have hurt my heart. I was saddened and disappointed to learn about them. I served on the Human Rights Commission for four years prior to becoming a member of our City Council. The Virginia Beach Human Rights Commission was founded to institute, conduct and engage in educational and informational programs for the promotion of mutual understanding and respect among citizens, and the fulfillment of human rights. It is my hope that every member of the Human Rights Commission would commit to uphold that mission when they accept the appointment. I am currently speaking with my colleagues at City Council, the Human Rights Commission, and members of our community to resolve this matter quickly.”

Kenick El, via Facebook

LGBTQ organizations in the Hampton Roads area, including the LGBT Life Center, Hampton Roads LGBTQAI Interfaith Group, and Hampton Roads Business OutReach (HRBOR), have called for El’s removal from the Virginia Beach Human Rights Commission in light of these statements. However, El told Norfolk’s 13NewsNow that “this has been blown out of proportion” and went on to say that “I don’t intend on quitting or resigning.”

“If you were offended by anything that I said, I assure you that I didn’t intend to. I’m just expressing my faith,” El told 13NewsNow. “I love everybody. Just because I told you the truth doesn’t mean I hate you. Just because we don’t agree doesn’t mean I hate you or I’m opposing you.”

Despite El’s Facebook comments, and his insistence in 13NewsNow’s interview that his expression of said believes simply constituted him “[telling] you the truth,” he has shown support in the past for the LGBTQ community in his role on Virginia Beach’s Human Rights Commission, previously voting in favor of a resolution that asked the General Assembly to ban conversion therapy.

In a subsequent Facebook post, according to Metro Weekly, El insisted that he was merely expressing his personal views on his personal Facebook page, and that those views didn’t interfere with his work on the Virginia Beach Human Rights Commission. However, as LGBT Life Center CEO Stacie Wall told 13NewsNow, “We believe that somebody who believes that, the way that he does, is not someone who would represent all Virginia Beach citizens.”

At this point, it remains to be seen how the government of Virginia Beach will handle this situation. For now, we can only hope that El’s views do not continue to hold influence over the actions of Virginia Beach’s Human Rights Commission.

Top Photo: Kenick El, via Facebook

We Now Have Proof That It Was Never About The Damn Bathrooms

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When a teenage girl defended herself from boys in a high school bathroom, she was the one who got punished. So can we just go ahead and admit all these “trans bathroom bills” were a farce?

Recently an Alaskan teenager had the audacity to do the unthinkable. She used the restroom, and she even did it during school hours like a human being.

A group of boys decided to enter the girl’s bathroom in order to protest a trans boy who was using the boy’s restroom. This may surprise you to hear, but the trans boy was in a no way involved in the incident that ensued. Instead the girl who happened to be in the bathroom at the time was the one punished — for defending herself against the invading boys.

What nerve of her. Or, you know, something.

She felt threatened, understandably. When they blocked her from leaving the bathroom, she kneed one of the boys in the groin. She did exactly what we as women are taught from day one out of the womb, and defended herself. But when, according to the Washington Post, the boy was told he may need medical attention, the girl was the one disciplined — indeed, she was expelled, according to a tweet from her older sister.

Luckily, Alaskan representative Tammie Wilson had her back and agreed that, were the girl her daughter, she would have advised her to do the same thing. Wilson is also upset with how the school board handled the situation, and spoke out publicly.

“If you ever feel threatened for your safety, whatever force you think you have to give, I will stand behind you,” she said according to The Daily News-Miner. The girl’s family is now appealing her expulsion, and receiving significant support from Wilson and the local community.

This incident took place at a time when Alaska’s state government has recently contended with exactly the sort of “trans bathroom bill” we all think of when we hear stories like this — one that was defeated in a ballot referendum in 2018. However, its defeat doesn’t mean that Alaskan trans students are free to use the correct bathrooms for their gender. Fairbanks North Star Borough School District Superintendent Karen Gaborik told The Washington Post that, in her district, trans students are supposed to either use a gender-neutral single-stall bathroom, or the bathroom that corresponds to the gender they were assigned at birth.

This entire incident took place because one trans boy went beyond the rules to do what felt right to him, then posted about it on social media. No one was harmed or even inconvenienced by his actions — the problems only started once prejudiced people decided they were going to “make a point.”

This circles around to another point I have, the transgender community has, and most people with any iota of sense have. This whole brouhaha over transgender kids in high schools? It was never about bathrooms to begin with — and it never will be.

The argument we heard over and over was that everyone needs to use the bathroom that aligns with their gender assigned at birth, because we need to “protect our girls and women,” or some such crap. If that was the case, then why, when a girl was threatened in a girls’ bathroom by actual boys — to the point that she had to defend herself with force — was she the one who was punished, and not the boys?

Because the entire argument is bullshit.

It’s a load of crap, and this incident completely proves it. This was never about bathrooms, this was about policing the bodies of a community currently marginalized enough that people feel like they can bully and push them around. The hole in the argument is not only evident, but withering away like threads on fire.

What is even more depressing is the way it proves that we as a society do not care about our children — regardless of whether they are cisgender or transgender. We’re willing to put all of them in dangerous situations and then punish them when they attempt to defend themselves. All to make an abstract political point.

I have at times allowed myself to think that at least all the hubbub over bathrooms in schools meant that children were the one group in all of this craziness we call the world right now that we were willing to protect. But every single day, it becomes more and more apparent that even they are easily sacrificed in pursuit of oppressive political goals.

If the children are our future, then we need to take a step back and ask ourselves earnestly – what the hell are we doing?

Additional reporting by Marilyn Drew Necci. Photo: Zackary Drucker, The Gender Spectrum Collection

Opinion: TikTok Can’t Hold A Candle To Vine

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Vine is dead, I know. But the recent onslaught of TikTok ads on the internet has left me feeling nostalgic for the once beloved video app. So in the spirit of love, Vine, and my opinions, “welcome back to… me, screaming.”

In search of the right herbal tea, or bubble bath, or Netflix series, I have discovered that nothing eases my anxiety better than a good Vine compilation. A fan of classics, I still snort every time Jared, 19, tells me he can’t read.

The now-departed app was created to share small snippets of daily life in video form. But it was the six-second time limit that pushed the boundaries of social media and comedy. That restrictive constraint led content creators to get their point — most often a joke — across faster. Vine users only had six seconds to make themselves memorable, with various levels of fame available for the successful ones.

The idea of “Vine Stars” may sound ominous, but the reality is scarier than you might imagine. In 2015, Business Insider named Justin Bieber one of the 30 most popular Vine stars; but a year later, Bieber didn’t even make the list. Jake and Logan Paul, however, made it in both 2015 and 2016, with Logan’s individual following reaching over 9 million. As terrifying as that is, the siblings didn’t come close to the 15.8 million followers of Andrew B. Bachelor, known as KingBach, the No. 1 most followed Vine star.

So with that many users, why did Vine die?

Twitter bought Vine early on; the 6-second time limit complemented Twitter’s 140-character message format. Over time, Vine struggled in a growing market — as Snapchat and Instagram videos emerged, Vine couldn’t compete with updates and advertising dollars, according to The Verge.

Despite eventually being shut down, Vine’s impact on comedy and meme culture has given almost everyone an answer to the question, “What’s your favorite Vine?”

“I ain’t get no sleep ‘cause of y’all,” said Leslie Whiting, a 20-year-old Longwood University student. Tanisha Thomas’ unforgettable outburst on Oxygen’s Bad Girls Club was popular source material for Vine, with multiple remixes and overlays added to the footage.

For Aysha Malik, a 26-year-old events supervisor from Arlington, it gets romantic with “I love you bitch.”

The lure of Vine crossed generational lines. It’s a bonding point for millennials and Generation Z. But Generation X wasn’t left out of the fun either. Over the holidays, when I said, “It’s cris-men,” to my cousin, my 52-year-old aunt chimed in, “Merry Chrysler!”

Youtube is stocked with beloved vines. A good compilation may send you delightedly down a rabbit hole. Compilations are easy to find and vary in style. There’s dozens of “Best of” videos, but you can also find “the Zodiac signs as Vines” or the emerging and multiplying “Umbrella Academy characters as Vines.”

Of course, Youtube has it’s nuisances. With modern targeted-advertising, it’s highly likely that fans of Vine are going to find themselves facing the demon that is TikTok ads. The internet is overwhelmed with these videos — Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and even news sites are interrupted with short video advertisements from the app. It seems like if ad space can be bought, TikTok has found it.

At first glance, TikTok’s set-up is pretty similar: users share short clipped videos. It might seem like a natural successor for Vine fans. Unfortunately, in action — and yes, I did download it — TikTok feels embarrassing.

Videos of teenagers lip-syncing in cosplay are paired with viral challenge videos. The style of video verges on click-bait. Users consistently rely on musical overlays and aesthetically pleasing images. The honesty and fast-thinking humor that made Vine so popular is largely missing from TikTok.

Last October, the Atlantic boldly claimed, “TikTok is Cringey and That’s Fine,” but I have to disagree. Maybe it’s a generation gap, or maybe it’s the aggressive marketing that I find tiresome. But for the most part, it feels like TikTok didn’t get the message that we want to laugh with the content creator.

After all, Vine wasn’t without it’s fair share of cringe, but more often we were laughing with Riff Raff singing Sublime (or Riff Raff being Riff Raff), than we were left staring wide-eyed waiting to be involved. That’s the turn-off: Vine was about an interaction with the audience — even if only to inspire laughter. TikTok videos seem like they’re solely about the content creator.

That being said, numbers don’t lie. TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is valued at $75 billion, according to the Business of Apps. In October, it was the number one downloaded app from the Google Play Store, with over 9 million downloads in the United States. For iPhone users, October downloads reached 6 million.

With rising use, TikTok isn’t without it’s fair share of controversy. Just this year, the company was fined $5.7 million for illegally storing personal information from children under 13, according to CNN Business. The fine was directly linked to TikTok’s merger with Musical.ly, another short video app that was based on lip-syncing and required users to submit first and last names, among other things.

Last Summer, Indonesia announced they were banning TikTok. Authorities called the app, which relies on user-created content, “pornographic” and “inappropriate.” Rumors of a similar ban in Pakistan have been circulating through the beginning of 2019.

Despite the concerns, the United States accounts for 80 million TikTok app downloads, about half of which are still active accounts.

TikTok has a high number of users, a high number of downloads, and a parent company with obvious financial success. What it doesn’t have is the audience connection and honesty that made Vine so legendary.

On Youtube, the compilation videos tell the stories of both apps: Vine searches result in titles like “Vines I quote every day,” or channels like Cool Vines, that does monthly “TBT Vine Compilations” for over a million subscribers. When you search TikTok, top results include the “Ultimate TikTok Cringe” compilation and “10 minutes of TikTok Cringe.”

The truth is the apps aren’t exactly comparable. The differences between them, though they may seem small (15-second clips for TikTok compared to six seconds for Vine, TikTok’s stronger focus on lip-syncing), have led to completely different styles of content: one that gives me a pleasant feeling of amused nostalgia, and one whose ads I wish would stop showing up in my feed.

Note: Vines quoted and linked here come from Youtube and aren’t originally sourced, because Vine is dead. Content appreciation to: Rockwell Rockamole, Josh Kennedy, Christine Sydelko, Riff Raff, and the glorious people who saved these videos from extinction.

Also, opinion pieces reflect the views of individual contributors and do not constitute RVA Mag editorial policy.

Cambridge Analytica and The Future of Facebook: The Bleak Reality

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Facebook, every time you sign in it starts.

One of the hallmark achievements of our century, this segway into a new evolutionary age of connectivity; designed to be a banner of equality to distance us from the imbalance of power. Every post to your status, you’re continuing the excavation into this new wonderland, while you lean back in your chair wondering where this rabbit hole leads.

The creation of organic social communities, digital frontiers for pioneer developers to flourish with little hindsight paid outside the family researcher. Each update would shift the parameters of modern society. Their intent became their mission, prophesied as higher purpose, one of equal footing. The sole responsibility of a users’ personal data- in many cases, one’s livelihood- was left, cradling upon a bridge of trust. And for many, that expectation was good enough.

The unmarked conquest of American capitalism accumulated inside the smokescreen amidst the new toymakers’ workshop. The original purpose lost amidst the obsession for connection. And the worst of it- the warning signs have been present all along, embedded in the fine print for anyone who cared to look.

In a memo addressed in June 2016 to fellow board members at Facebook, Vice President Andrew Bosworth relayed a statement far gone from the original benign aspirations of a group of college kids making a platform in their dorm room.  

Bosworth was quoted as saying, “So we connect more people. That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools” His rumination did not stop there, “And still we connect people. The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good. It is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we are concerned. That isn’t something we are doing for ourselves. Or for our stock price (ha!). It is literally just what we do. We connect people. Period.”

The firestorm over Cambridge Analytica’s (CA) scornful acquisition of an estimated 87 million Facebook users personal data has shifted focus to the tech giant in a way that has not happened before. As further layers are peeled back, the walls surrounding the tech giants – not just Facebook – have started to crumble with a hail of scrutiny battering upon the doors – the barbarians are indeed at their gates.

CA CEO Alexander Nix. Photo from CA YouTube Channel

As the investigations into the CA scandal unfolds, many wonder- how could they obtain this information so easily – all while under the radar?

In response, Facebook desperately pushed to distance itself from CA, suspending the firm’s Facebook access and labeling them and their affiliates, as “rogue third parties”. They have been drawn up as the villains who took advantage of the helpless social network and their users. Nonetheless, several whistleblowers have since come forward, including ex-Facebook managers and former CA staff, illustrating a different story; one of deep negligence and malfeasance by both parties.

Since previous campaigns have knowingly used similar microtargeting techniques, CA has become a red herring, however. A diversion best left in the backdrop of growing national outrage over the protection of users’ personal data.

Jason Arnold, an Associate Professor of Political Science at VCU who spoke with RVA Mag about this issue summed up Facebook’s initial response:

Facebook is either lying or naive in saying that it cannot be responsible for what happens to datasets once it sells them to outsiders like the Cambridge [Analytica] researcher.

What once stood as the road to connecting the world now rests a dwindling bridge. The public has now been presented with the actual state of data mining and usage. Facebook’s original obsession with connectivity has turned decidedly toxic, catching the eyes of lawmakers and intelligence professionals who are still attempting to understand how platforms like Facebook influence events in real-terms.

“While companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google are great American success stories, so far I’ve been disappointed at how reluctant they have been to accept the fact that we are seeing the dark underbelly of social media,” said Virginia Senator Mark Warner, Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in articulating this challenge.

A growing body of evidence purports this to be a symptom of a widespread complication, a drop in the bucket to continual risks facing a society co-dependent to social media for relevance in a modern economy.  

“It is very unlikely that CA had something that was light years ahead of what competing firms were doing,” said Arnold. This is true, companies such as Experian and Acxiom have faced disablement following ties to ad-targeting. 

For instance, Graph API, the interface in which Facebook allows third-party apps to use your data, is at the center of this ethical uproar. It’s here where Facebook’s own data collection tools have encouraged the monetization of personal data with careless oversight. For proponents of electronic privacy, this is political transparency dozing at the wheel.

But it is also apparent there is plenty of blame to go around.

“I think we’re all to blame,” said Charlies Ajemian, chairman of Social Enterprise Alliance of Virginia (SEAVA). “I thought it was primitive, but definitely didn’t think people would hand over their information to marketers to use it on their own end. He went on to say that Facebook is also to blame, knowing that it was their responsibility to protect people’s data. “There can be a lot of great things about social networking that benefits the essential things, but it can also be used to other ends.’

Social media has become a necessity these days, much like a public utility. This necessity has also become very lucrative to marketers and consumers.

Most if not all businesses are deeply connected to social media, and the data scraped from the different platforms provides insight into what the public finds interesting. Whether through the messages we send, mentions of products we like, companies we follow – our online presence has become a modern-day currency and all E-Commerce runs on these metrics like fuel.

But what was not taken into account in these business models was something which coincides with its very foundation – the idea of progress and what that means in the context of 2018. Facebook has clearly underestimated its own tools and its own ideals. And perhaps without the proper oversight, many believe this problem will continue, leaving all of us codependent on social media in a precarious position.

“Facebook has proved they cannot handle this responsibility alone,” said Ajemian, “Social media is leading us towards a certain degree of social engineering and I don’t believe our current laws were created with this kind of attack in mind.”

In response to calls for reform, Facebook has taken an initiative to formulate a multi-stage plan for regaining composure, particularly in respect to the upcoming midterm elections. While their terms were technically updated in 2011 and later again in April 2014 to restrict data mining, loopholes have continued to be exploited, only to be realized in the past few weeks. This means the upcoming elections are likely still to be considered at risk. Nonetheless, for a company to weaponize illegitimate personal data mining demonstrates reasonable risks to the electoral process and democracy altogether.

Which has led some to believe regulation needs to come from government. “This is another strong indication of the need for Congress to quickly pass the Honest Ads Act to bring transparency and accountability to online political advertisements,” said Warner.

In direct response the CA scandal, Ajemian believes that greater transparency will be required. He has posited that Facebook could become an objective medium for the political arena.

“Facebook could build an objective continuity around candidates, offering data to the public to help have a better understanding of who a candidate is as a whole to help the electoral process,” he said. “Politicians run to win a position. Then it’s their duty to govern. We’ve gone too far into the campaigning side, it should be the best to govern not the best to win.”

Still, this doesn’t end with Facebook and remains an industry-wide problem. Data breaches happen, but it’s the response time that matters.

However, with Facebook, the problem remains complex since to “fix” their problem with data breaches they would need to build an entirely different platform to begin with. Some experts have speculated on new models for the tech giant, working searching for the sweet spot between privacy and data collection.

There’s a way you could use [Facebook] as a real solution for the world we’re moving in to. Facebook is valuable because of our identities, without us it’s nothing,” Ajemian said. “The real currency in the world is our attention. the better our attention is, the more we get paid.

In a review conducted by the Research Group COSIC out of Beligum, their analyst stated that Facebook should change its platform altogether – putting the power back into the hands of the user.

“In order to assist users and enhance transparency, we proposed a privacy scoring computation mechanism for the collateral information collection of third-party applications on Facebook,” said Iraklis Symeonidis, the lead researcher.  “The privacy score calculates the amount of the personal information of users that can be collected from such applications. Being able to raise awareness on personal information collection, it can support decisions and foster user control on personal data disclosure.”

In this regard, Facebook is not really a social network any more than an ad network. Letting the user take control of what information they want available for collection could be achieved, possibly a win-win for user and network. “You can’t maintain this model of selling our values to marketers,” said Ajemian.“What Facebook is doing is on steroids. It needs to change its model to empowering users. If only they worked to share the profits with the users, make them the partners. That would get people to participate voluntarily.”

A professor of journalism at VCU, Jeff South, stated alternatives to advertisement isn’t a new concept. “Restricting the use of our personal data on social media would greatly undercut the network’s appeal to advertisers,” he said. South added that “technological disruption” has put many media sources that relied on traditional methods of advertising back on a model that followed the subscription services of the 1830s.

Symeonidis remains skeptical about Facebook actually taking this level of initiative. “To be honest, I would be surprised if Facebook didn’t know about the analysis work. We have been publishing several articles since 2015 about Facebook and the third-party applications privacy issue,” he said in his analysis for COSIC.

The responsibility is not Facebook’s alone though, the public has a responsibility to bear some of this criticism too. “Our responsibility is to understand media literacy in the modern age. Take note of when people are blaming others, take a deep breath, and understand what they’re really saying. The way you approach something should not alienate people,” said Ajemian.

What has become clear in this debate is that the goals of each tech giants – not just Facebook – will constantly be in question moving forward. Their incomprehensibility to the layperson provides them a sense of ambiguity in how they represent their product to the public. Yet transparency should always take precedence, no matter the latest feature. And this bleeds into technical issues outside of the conversation over fixes to the platform, connecting to issues that should have never been present to begin with.

Warner got to the heart of the matter, implying regulations may be the unavoidable route. “We’re going to have to get this problem under control, and I’m not sure the companies are able to do it on their own. I don’t want to regulate these companies into oblivion, but I think it is time for them to accept responsibility for the potential misuse of their platforms and work with us to figure out the best way to prevent it.”

Whether Facebook decides to make a change for the better is little more than speculation. One distinction is for certain- the internet may have been for the user, but Facebook is still for its customers.

Who are the customers, and what are they trying to sell?