Blayne Haggart, Associate Professor of Political Science at Brock, wrote a piece recently published in the National Post about nationalizing Facebook in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Haggart writes:

The Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal is fast emerging as a watershed for our increasingly digitized society. For the first time, how to regulate personal data has become a mainstream public issue, so it’s important that we understand fully all the options available to us.

In deciding what to do, the negative reactions of some tech pundits to the calls for individuals to #deletefacebook are instructive.

Somewhat counter-intuitively, they argue that it’s irresponsible and ultimately ineffective for people to #deletefacebook. On its own, this argument is overstated. The loss of even a small number of influential Facebook users (relatively wealthy, North Americans) is a signal to Facebook and governments about dissatisfaction with the status quo. That’s not a bad thing.

Continue reading the full article here.