Truth: a clear principle introduced from childhood. A principle seemingly contorted in every day life; a principle loitering on the knife-edge of lies.
One key example, the consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, haven taken Facebook users direct messages, through the GSR's ‘This Is Your Digital Life App.' Only one, from a “wide range of surveys” utilised to invade privacy, another being the 'sex compass quiz'.
The use of this data, however strikes the biggest issue. The “OCEAN” scale (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism) having classified the data for each different person. Each specific thought or belief, targeted through social media, so as to ecourage votes for the Trump campaign. A tragic reality, for Voters in 17 states.
Yet, with the billions drowning in streams of propaganda, we were only granted a more limited perception- of both the campaign leading up to the 2016 elections, and of truth.
How we define liberty and even truth, suddenly malleable. Here we "are free to be a drunkard, an idler, a coward, a backbiter, a fornicator; but you are not free to think for yourself," like in Orwell's 'Burmese days' Our every notion of liberty, snatched away- well, if we define as liberty as "the right to tell people what they do not want to hear,” as the novelist, George Orwell does.
Clearly then, the deceitful Cambridge Analytica has cut deeper and deeper into truth. Their deceptions in the public eye, now a fact. Yet, from what do we define as lies? A question, loitering throughout all of history. A question that seeminlgy, may be absent of an answer eternally.
By Vanessa Gardy
