FB faces ‘Oppenheimer moment’ over Trump scandal

PARIS: Facebook and psychologists who have worked with it are grappling with their "Oppenheimer moment", experts say, over revelations that its data may have been used to help elect US President Donald Trump.

The scandal over the way Cambridge Analytica obtained personal information to try to manipulate US voters "is the most important moment that Facebook has faced since it went public in 2012," according to Professor Andrew Przybylski of Oxford University, one of the world’s leading authorities on social media psychology. He compared their reluctance to admit the destructive potential of social media to the epiphany of the father of the atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer, who declared, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

"With Facebook we have to acknowledge we are giving Frodo the Ring," Przybylski told AFP, referring to the object in the Lord of the Rings which confers absolute power. "If you gave me the Ring I would be corrupted".