Did you hear about the story that The Guardian broke, where an analytics firm harvested the data of millions of Facebook users to create psychological profiles on potential voters in the US? No, not last week, you’re off by several years. Because The Guardian broke this exact story in 2015 — and no one cared. Even Facebook, when informed of Cambridge Analytica’s activities, did nothing, even though it had banned usage of its data in such ways in 2014.

So it was only when The Guardian broke the story again, with more details this time thanks to a whistleblower, that Facebook felt even compelled to do something about it. And this time, there was an outcry about what happened with the data Facebook gave away — even though no one listened in 2015.

Initially, reports called this a “leak” or insinuated that the data had been stolen. Except this is not the case. Facebook is designed from the ground up to collect as much data — on its users, but also everyone else who is using the web. Their tracking network can follow you across almost any site you visit, allowing them to build up a profile of pretty much everyone who uses the internet. They also collect data on what you don’t do on Facebook. And they used to allow anyone with a developer account to access to this data via their APIs. When Facebook stopped this practice in 2014, it wasn’t because of privacy concerns — they realized they were giving away their crown jewels, and they’d rather make money selling user profiles themselves.

And all of this happens with the consent of their users (you did read the Terms and Conditions before clicking accept, didn’t you?), even though few are really aware of it. And now, all of this is coming back to bite them. Even worse, they first tried to prevent The Guardian from publishing the story by threatening to sue, and then tried to downplay the affair. Mark Zuckerbergs and Sheryl Sandbergs initial silence wasn’t well received either, both outside Facebook, and by their employees. Later, Facebook also decided to not grant interviews to the outlets that broke the initial story in 2015.

This leak, then, shouldn’t surprise you, but it should scare you. The amount of data Facebook has on you is truly staggering. Dylan McKay decided to download his Facebook data, and see what’s in there. What he found were things like metadata of every text message and call he had ever sent or received, and a historical record of all the contacts he had on his phone, including those he had already deleted.

Some of the outrage was also directed at Cambridge Analytica, in part also because of certain statements its CEO Alexander Nix made on how they could influence elections. The company immediately went into damage control mode, suspending Nix. Except Cambridge Analytica only really exists as a shell company, which means Nix’s suspension might not really mean all that much after all, since he’s also the CEO of SCL Elections, from which he hasn’t been suspended.

This scandal isn’t just emblematic of Facebook, who might be the worst offender, but they aren’t the only one. Paul Ford makes the case for a digital protection agency, since it’s clear that Silicon Valley can’t or won’t protect the privacy of their users. And the case against Facebook is not just that they collect all this data on you, it’s that just using Facebook doesn’t even make you happier or more connected. And if you decide to leave Facebook, don’t forget that it’s not just Facebook itself. After all, Instagram and WhatsApp are both owned by Facebook, and Amazon, Twitter, Google, and Apple all collect and sell or share your data with others.

In this case, though, the Facebook’s biggest problem might be its founder and CEO. He once called the first Facebook users “Dumb Fucks”, since they just gave him all their private data because they trusted him. Seems like nothing much has changed since then.

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