You are not friends with Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. You are their product. We conveniently forgot that we are the product Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg are marketing. The Cambridge Analytica scandal is a wake-up call.

Alicia Shepard | Opinion columnist

Show Caption Hide Caption Zuckerberg admits 'mistakes' in privacy scandal Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a message Wednesday admitting mistakes in a privacy scandal involving a data mining firm with Trump connections. He says Facebook is taking steps to better protect user data. (March 21)

Attention Facebook users, all 2 billion of you. If after reading the latest news about a private company harvesting your personal data for political gain, you think Facebook has screwed you, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Facebook has been playing fast and loose with your data and privacy for years.

Recent reports disclosed that Cambridge Analytica, a Trump-aligned voter profiling company, helped itself to 50 million Facebook user profiles before the 2016 election without any user’s permission. Cambridge was able to take that data, analyze it, identify the personalities of American voters and potentially influence them.

We already knew about the well-documented Russian interference on Facebook during the 2016 election and the platform’s role in perpetuating “fake” news. Experts believe that Facebook, more than any other social media platform, has facilitated the spread of fraudulent news because of its vast number of users and the many mechanisms it offers for sharing information quickly.

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We are shocked. We are outraged. Facebook is our friend.

How could our good friend Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg take advantage of us like that? He told us when his company hit the 2 billion mark in June 2017 that the largest, most influential social network in the world was “making progress connecting the world, and now let's bring the world closer together. It's an honor to be on this journey with you.”

For years, we loved Facebook without thinking of how it worked or what the consequences were. We happily, giddily traded all of our privacy and shared data — without much thought — for access to free information about friends, relatives and news. For a chance to show off to our friends, to post pictures about how our lives are better than theirs.

We thought Zuckerberg was a cultural hero for bringing millions and millions of people all over the world together. He could do no wrong. Facebook is amazing, we all exclaimed. Facebook continually wowed us; it rarely worried us.

And who the heck ever read the terms of service before signing it? Or understood the privacy settings?

We conveniently forgot or ignored the fact that WE are the product Facebook sells. We are not Facebook’s customers. We don’t pay to use it. We give Facebook tons of data every time we sign on or post or ‘like’ something, and they make boatloads of money off us. They sell our information to advertisers. The small price we thought we were paying was seeing an annoying ad for a dress bought on StyleWe or shoes from Nordstroms follow us around for a few months.

We didn't care as long as we could see our friends’ babies, post graduation pictures or share another Trump outrage or paean.

So, now we are suddenly outraged? We are now mad that Facebook misused our data, or that the gigantic platform let the Russians stick their hands inside our feeds or that they couldn't figure out a way to control fake news?

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Facebook is a $500 billion for-profit company (or was until it plunged this week amid the scandal). Its lifeblood is third-party advertising. In 2016, advertising accounted for 97% of the company’s revenue, according to Facebook’s annual report. There’s nothing altruistic about Facebook, regardless of what Zuckerberg says.

We’ve been trusting Facebook for years to responsibly and ethically use our data as though Zuckerberg and his company are really “honored” to share this journey of socially conquering the world. Few of us really know or understand the extent to which our information is used, and up until the most recent violation, we didn’t seem to care.

Instead of thinking of Facebook as your cool, popular friend, we should all be wary of Facebook. Watch for the platform to trick us. Or claim it is a tech company, not a media company responsible for what third parties do on its site.

From the minute the Cambridge Analytica's breach story broke last weekend, Facebook downplayed the problem. Initially, the company got into a sematic Twitter fight about whether it was proper to use the word data “breach.” Facebook knew about Cambridge Analytica taking advantage of its data in 2015, but didn't suspend it until now. There was no immediate apology; in fact the platform didn’t say much of anything.

It wasn’t until Wednesday afternoon that Zuckerberg, one of the most powerful people in the world, finally responded. He acknowledged that Facebook has a responsibility to protect its users' data "and if we can't then we don't deserve to serve you.”

Zuckerberg has said as much before. In fact, that was essentially his response to Russian interference and fake news. Fair or not, the onus to protect our data is on us to get smarter. We really have no right to be mad. There is no such thing as a free lunch. We always knew that, but it was convenient to look away and hit the “like” button instead.

So here's how to adjust your Facebook privacy settings. Do it.

Alicia Shepard, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, is a longtime media analyst and a former ombudsman for NPR. Follow her on Twitter: @Ombudsman