Despite serving over a billion people worldwide, Facebook still does not understand that with great power, comes great responsibility. Last month, a third-party app accumulated the personal information of over 87 million people due to incoherent and ineffective privacy policies and guidelines for users. This is an egregious violation of the people’s right to privacy, since third party entities such as Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm, were able to harvest data claiming it was for educational purposes.

Professor Aleksandr Kogan created a psychology quiz application on Facebook and then sold the data he collected to Cambridge Analytica, a violation of Facebook’s policy that data from research may not be sold “to any ad network, data broker or other advertising or monetization-related service.” In other words, its policy was violated the minute that Dr. Kogan was paid for the data.

Initially, Cambridge Analytica denied all allegations of wrongdoing, but quickly changed their tune after involvement by law enforcement, knowing that what they had done was both ethically wrong and a misuse of social media.

It is an outrage that Cambridge Analytica was able to track users’ interests, friend networks and “likes,” but even more so that Facebook permitted this furtive endeavor. By tricking users that they were simply taking a personality quiz while secretly preserving their data to create personalized political ads.

Laws should not dictate everything that can or cannot happen under the confines of a functioning society; to some extent, people and companies must follow their own moral compass. For instance, it is legal to cheat on a spouse, but the pain it causes all parties involved is more than enough to deter most people from engaging in extramarital affairs. Likewise, Facebook should think twice about who all are impacted by the information that was unethically obtained due to the lack of user consent.

It is time for Facebook to join MySpace, AIM and other obsolete social media networks, since it does not deserve support if it cannot respect users’ privacy. By blatantly ignoring numerous ethical red flags, Facebook deliberately put personal information at risk and should be held accountable for its actions.