A Facebook like is enough to make you an insider-trading culprit

There is big data — the kind Cambridge Analytica allegedly mined to influence citizen choices. Then there is small data — the ones you see in newspaper articles and advertising campaigns. Finally, there is the Facebook Like. According to the Securities Exchange Board of India (Sebi), liking a person’s Facebook post is enough to establish that you authority and the need to conduct surveillance on social media under securities laws — that too at an interim stage. “Currently, such orders operate in a legal and ethical vacuum, and it is necessary that Sebi or appellate authorities issue guidance on that,” says Agrawal. “Unless such guidelines are issued, this order is a worrisome precedent for Indian democracy.”