Unsure whether to continue maintaining research account on Facebook re Cambridge Analytica
You are facing a moral dilemma that only you can answer. We all are facing a similar dilemma:


  Do my professional activities contribute to the wealth of un-ethical companies?


That company may be Facebook, a publisher, a software company, a private group, etc.
Most of the people I know will think


  If I don't have the choice, I will go with it but keep an eye open for the alternatives, and make sure the people I work with are aware of that dilemma.


I use C# and Visual Studio in my teaching, despite not really liking Microsoft: I roll with it, but make sure my students know of the alternatives, and bring up the topic regularly with my colleagues, in the hope that we will collectively chose an alternative.

Arguably you can't make that switch on your own: you can't make all the virtual communities in Iraq and Syria switch to Diaspora overnight, but you can create an account on that website as well, encourage people to switch, and keep an eye on both platforms.

As you stated, that recent "scandal" with Facebook didn't create that dilemma: you already knew that your data was used in all sorts of ways. But maybe you can use it to encourage some of your contacts to move to a different platform?



Some people have the opposite approach and put their morals before their career: Alexander Grothendieck is such an example. Quoting Wikipedia:


  Grothendieck's political views were radical and pacifist […]. He retired from scientific life around 1970, after having discovered that the IHÉS was partly funded by the military.