Today I learned about the most shocking revelations on the internet today and this involves the most popular social media platform we have today - Facebook. 

Currently, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, is being accused of manipulating the votes of most Americans during the last election campaign and even selling the confidential information of the platform’s 78 million users to third parties. Now that’s a humongous case of breach of privacy. But somehow, Zuckerberg seems to not see any fault with his platform. So the question is, what happens now?

Thin Line of Facebook Privacy

Last Wednesday, Zuckerberg was put on a roller-coaster ride on his second day of congressional testimony. This has been due to the fact that Senators of the Congress are dumbfounded when reports ensue that Facebook made an election interference which most likely was a success on giving Trump the upper-hand. 

Moreover, Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy firm, were the recipient of the harvested data of almost 78 million users. This was made possible by the app developed by Aleksandr Kogan called thisisyourdigitallife. However, the Billionaire CEO of Facebook defended himself and even said that Kogan has deceived the social media firm when the latter accessed and used for his own purpose the users’ data. Senators pointed out that the harvesting of data happened on 2015 but why didn’t Facebook ban Cambridge Analytica from one of their advertisers which Zuckerberg responded that it was a mistake.

Now the question is, where do us users stand on this issue?

Thoughts of a Facebook User

At one point in the congressional testimony, Zuckerberg said, “People chose to share information with an app developer.” 

Well, I agree that this is true but this doesn’t mean we are allowing the developer to sell or divulge our personal information to third party companies, people or websites. This is annoying and scary at the same time knowing other people knows your private information and stalking your activity even when you’re log off from the app. It is downright disturbing.

Furthermore, during the said testimony, it was reported that the app Kogan made were also used to scrape personal messages from the social media platform. This is clearly a breach of privacy that no one is aware of. The word “personal” means it is private and not for the eyes of many.
One of the most interesting question on the testimony was when Senator Deb Fischer asked if Facebook is safe; to this Zuckerberg responded that it is safe because his family also use it. But, lo and behold, TechCrunch just revealed another shocking fact where the privacy of Zuckerberg, his family and executives has a special privacy settings that’s not available for a regular Joe.

A lot has been put in the spotlight but the main concern is the privacy of the users. No one wants their private messages and activities be sold to others for whatsoever purpose and clearly, Facebook did an awful job on this category. As a matter of fact, we can consider Zuckerberg and Kogan as hackers as they gained unauthorized access to our personal data. A huge chance of a criminal case is on their way. Well, maybe or maybe not.

What we can do is to simply delete all private messages and minimize the use of social media in our everyday lives. Can that be it? Or should we just adopt decentralization and blockchain.

I am very sure Mark Zuckerberg is looking into that too, especially now. 

Now, Facebook is great but it just may know us too much, likely more than we know ourselves and oh boy, that's scary.

Additional Credit and Reference:

1. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/11/zuckerberg-hearing-facebook-tracking-questions-house-back-foot
2. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/live/2018/apr/10/mark-zuckerberg-testimony-live-congress-facebook-cambridge-analytica?page=with:block-5acd2588e4b08f6cf5be4e8b#liveblog-navigation
3. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/4/10/17208322/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-congress-testimony-regulation

Image credit to Pixabay (Free to use)