About the Content
A few years ago I broke down Facebook’s privacy policy and discovered the selective jargon and shady wordplay that allows them to trick users into signing away the rights to their privacy and data. I wanted to expand on that past work and do a little more research into what Facebook does with this information. In doing this research and writing this content, I’m hoping to help give insight into how intrusive Facebook is – and leave it up to you to decide if you want to delete your Facebook account or not.
The Rise of Facebook
Of every social media company in the world, perhaps none is as powerful as
Facebook. With just under 3 billion users, nearly half of the world’s
population has a Facebook account. In what started off as a small social
media platform in Mark Zuckerberg’s college dorm, the company has shot
Zuckerberg into the global elite, making him one of the wealthiest people in the world. A company as large and influential as Facebook however is bound to
have an array of problems, and for Facebook, most of these involve the
company’s controversial privacy concerns.
As technology becomes more and more prevalent in our daily lives, so does
the need to protect ourselves from the intrusive nature that helps tech
platforms thrive. The Amazon Alexa has seen this in the past, as reports of
the device waking up on its own and listening to conversations caused a
widespread panic just a few years ago. Facebook on the other hand fell
victim to its own privacy scandal, which in the opinion of many including
myself, was considerably more concerning.
Data Leaks
Back in 2018, Facebook was found to have leaked millions of its own user’s
personal and private data to Cambridge Analytica. For Cambridge Analytica,
the purpose of acquiring such sensitive information posed to be incredibly
lucrative. With this sensitive data, Cambridge Analytica packaged it and sold
it to advertisers to help make targeted ads and learn more about consumers
and demographics. It was known as the largest data leak in Facebook’s
history and resulted in a massive lack of trust between Facebook users and
the company. Facebook is so large that this event brought Facebook founder
Mark Zuckerberg in front of the Senate to testify about how intrusive
Facebook truly is, among other things.
But the fact that Facebook has the ability to store that much information
about its users is enough to be concerned about. What Facebook has that
the other social media giants don’t is size. With nearly 3 billion users, that’s
enough for every single person in Europe to have not one, but five Facebook
accounts. It’s not just Facebook’s ability, but also the company’s decision to
store the private information of its users that is incredibly concerning, immoral,
and intrusive. Facebook has more personal files about its users than most
countries’ national security teams do. The billions of files of sensitive data
have been compromised in the past, and who’s to say it won’t be
compromised again in the future.
How Does Facebook Get User Info?
So, what steps does Facebook take to get our information? As it turns out,
it’s not that hard. Facebook has the ability to collect everything on our
phones, from our email address to our photo library – even down to our
phone’s battery percentage. Facebook can also access data that isn’t
associated with our Facebook accounts, such as private messages, text and
call history, emails, and much more – they can even access our phone’s
microphones at any given time to listen to what we’re saying. Facebook
however claims that they don’t do this despite having the ability to, but after
seeing their data get mined just a few years ago and nearly 100 million
people having their personal information sold, you’d be wise to not take their
word for it. The sheer size of Facebook’s pool of users to data-mine from is
alarming, and if compromised or even hacked, that information in the wrong
hands could lead to chaos.
Why Do They Need The Data?
Why does Facebook worry so much about the personal and private
information of its users? In short, that’s how they make money. Sure,
Facebook makes enormous sums of money through a number of different
channels such as Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and others, but the bulk
amount of revenue that Facebook brings in is through advertising. In 2017,
Facebook made $40 billion alone from ad revenue (Wagner, 2018). This ad
revenue however doesn’t come directly from its users but instead from
companies who pay Facebook to advertise.
While Facebook users might see themselves as the consumers, soaking up
the content that Facebook has to display, they are actually the product.
Facebook sells our ‘eyes’ to ad companies and charges them to put
advertisements on our screen. So, every post that you interact with, every
product that you search for, even every company that you mention in private
chats through DM’s – Facebook sees this, and they store it all. They then sell
that information to ad companies who then turn around and again sell that
information to companies such as Pepsi, Coca-Cola, or Microsoft – any
company that is interested in advertising on Facebook. While an interesting
business model, the fact that Facebook requires the personal data and
information of billions of people to make this kind of money is what makes Facebook’s power and influence incredibly concerning. It’s up to you to decide if you
trust them.
Source:
Wagner, K. (2018, April 11). This is how Facebook uses your data for ad targeting. Retrieved November 20, 2020, from https://www.vox.com/2018/4/11/17177842/facebook-advertising-ads-explained-mark-zuckerberg
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