While this surge in popularity worked wonders for its client list, it also exposed its massive privacy and security flaws, the list of which is quite long. Then there’s Zoom, the enterprise videoconferencing company that’s entered the limelight since most of the world has been on lockdown during this pandemic. Following that, Facebook was busted nearly a year ago for storing hundreds of millions of user passwords in plain text, meaning anyone could have that information if they were lucky enough to intercept the right files. On the heels of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook experienced what is suspected to be its largest data breach ever, with nearly 50 million accounts compromised by a theft of “access tokens” that normally kept people logged into the site. That was the basis the entire company was built on.”Īn Unending Pandemic of Privacy Violations In the words of data consultant-turned-whistleblower Christopher Wylie, “We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people’s profiles, and built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons. This was only possible because Facebook left the door open with a toothless policy banning this kind of data collection unless it was used to improve user experience on apps. Ever hear a friend mention how they received an extremely relevant Instagram ad? We have, too.Ĭambridge Analytica was a British political consulting agency that purchased data from hundreds of thousands of Facebook users for “academic purposes,” but the firm went on to collect data on those people’s friends networks and amassed a trove of data on roughly 50 million people. Users are still surveilled to the gills and data-mined in order to serve them the most targeted, most valuable ads possible. It’s been two years since the Cambridge Analytica scandal stirred global controversy, and what has changed? Facebook is worth about 25% more than it was at the height of the scandal, even in the wake of a pandemic-fueled “ad-pocalypse,” and it’s essentially still business as usual for the social giant. An endless carousel of surveillance capitalism People feeling sick and wanting to help with researching this pandemic are forced to trust Facebook’s sprawling data-mining apparatus to treat their sensitive information carefully and with integrity. During an April 2018 survey, only 20 percent of respondents stated that their Facebook usage has not changed, and they were planning on continuing to use the social platform as much as they always had in the past.The survey was conducted under the auspices of Facebook’s Data for Good program, which claims to respect data privacy in all of its initiatives, but there’s no accountability or transparency into how that data is handled. users are planning to use the social network much less and to be much more careful about what they post. The Guardian, The Observer, and The New York Times simultaneously reported on political data firm Cambridge Analytica harvesting data of millions of Facebook users worldwide without their knowledge before the 2016 election, which led to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg having to testify before Congress in April 2018.ĭue to the revelations about Facebook and the company’s treatment of private user data, many U.S. One of the first and biggest negative Facebook stories of 2018 was the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which unfolded from March 2018. The platform has long been accused of enabling the spread of fake news during the 2016 election and beyond. The biggest social media company in the world had a difficult 2018. The company’s other properties Instagram and Facebook Messenger ranked second and third with 121 and 106 million users respectively. Despite a tumultuous 2018, Facebook is still the top social network in the United States, with 169.76 million mobile users accessing the Facebook app in September 2019.

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