Facebook: is it time we all deleted our accounts?

In a sense, Facebook’s defence to the Cambridge Analytica story was more damning than the story itself

The Cambridge Analytica revelations may be the final nudge we need to turn away from the social network. And it’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to big tech harvesting private information

Facebook has displayed a remarkable lack of contrition in the immediate aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica revelations. Photograph: Piotr Malczyk/Alamy Stock Photo

S orry to break it to you, but you are probably a “dumb fuck”. This is according to statements by a young , when a 19-year-old Zuckerberg had just started building Facebook, he sent his Harvard friends a series of instant messages in which he marvelled at the fact that 4,000 people had volunteered their personal information to his nascent social network. “People just submitted it . I don’t know why . They ‘trust me’ . dumb fucks.”

Fourteen years later, the number of people who have trusted Zuckerberg with their data has grown from 4,000 to 2 billion. Zuckerberg has also grown, or so he would have you believe. In a 2010 interview with the New Yorker, the Facebook founder said he regretted those early messages. “If you’re going to go on to build a service that is influential and that a lot of people rely on, then you need to be mature, right? I think I’ve grown and learned a lot.”

On Monday, Facebook’s shares dropped almost 7%, taking $36bn (?25

When it comes to respecting and safeguarding the information people have given him, however, has Zuckerberg really learned that much? Recent events suggest not.

On Saturday, the Observer revealed how Cambridge Analytica, a company funded by conservative billionaire Robert Mercer, acquired and exploited the data associated with 50m Facebook profiles. It appears that while Facebook had been aware of what the Observer described as “unprecedented data harvesting” for two years, it did not notify the affected users.

What’s more, Facebook has displayed a remarkable lack of contrition in the immediate aftermath of the Observer’s revelations. Instead of accepting responsibility, its top executives argued on Twitter that the social network had done nothing wrong. “This was unequivocally not a data breach,” Facebook vice-president Andrew Bosworth tweeted on Saturday. “People chose to share their data with third party apps and if those third party apps did not follow the data agreements with us/users it is a violation. No systems were infiltrated, no passwords or information were stolen or hacked.”

Tracy Chou, a software engineer who has interned at Facebook and worked at a number of prominent Silicon Valley companies, agrees that there wasn’t a hack or breach of Facebook’s security. Rather, she explains, “this is the way that Facebook works”. The company’s business model is to collect, share and exploit as much user data as possible; all without informed consent. Cambridge Analytica may have violated Facebook’s terms of service, but Facebook had no safeguards in place to stop them.

While some Facebook executives were busy defending their honour on Twitter over the weekend, it should be noted that Zuckerberg remained deafeningly silent. 7bn) off the company’s valuation. Still, Zuckerberg remained silent. If you’re going to build a service that is influential and that a lot of people rely on, then you need to be mature, right? Apparently, silence is Zuck’s way of being mature.

But forget how the folks at Facebook are reacting to this – still unfolding – PR crisis. If you’re one of the social network’s 2 billion users, how are you reacting? Have you deleted your account in protest? Are you angrily sharing articles about the fiasco on Facebook but continuing to https://hookupdate.net/victoria-milan-review/ use the service? Have you shrugged and moved on?

March 18, 2022