#Facegate is a trend you may have heard of pertaining to Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony in Congress over the privacy leaks in 2012. For two days, Zuckerberg was grilled with questions asked by members of Congress in regards to Facebook’s usage of personal information gathered from online users’ data. A researcher from Cambridge University received access to over 300,000 accounts through an online survey they made accessible to Facebook users, violating people’s privacy and allowing outside parties to access and share personal data. The data was then sent to Cambridge Analytical who then gave the access to this information to other parties, such as Donald Trump’s campaign. An estimated 87 million Facebook users were affected, whether or not they were actively using the social media platform.
When Facebook’s team was first alerted about the violation of privacy and terms of agreement, they opted to threaten to sue several news platforms that were aiming to release the story. After receiving backlash for their lack of concern, Facebook began making changes to their privacy policies, but it is evident that Mark Zuckerberg’s disregard for user safety is not a new phenomenon – an instant message from Mark Zuckerberg surfaced from 2004 where the then-Harvard student gloated about the access he had to over 4,000 user’s personal data, claiming users were “dumb” for trusting him with their pictures, posts and private details.
While Facebook’s interface is powered by the interactions between advertisers paying to push their products onto users that are interested, it is evident that Facebook does this through the unlawful sharing of data between third parties. Because the age of technology is ever expanding, it becomes harder to exist in a reality that is free from social media influence. Convenience is something sought after by most people that interact with social media on a daily basis, and the necessity of having technology at the touch of their hand is both desirable and imperative to staying connected to the world. Social media users should not have to trade their privacy in order to participate on the internet, especially while using a platform that promotes the benefits of staying connected with family and friends through an online connection.
Since the news broke about Facebook’s privacy scandal, I have seen a plethora of friends and family expressing concerns for continuing to use the platform, but, at the same time, they are reluctant to disconnect due to the ease of access of distant attachment it provides. Especially for older users, Facebook is often what connects them to their loved ones who live far away, and for Facebook to take advantage of that resource and profit off of these people’s private information disclosed in order for them to stay connected is completely hypocritical, and it leaves more susceptible people vulnerable to having their personal information shared and sold to third parties to gain advertisement revenue. This for-profit paradigm Mark Zuckerberg has created in order to increase his network’s popularity and income is disturbing, especially since Facebook spent a whopping $7.3 million to increase his security in 2017, and should be addressed further than the inconclusive hearing from Congress last week in order to ensure that internet users aren’t being taken advantage of in the name of a millionaire’s profit.
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