Welcome back everyone, today Im gonna be talking about Facebook - you may have heard of it.
I think I made that joke in the last video - Im becoming too predictable.
In that last video though, I revealed the dark underbelly of the most used social media
site on the planet - Facebook.
Many of you were shocked but also intrigued to learn more - so here we are.
My name is Danny Burke and this is the Top 10 Scary Facebook Dark Secrets - Part 2.
Starting off at number 10 now we have the Messenger Scans.[a] In April 2018, Bloomberg
reported that Facebook scans every link and image that people send each other on Facebook
Messenger.
Facebook said they do this so that they can flag content that goes against their terms
and conditions.
In a statement, they gave an example of their scanning as a tool to detect and stop child
exploitation imagery as their system will scan it and flag it to their attention.
They say the same works for links that people send you being scanned for malware or viruses.
This may sound good on paper but in practice, many people are unhappy with the idea of Facebook
scanning their pictures or personal links, wether or not its a machine doing it.
At the end of the day, I think this one comes down, like so many things, to how much you
value safety and fighting crime compared to your own privacy … Id be interested to hear
where the line is for you in the comments …
Next up at number 9 we have Deleted Videos.
In the last video we talked about Cambridge Analytica - the company that gathered information
about millions of Facebook users to sell it on for political purposes.
One of Facebooks responses to the scandal was to download their data archive and see
for themselves what Facebook ahs been storing about them.
To peoples horror, they found that Facebook had stored videos that they had deleted.
There they were, still present in Facebook archives and available for anyone to retrieve
who knew how … Facebook apologised for the unintentional bug.
However, the damage was done and public opinion of Facebook plumited, thanks to their loose
definition of the term -deleted-
Moving on to number 8 we have Marks Messages.
As many of you are aware, Facebook users cant delete messages from someone elses inbox once
they send them a message - they can delete their own all they want - but the other person
can still see it.
Well, apparently that doesnt apply TechCrunch report.
In early 2018, they claimed that Facebook reviews old messages sent between sources
and Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook.
They found that Marks messages had been removed somehow.
When the report was released, Facebook said it was a corporate security measure.
They claimed that after Sony Pictures had their emails hacked in 2014, they made a number
of changes to protect their executives communications.
This included, in their words, -limiting the retention period for Marks messages in Messenger.
We did so in full compliance with our legal obligations to preserve messages- … whether
or not you think its fair that this privilege isnt extend to other Facebook users, one question
still remains: why didnt Facebook publicly disclose this?
Moving on to number 7 now we have The Facebook Killer.
Nobody would say this one is Facebooks fault, but its still something I think they would
like to downplay.
On April 16th 2007, 74 year old Robert Godwin Senior was shot and killed while walking on
a sidewalk in Cleveland, USA.
The suspect was 37 year old Steve Stephens - he posted a video of the shooting on his
Facebook account.
This led many media outlets to dub him the -Facebook killer- … while this was not Facebooks
fault, however, they did get some criticism.
Some felt that the video should not have been allowed up on Stephens Facebook page for 2
hours being taken down.
A few weeks later, Facebook announced that it was adding additional personnel to team
to proactively screen Facebook live content for violent and other inappropriate content.
Moving on to number 6 we have Russia.
Most people are aware of the ongoing investigation into Russian meddling into the 2016 US Election.
There has been mounting evidence of a Russian influence campaign on Facebook that targeted
America voters to spread misinformation.
Many people claim that Facebook didnt do enough to stop this, despite it happening before
their very eyes.
In response to this, Facebook announced plans to begin requiring disclosures and disclaimers
on all political ads and including issue based ads.
Some say its a step in the right direction, others say its too little too late …
Coming in at number 5 we have Anti Semitism.[b] In September 2017, Pro Republica published
an article in which they claimed that Facebook allowed them to post anti semitic advertisements
with no restrictions.
They were shocked by the test results.
For 30 dollars, they promoted 3 posts to over 2000 people interesting in topics that involved
extremely anti semitic phrases.
In just 15 minutes, the ads were approved.
After they contacted Facebook, the company removed the anti Semetic categories which
were created by an algorithm rather than people.
Despite the fact that the categories and posts were machine made and monitored - that didnt
get them off the hook.
Facebook admitted fault and said it would explore ways to fix the problem, including
limiting the number of categories available or scrutinizing them before they are displayed
to buyers … Moving on to number 4 now we have The Instagram
Clash.[c] In case you didnt already know, Facebook owns Instagram.
They bought the company in 2012 for $1 billion dollars.
In this years since then, many people thought the 2 companies had a harmonious relationship.
However, behind the scenes, it was a different story.
Rumours of the rift between them were confirmed in September 2018 when Instagram co founders
Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger announced they would be leaving the company.
This was amid reports that their departure might be due to an increase in meddling by
Mark Zuckerberg.
Thats right - they felt that Mr Zuckerberg was getting far too involved with their company
to the point where they felt the only option was to leave.
Officially, they said they were leaving to -explore their curiosity and creativity again-
… experts think that they were trying to run Instagram more independently than Facebook
wanted them to.
The companies had worked together well for the past 6 years but its thought that something
happened behind the scenes in the last few months that caused the rift between them …
Next up at number 3 we have Hate Speech.[d] In April 2018, Vox published an interview
with Mark Zuckerberg which got him in hot water with many people.He said hee helped
to silence anti Rohingya propaganda through the Facebook Messenger scans we talked about
before.
The crisis involved 650,000 Rohingya refugees being forced to flee to Bangladesh following
persecution.
Organisations in Myanmar were furious about Zuckerbegs claim.
Six groups signed a letter to Zuckerberg that stated -Though these dangerous messages were
deliberately pushed to large numbers of people – many people who received them say they
did not personally know the sender – your team did not seem to have picked up on the
pattern.
For all of your data, it would seem that it was our personal connection with senior members
of your team which led to the issue being dealt with.- … Mark Zuckerberg might have
felt Facebook did enough to stop hate speech, but many who were on the ground there did
not …
Moving on to number 2 we have Plagiarism.
In 2009, Facebook settled a lawsuit from a man who claimed he came up with Facebook.
Let me explain.
The lawsuit came from Aaron Greenspan.
He attended Harvard university at the same time as Mark Zuckerberg.
He designed a programme called houseSYSTEM for students and faculty members.
One section involved -a course scheduler, student marketplace, email service, automatic
birthday reminder, message boards, photo album, digital flyer advertising, event calendar,
map integration, job placement and local business reviews- … its name was -The Universal Face
Book- or -Face Book- for short.
The lawsuit was finally settled with Mark Zuckerberg acknowledging Aaron Greenspan for
his contribution - any money that changed hands was not disclosed … what do you think
guys?
Is this just inspiration or a total ripoff?
And finally at number 1 we have Experimentation.[e] This is a really shady one that not many people
know about.
Back in 2012, for about a week, Facebook ran an experiment.
Without users knowledge or permission, many people were shown happier or more negative
statuses than usual, with the opposing ones being censored.
At the end of the week, Facebook analysts examined if this affected peoples moods by
seeing if they posted happier or more negative things themselves.
Naturally, there was a bit of an uproar when this happened.
Many people said this was extremely unethical and that just because an experiment is done
online - it doesnt mean you can hide it from the people taking part.
Facebook didnt really seem to mind though, at least not at the time.
People speculate that they were trying to find out how to make you happy or sad so that
they could advertise certain products to you when they had you in the right mood.
How creepy is that.
The whole thing has been quite creepy - Im pretty close to just deleting Facebook altogether
but Im sure they will never delete me.
What are your thoughts on Facebook in general?
Thanks for watching as always guys, my name is Danny Burke and Ill see you all in the
next video!