ah yes Facebook
it's no secret this tech giant has had a
tough two years lurching from scandal to
scandal like when the news broke that
Cambridge analytic I had misappropriated
tens of millions of users data or when a
hack affected 30 million users not to
mention the social networks role in
spreading hate speech misinformation and
Russian propaganda this goes to show
that what's been happening behind closed
doors hasn't stayed there but at the
same time Facebook's constant crises
haven't really hurt the company's bottom
line so what's going on with Facebook I
know that we don't exactly have the
strongest reputation on privacy right
now to put it lightly if we look back at
Facebook in 2004 when Mark Zuckerberg
founded it it's clear that they've come
a long way
connecting billions of people all around
the world but they've prioritized
growing their user base revenue and
profits and sometimes lost track of the
possible consequences
and only now 10 to 15 years later are we
seeing the impact by only half the
companies they like cash printing
machine it's insignificant growth it's
making billions of dollars in profit
every single quarter and the stock while
it's not up but at the same wartime high
as it once was it's still doing very
very well well that's the good news
let's backtrack shall we Facebook really
started facing more scrutiny in the
aftermath of the 2016 US presidential
election when it emerged that Russia had
used the platform to spread propaganda
in 2017 Facebook was criticized for its
slow response after the social network
was used to spread hate speech that
helped fuel genocide in Myanmar
following this in March 2018 Cambridge
analytic a political firm had
misappropriated data of 87 million users
they did this not by hacking Facebook
but by buying the data from a researcher
who had taken advantage of Facebook's
lacs rules harvesting tens of millions
of users data using a viral personality
quiz it was pretty obvious that
Facebook's protection on users data
wasn't up to par things continued to
snowball after Cambridge analytical in
September 2018 there was a string of
privacy scandals where the personal data
of 30 million users was hacked
since then the company also discovered
that hundreds of millions of users
passwords are being stored in plain text
that means no encryption which is a
massive security misstep and Facebook's
response to the scandals hasn't helped
either a public relations firm hired by
Facebook tried to smear the company's
critics by linking them to Jewish
investor George Soros an attack that fed
into far-right conspiracy theories and
was criticized as anti-semitic then in
2019 the US Department of Housing and
Urban Development sued Facebook over
allegations of housing discrimination so
what do people think of it all
interestingly it's not enough to get
them to stop using the social network
not only is the Facebook app getting a
major all-white redesign of focusing
more on groups it's also making changes
that it claims represent a pivot to
privacy so that's why I believe that the
future is private this is the the next
chapter for our services it is
encryption its messaging apps messenger
Instagram DMS what it says will help
protect user security driven see
interestingly this won't actually affect
the amount of data Facebook collects on
any of its users and so the target you
live the same adverts will still know
everything to say about you
also in the works
messenger whatsapp and Instagram will
allow users to send messages between
each app but this is drawing more
criticism from those who view Facebook
as a monopoly having everything combined
could make it harder to spin off its
apps if antitrust action is ever taken
against it
in the meantime the social network is
preparing for a fine of three to five
billion dollars it would be a record
fine for an FTC settlement so where does
Zuckerberg stand in all of this despite
all the scandals Zuckerberg has total
control he's in such a powerful position
as the majority shareholder so the rest
of the shareholders can't force him to
do anything he doesn't want to do so it
doesn't look like he's going anywhere
anytime soon I come to now claims that
change will change
it's promising but it's fundamentally
pre-orientation the company in a way
that's never never done before and that
this is one of the most if not the most
important shift in its history well only
time will tell whether Zuckerberg can
pull this off hopefully no more bumps in
the road
you
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