Facebook was launched in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with the objective of connecting people through the internet. Particularly, Facebook falls under the same category of “Web 2” applications with other social media sites such as Twitter, Instagram, Google+, among others. What began as a social media site for Harvard students gradually expanded to accommodate anyone around the globe. Although Facebook has witnessed success, the company also has encountered a lot of criticism, particularly in relation to protection of private information. When people subscribe to Facebook, they are always convinced that their personal information is secure. However, it recently emerged that Facebook has poor management of people’s private information.
In April, 2018, Zuckerberg was summoned by the US congress to be probed about how Facebook handles subscribers’ data (Watson, 2018). The summon was prompted by the revelation that a private firm known as Cambridge Analytica had gained access to Facebook subscribers’ private information and had even interfered with the US elections. Secondly, it was revealed that about 50 million Facebook accounts were compromised. The worrying aspect was that Zuckerberg said he did not know who had hacked the accounts or where the hacker(s) were based. That implied that Zuckerberg and the Facebook management were powerless in protecting users’ personal data.
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In regard to the case of Cambridge Analytica Zuckerberg told the Congress that they allowed third party applications to access users’ private information. Zuckerberg insisted that it was the only way they could make revenue for the company. He even stated that if subscribers did not want to receive adverts from third party applications, they needed to pay a fee to the company. This response seemed not to augur well with some senators, who wondered why people needed to pay so that they could not receive adverts using their personal information. The most prominent reason the senators were not happy with the Facebook management was that Facebook did not have measures that outlined the extent to which third parties would use subscribers’ personal information (Watson, 2018). Secondly, Facebook did not conduct enough awareness to the users in regard to how their information was being used. The awareness would have made the users to exercise caution in relation to what information they share on their pages.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDR) came into effect in May, 2018. The regulation aims to give users more control on how to use their information as well as how companies use it. The companies that fail to comply with the regulation risk facing a fine of up to 4 percent of their annual revenues ( Computer Business Review, 2018) . A company such as Apple Inc. already rolled out privacy management tools that allow users to have access to their data, request a correction of their data and to delete or deactivate their account. Facebook also created more control tools that allow users to choose whom to share their information with (particularly, who to view their posts or profiles).
In conclusion, the measures have to some extent made Facebook users aware of what they should share but the issue of third party applications has not been solved conclusively. Facebook is yet to devise measures to limit the amount of private information third parties ought to access and use. Even if users can deactivate or delete their accounts, their private information would still have been accessed by malicious individuals. Again, even if one chooses what people access his or her posts, anyone can still visit their profile pages by searching their subscription names. Therefore, the information is not private per se. Evidently, Facebook management and the government need to devise more effective measures.
References
Computer Business Review. (2018). Apple rolls out privacy features ahead of GDPR - Computer Business Review . Computer Business Review . Retrieved 7 November 2018, from https://www.cbronline.com/news/apple-rolls-out-privacy-features-ahead-of-gdpr
Watson, C. (2018). The key moments from Mark Zuckerberg's testimony to Congress . The Guardian . Retrieved 7 November 2018, from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/11/mark-zuckerbergs-testimony-to-congress-the-key-moments
