Since its creation, Facebook has a long dark history of playing dirty with its user’s privacy.
Here are some examples of Facebook’s most popular story of treating users as products:
1.While Facebook originally made changes to its terms of user, terms of service, on
February 4, 2009, the changes went unnoticed until Chris Walters, a blogger for the consumer-
oriented blog, The Consumerist, noticed the change on February 15, 2009. Walters complained
the change gave Facebook the right to "Do anything they want with your content. Forever." The
section under the most controversy is the "User Content Posted on the Site" clause. Before the
changes, the clause read:
You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your
User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge
that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.
2. Facebook has been criticized heavily for 'tracking' users, even when logged out of the site.
Australian technologist Nik Cubrilovic discovered that when a user logs out of Facebook, the cookies
from that login are kept in the browser, allowing Facebook to track users on websites that include
"social widgets" distributed by the social network.
3. in August 2019, it was revealed that the company had enlisted contractors to
generate transcripts of users' audio chats.
In the world of technological advancement, the more people are connecting with one another,
people are losing their privacy more and more when the technologies are upgrading enough to
trade with consumers’ daily life data even when consumers do not want. With the power of AI
and machine learning technology, some big techs are prioritizing its users/consumers while
some others like (Facebook) are treating its users as the products by selling users data to third
parties.
To end the misuse of users’ data and privacy, Apple announced modifications coming to iOS 14
at its annual developer conference in June, including a change to a unique code linked to each
device, known as an Identification for Advertisers, or IDFA. App developers, including Facebook,
have historically used IDFA to help target users with ads, and track the performance of ads
across different devices. Apple’s planned privacy update to iOS 14, which will inform users
about this kind of tracking and ask them if they want to allow it. The new feature has been
angering Facebook since it was announced — the social media company says the update could
destroy part of its business, a tool that personalizes ads in third-party apps. Regarding this
battle between Apple and Facebook, Apple CEO Tim Cook alluded to Facebook in a speech at a
data privacy conference in Brussels, saying, “If a business is built on misleading users, on data
exploitation, on choices that are no choices at all, it does not deserve our praise. It deserves
reform.”
What Facebook does from the time to time breaks the law of contract. It trades and misuse its
user’s data with third parities for more profit. The more time is passing the more Facebook is
crossing the law bar as a tech big giant and government and policy makers should make policies
to control it.
