For these blog posts, I will be discussing huge news stories I can recall from 2019 involving media. For my first post, I want to talk about the Facebook privacy scandal and social media privacy concerns, in general.
In February of 2019, Facebook was officially accused by the United States government for sharing user’s personal information with other cellphone apps, stealing user’s information from other apps, and promoting minors to use their parent’s credit cards for in-app purchases. I gathered this information from Media Post’s article, “Facebook Accused On More Privacy Violations, Investigations Underway” by Gavin O’Malley.
After a 16 month investigation, Facebook was officially charged in August of 2019 for the accusations and misleading it’s 2.2 billion users. The settlement required the company to pay five billion dollars to the Federal Trade Commission, as stated by Tony Romm, journalist of the Washington Post, in his article, “U.S. government issues stunning rebuke, historic $5 billion fine against Facebook for repeated privacy violations”.
In my opinion, users of any social media, which is the vast majority of the public, have no privacy. They sign away their privacy rights with each “Terms and Conditions” they ignore but accept. Most users are aware of this lack of privacy, but truly do not care. Just think of how many people still have a Facebook even after this scandal was released, myself included. It has become a social norm to have no privacy. Every day social media users give out personal information to hundreds of other people without even batting an eye. In fact, they indulge in it.
The point that I am trying to make is that for government officials to accuse and demand investigation of Facebook is virtually pointless. Facebook is not the only social media that invades their user’s privacy. It is all forms of social media and most users are not concerned about it. Although these privacy violations are unethical, it is not enough for officials to attack Facebook. If the government cared about the public’s privacy they would be accusing the FCC and every single social media website out there. I truly believe that social media has gotten way out of hand with user’s privacy being exploited and misused, but it has become almost uncontrollable. The government and FCC would have to target social media, as a whole, and come out with laws that would affect the user’s freedom within the apps.
