If you’re following the news, you must have heard that celebrities boycott Facebook and they delete their accounts and pages. However, many people are still wondering what this boycott is all about. Even more, you can see tweets saying Facebook to avoid interpreting democracy. Yes, as you can guess it’s mainly about the recent election in which Donald Trump was elected.
So, let’s look into to details step by step in order to understand the process and evaluate Facebook’s safety.
Why did Elon Musk Delete Company Facebook Pages?
Last week, we have woken up to the rumors stating Facebook has shared personal information of millions of its users. According to the case, Cambridge Analytica which helped Trump becoming President took user data of 50-million users of Facebook. This situation has caused a big boom in the social media such as Twitter and Instagram. Because, this is pure violation of privacy as no one was asked for permission.
After the release of the news, millions of people stared a boycott against Facebook on the social media. As you know, Elon Musk is a dedicated twitter user who interacts with many twitter users time to time. Of course, Elon Musk has become one of the pioneers of the celebrities boycott Facebook movement. During this boycott, his several followers challenged him to delete his companies’ Facebook Accounts. Elon Musk has responded stating that he didn’t even know if they had Facebook Accounts. Therefore, he announced the deletion with “Done!”.
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Later, he continued explaining what helped him to make this decision. He clearly stated that it wasn’t because of the challenge and continued his explanation saying that his companies have never used Facebook Ads because he just doesn’t like it.
Is Personal Information Leak of nearly 50 million Users Facebook’s Fault?
According to Facebook, it’s not. In their defense, they accept the fact that they made a mistake, but don’t take full responsibility. Here is the tweet of Facebook’s chief security officer, Alex Stamos:
“Should have done a better job weighing in.”
Seriously? Although they have deleted this tweet later, there are many screenshots. In my opinion, this explanation is just ridiculous and insufficient. Let’s look how Cambridge Analytica reached to 50-million user’s information without being noticed. As you all know, knowledge is power. There is no question about this. Especially in politics because personal information could be used for building psychographic profiles which is a definite advantage in terms of building a strong campaign.
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According to Facebook officials, Dr. Aleksandr Kogan -Cambridge University Professor- has created an app called “thisisyourdigitallife” in 2015. In Facebook’s defense, sharing some personal information with Facebook Login feature was legit back then. Even today there is some sort of information is being shared when you use Facebook Login. There was nearly 300,000 people signed up to “thisisyourdigitallife” app with Facebook Login. Through these people, company was able to access 50 million users’ information. 30 million out of these 50 million users had sufficient information including places of residence, photos, interests, etc.
Is it Safe to Use Facebook Login for the 3rd Party Apps?
I can easily say that it’s much safer than it used to be in comparison to few years back. However, you should still review what information you provide before continuing with the login. There is an editing option for you to review what information they’re asking to receive. You can always uncheck the optional ones. Moreover, if you ever decide to limit the access of the information you provide. In order to limit the information provided with Facebook Login, you can simply deauthorize the app from your profile. After deauthorization, you can login again and review the information shared.
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Is Facebook Going Out of Business after Celebrities Boycott Facebook Movement?
Right after the rumors, there were few sources claimed that the Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has sold shares. There were the shares have lost high value due to these updates. Therefore, many users have stopped advertising for Facebook which caused drastic fall. In my opinion, Facebook will recover from this fall. It might take a while, but they will find a way. I think the road map is very simple, they must take radical action and make changes with their policies. Because Facebook is a well-established company for letting one mistake to wreck years of work.
