Recently, one of the hottest topics that is related to the social media world is Facebook and the Cambridge Analytica Scandals.
Concerns have grown about the influence of false information and its ability to speak unscrutinised on social media. As one of the most popular social media platforms, Facebook uses the private information of its users as a tool to earn profit, leaking the information to the third party. Following the truth being revealed, many have criticised Facebook handles individual’s private information.
“avoid our information being leaked to the third parties”
Facebook is being criticised for continuing to choose profit over data security, taking risks in order to prioritise their aim of making money for user data. In addition to that, Facebook secretly acquired data harvested from millions of Facebook users’ profiters. By selling its insights to political clients, this allows them to more effectively manipulate potential voters. This has ignited anger of many users, feeling that their privacy has now become a manipulative tool for social media to make profit. Some professionals claimed this to be the result of social media programming, therefore people are demanding that the behaviour of Facebook should be under scrutiny.
Facebook is using its market dominance to crush rivals and shunting other social media platforms out of the picture in order to decrease competition resulting in Facebook being labelled as the ‘Digital Gangsters’. For this reason, people suggested that Facebook should face scrutiny.
Although some people may think that this rule is not really suitable, there are still some advantages. Under the regulatory control, social media companies cannot hide behind the claim of being merely a platform and the maintenance of the idea that they have no responsibility themselves in regulating the content of their sites. In addition to that, these new regulations could bring legal proceedings against social media companies and force them to hand over user data. Therefore, this could help to protect the privacy of the users at the same time, stopping social media using data to make profit.
“continuing to choose profit over data security”
As the Facebook user, there are some ways that we can avoid our information being leaked to the third parties. Firstly, we should not provide most of our real information to the social media. This could reduce the chance of our private information become a tool for the social media use to make money.
Secondly, whenever there are any new terms or new updates about the personal privacy, we should pay more attention about those terms and understand clearly what are the consequences of each terms. After doing all these procedures, the private information would be secured and would not leak to third parties so easily even though those social media are not under the scrutiny for privacy issues and monitoring their users.
Charlotte Leung
Articles Used: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/feb/18/facebook-fake-news-investigation-report-regulation-privacy-law-dcms?fbclid=IwAR1wikhsePSX1lzBE4ALpkyWnAnN0n8DWLf_zFt-N-FfQcPi6IkORZqbOoM
Featured image courtesy of Sarah Marshall via Flickr. No changes were made to this image. Image license found here.
If you would like to write Science articles for Impact Lifestyle drop us an email at lifestyle@impactnottingham.com
Follow us on Twitter and like our Facebook page for more articles and information on how to get involved.
