WTF FACEBOOK?

Facebook is an open book, which not everyone can appreciate:

Having a break after the first lesson and I grab my mobile phone and open the Facebook app. Scrolling through my timeline I see different items, from funny memes to events which my friends are participating in. Facebook unites, makes people feel bonded 24/7 and shows you news which isn’t that new, (let’s be honest right?).

Facebook is your best friend?

I guess you have a Facebook account. I didn’t have a Facebook until two years ago. The reason why is mainly because of school. Each week we need to share our latest findings about trends (A trend is a new movement in every sector possible). I made an account and started to fill in my personal data. Information like place of birth, favorite color and biggest dream in my life were things I typed down in my Facebook account.

The scariest part of this is the moment I liked certain things, for example dance videos and clothing brands etc. I saw advertisement on other apps like Instagram and twitter which were the same brands I liked on Facebook. And let me make things scarier, last week before school I was sitting with a classmate talking about cars and when she was scrolling through her Instagram timeline and an advertisement about this car popped up. If you ask me if this is coincidence…

Sharing is caring?

March 2018 Facebook did it again, a privacy scandal hit the headlines and people were this time shocked. (NOS. (2018). Data from Fifty million Facebook users were collected without their permission. This happened through Cambridge Analytica. (Bright.nl. (2018). They offered these users a personality test. And yes, they filled it in. With the gathered information, it was passed over to the election team of Donald Trump. The results from these tests were used among the people for the election. So, we have two questions. Firstly, Was the election fair? And secondly, is this a serious privacy invasion?

If you ask me if the election is happened in a fair way, NO! Has Facebook seriously invaded our privacy? YES!

The thing I asked myself after reading several articles and headlines is how this will continue in the future. Are we no matter when or where still capable of protecting our life and privacy? (CNBC. (2018). Because, even now, we can see that the online world is a scary world. Things you share, save or type down can be used any time or moment!

Beside the outcomes of the personality tests Facebook provided, Cambridge Analytica had also access at several medical documents from hospital patients in Great Britain. These documents were also used for the sake of the elections which Trump participated at. The interesting point about this is that even the fact that official organizations as hospitals guarantee privacy about personal data, there is a chance that your personal data will get in the hands of third parties.

Because of these kinds of incidents, it’s important that we seriously consider to tighten the privacy regulation. If we look at the government, it would take a lot of modifications to change the way how our personal data is protected. At this moment, there is too much space for third parties to abuse the personal data people share on social media. But also, patients don’t know half of the time how easy there can be made wrong use of their personal information.

Future online-me will be save?

In fifty years, I see people still using social media, but in a different way. There will be a separate safety service/department which will stand on the side of the citizens. They will be actively fighting against online corruption in every way possible. That does mean that this will create a lot of friction between groups like an election team of Trump or Facebook itself. Privacy will be something what’s very precious and what people will be trying to protect in every way possible. If this also will mean that the digitization will have a dip. The way it is right now with the privacy statement isn’t safe enough. These last year’s Facebook had several data leaks or other sort of scandals. This made some Facebook users very doubtful. For the future, it is the question how many users will keep using Facebook or other social media platforms. The option that there will be some sort of service to protect the citizens is a good way to reduce online corruption. But how about the point if there isn’t any social media platform as we know nowadays? The citizens in the future won’t communicate by Instagram or Facebook but maybe by a device which has artificial intelligence. The need to share personal stuff by pictures or wall-messages on Facebook will be history. Having a proper conversation with a device which can give you the same emotional reactions as a human being could be the new way of having a social platform.

#humanmovement #facebook #dataleak #cambrideanalytica #CBS #government