Deletefacebook: Why everyone rushed to delete facebook
Dmitry Kurkin
The hashtag #deletefacebook has been distributed online for the third week: users are looking for ways to completely remove personal data from Facebook and dozens of detailed instructions have been issued for them on how to do it. Anger and panic fueled articles published in mid-March, in which a former employee of Cambridge Analytica told how his employer, taking advantage of the security breach of the social network, collected data on 50 million social network users to sell them to political technologists (Steve Bannon , a former adviser to Donald Trump, who led him to victory in the presidential elections in the United States in 2016).
Facebook admitted data leakage, after which it was subjected to harsh criticism from politicians and official authorities (among them India and Brazil), public figures (including Ilona Mask and Apple CEO Tim Cook) and online commentators. The market also reacted - the company's shares fell by almost one hundred million dollars.
Cambridge Analytica, which is actually accused of spying on people, is far from being the first time in the press as an odious information broker and a tool of political propaganda. At the end of 2015 it became known that the candidate of the US Republican Party, Ted Cruz, hired a company to collect data on the potential electorate. The message did not attract much attention - perhaps because Cruz soon left the presidential race. However, next year, supporters of Britain’s exit from the European Union and Trump’s headquarters resorted to Cambridge Analytica’s services, and they won, not least thanks to powerful campaigns in social networks aimed at users. It is difficult to assess the role of Facebook in the election of Trump and Brekzit, but it is widely believed that neither could have taken place without the participation of Cambridge Analytica and the base of psychological portraits of millions of users collected by them, none of whom agreed to the processing of personal data. The company itself, of course, denies any involvement in advocacy. However, their former employee claims the exact opposite.
Most critics, however, did not go to analysts, who, by and large, took what was badly lying, and Facebook, which allowed the leak, and personally Mark Zuckerberg, who could not know about the flaw, but continued to assure the public that the data of his users Social networks are reliably protected from prying eyes.
Even if we take into account all bots, as well as corporate and fake profiles, it turns out that every fourth or every fifth inhabitant of the Earth uses a social network
Now the company, as it may, is trying to minimize the damage. Zuckerberg, who is scheduled to meet with the US Congress on April 11, promises to fix everything (although he admits that it can “take years”) to hire even more employees in the security department (there are about fourteen thousand of them in the company now) and in every way to prevent situations when Facebook is used to spread fake news, misinformation and propaganda (and cites as an example the recent elections in France, when its wards managed to suppress the dubious activity of black PR people). The company also released a utility to allow the user of the network to set more stringent privacy settings, and hired a team of digital auditors to investigate Cambridge Analytica interventions. According to rumors, the head of Facebook’s security department, Alex Staimos, is going to resign - although this rather confirms the prediction that the problem of data leakage on the social network is too large to be resolved promptly.
At the same time, the company has plenty of time: about 2.2 billion accounts are now registered on Facebook, and even if we take into account all bots, as well as corporate and fake profiles, it turns out that every fourth or every fifth inhabitant of the Earth uses the social network.
Delete all your data from Facebook forever still possible. It should be remembered that, firstly, a deleted account can not be restored; secondly, Facebook also owns WhatsApp and Instagram; thirdly, that everything that is once uploaded to the network almost always remains there anyway. In addition, as it turns out, not all users can afford such a luxury: among them, for example, people with disabilities, which the social network greatly facilitated life.
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