Facebook Is Having A Very Rough Week...
...and it couldn't happen to a better company.
This week, we are seeing things come out that many suspected about Facebook and now are being substantiated. It is a situation that keeps on growing, a fact that might get the wrong ones looking, at least from the company's standpoint.
We all know about the outage that took place the other day. While the company maintains that it was an internal error, many believe there was a hack that took place. If this is true, that means a hacker took down one of the most powerful digital organizations in the world. The fact that things were out for 6 hours means it is likely more than some type of internal glitch.
Whistleblower Fight
Another issue that arose for the company is Frances Haugen, who testified in front of Congress. One of the biggest revelations is how Facebook hid its data about how their platforms impact children, especially young girls.
This was a revelation that got Senator Edward Mackey calling her “a 21st-century American hero”. Here is a position one does not really want to be against as a company.
Of course, that did not stop Facebook from trying to smear the whistleblower. They pulled out the standard playbook, without much result. It is a common tactic, one used without success by Big Tobacco.
Like Wigand, Haugen has receipts: internal documents and data from Facebook’s own researchers, all of which make for serious and supported claims about the platform’s harms and choices the company made to maximize profit and engagement in ways that would increase those harms. It is possible to contend with her allegations on the merits, but Facebook is too immoral for that — and Zuckerberg has decided he is above it, instead going on vacation.
It seems he is not too worried. In a situation like this, acknowledging the whistleblower can only provide validity to what is being said. Hence, best to ignore this while issuing official statements demeaning her.
There is one problem. This was substantiated by someone above her.
Who is this guy? Only her boss' boss.
User Data For Sale
Then there is the issue of 1.5 billion users data for sale online.
Facebook was always known to be loosy'goosy with people's data. In fact, there might not be a mega-tech company that is worse at securing people's data than Facebook. Nevertheless, that never stopped the company from continue to mine all it can.
Now we find out that the data of 1.5 billion users is for sale on a hacker forum. It is important to note this is not part of a breach. Instead, it is the compiling of what can be found online.
Reported by privacy research company Privacy Affairs, the data found for sale doesn't indicate that the seller actually broke into Facebook's systems, nor that its data tied to any other data breach. Instead, Privacy Affairs said that the data was allegedly obtained by scraping publicly available data shared by Facebook users.
This should not make anyone feel any better. There is still personal information for sale that is only available because of the way Facebook operates.
Privacy Affairs said the data they examined from samples provided on the forums appears to be legitimate. The seller claims their group has been in operation for at least the past four years and has served more than 18,000 clients in that time. Cross-checking the data against known Facebook leaks didn't bring up any matches, which Privacy Affairs said could indicate that this is all new, but legitimate, data.
The data exposed in this leak, if authentic, "may constitute one of the biggest and most significant Facebook data dumps to date," Privacy Affairs founder and CEO Miklos Zoltan said.
Taken in isolation, this might not be the worst thing in the world. After all, most are aware that Facebook is one of the biggest data whores going. They will sell it to anyone and, evidently, post a great deal out there for people to see.
When we add this on top of the other events for the week, it is just a mounting pile for them to try to dig out from under.
Loss Of Reputation
For many, the idea of holding Facebook in any esteem seems absurd. However, billions of people around the world willingly use their applications.
We might be seeing the winds change a bit. The company is now facing a hit to their reputation. This is something that was mounting and a tone deaf company tends not to do well in the long run. Many lost touch, believing they were above reproach. While this could be the case with regulators and political members, markets as well as users have a way of altering that pattern themselves.
It is no secret that Zuckerberg is out of touch with reality. He was, according to reports, always social inept and has run the company from that perspective. This means that it all starts with him, especially since he is the majority shareholder.
Ultimately, he could be blinded by his own obtuseness. For now, it appears that Facebook is taking a hit to its reputation that it might not be able to recover from. Many companies faced public rejection once a freefall like this started.
There is no doubt that Facebook is a behemoth. They are an entity that, like most mega tech companies, can simply keep growing, almost on autopilot. Of course, events like these could derail a company quickly. If nothing else, it does open the door for other players to try and step through.
Then to top things off, there appears to be some confusion about Facebook's status with its work from home situation.
https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/facebook-ends-wfh-forever-rule-after-mega-outage
We all hope Zuckerberg is having a restful vacation.
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