Ditch-your-Facebook-account Sunday reading list
I certainly didn't intend for most of my writing this past week to be about ditching Facebook. If you've been following the news and are still on the fence, here's some reading material which may tip the scales.
In 2018 alone, Facebook was implicated an impressive number of scandals. Perhaps most notably, it was revealed that the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica used data from millions of Americans without their knowledge during the 2016 election campaign.
The year 2019 is already off to an amazing start! Just in the past two weeks:
- Facebook knowingly bamboozled game-playing kids and charged their parent's thousands of dollars without their permission. Internally, the company referred to the practice internally as ‘friendly fraud’.
- ProPublica, Mozilla, and Who Target Me, all publish tools which let users see how they are being targeted by advertisers, including political campaigns. Facebook made changes to their code which blocks them.
- As I wrote last week, Facebook violated the terms of service for Apple's Developer Enterprise program by distributing a ‘research’ app to non-employees. This app, which installed a VPN on users’ phones allowed the company to collect virtually all their network traffic. Facebook used deceptive tactics to get children to sell this data in exchange for gift cards.
Need more convincing?
- Mark Zuckerberg has been apologizing since before he started Facebook and has never changed, nor has he changed the company.
- Think you're safe because you only use Instagram or WhatsApp? Well, the company has plans to integrate the backend infrastructure for all three apps. And don't let talk of end-to-end encryption fool you, they may still have access to the metadata.
If that's not enough to convince you to cut all ties with this company, just know this, Facebook doesn't care about you.
Feeling ready to take the leap? These links will help you through the process.
