Facebook is one of the undisputed kings of social media, but it wasn’t always the case. At one point Myspace was extremely popular, and people couldn’t have fathomed that it would be relegated to the diminutive status that it holds today. In the world of social media, nothing seems to last forever, so has the new push of the #deleteFacebook convinced enough people to impact Facebook?
Internet users are continuing to push #DeleteFacebook and this week and some advertisers hit the pause button causing the company shares took another hit. Facebook shares closed Monday at $185.09, but after news broke that Cambridge Analytica leveraged compromised data containing extensive psychographic information on about 50 million Facebook users. In an era where people think little about their online privacy, this event was a HUGE wakeup call. The stock is hovering around $159.39 at the time of writing this article. High profile public figures and former Facebook insiders are also now deleting their accounts. Even Billionaires are joining the movement. The Orlando Sentinel is reporting that Elon Musk has joined the #deletefacebook movement as the SpaceX CEO has apparently deleted the company’s Facebook page, which at the time of its removal had more than 2.7 million followers (Santana, 2018). Brian Acton, the cofounder of WhatsApp, the messaging App company that Facebook purchased for $19 billion four years ago, tweeted this week that he was deleting his Facebook account. This is a rather profound message in my opinion. Sure, the actor Jim Carry was telling people to #deletefacebook in early February and dumped his stock at the right time, but it’s even more impactful in my estimation when the guy that created What’s App says Facebook can’t be trusted.
Even worse former Facebook employees are coming out of the woodwork to raise their own concerns. Sandy Parakila was a comer operations manager for Facebook. In an interview with week with NPR, Parakilas stated, “So the apps that use Facebook platform are only held in compliance by policies that Facebook writes. And there was no way for Facebook to see what was happening to user data once it passed to the developers of those apps” (Chang, 2018).
How far will this movement go? Facebook will have even bigger challenges if advertisers start pulling out of the platform. We could see a snowball effect soon if Facebook doesn’t address these concerns. With over 2.13 billion monthly active users, Facebook has a long way to fall before the platform sees serious trouble.
Here are some helpful tips if you are concerned with your Facebook privacy.
- Check which apps have access to your data, and remove Apps that you don’t know or use
- Unfriend people you don’t know or barely speak to
- Be aware of what’s publicly available from your profile, lock down your settings
- Check which apps have access to your data, and remove Apps that you don’t know or use
- Disable the API sharing under settings
- Lie – or at least limit what you share about yourself on Facebook
What do you think? Will you be deleting your Facebook account?
References:
Santana, M. (2018, March 23). SpaceX’s Facebook page apparently deleted to support #deletefacebook. Retrieved March 25, 2018, from http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/space/os-spacex-facebook-deleted-20180323-story.html
Chang, A. (2018, March 20). Former Facebook Insider Says Company Cannot Be Trusted To Regulate Itself. Retrieved March 25, 2018, from https://www.npr.org/2018/03/20/595344888/former-facebook-insider-says-company-cannot-be-trusted-to-regulate-itself