Daniel Jee / Staff repoter
On February 4, 2004, Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook in his Harvard dormitory room which had a major impact on the world. Now Facebook has developed as the largest social media company from a small social network among Harvard students which includes other social medias like WhatsApp and Instagram. And recently, Facebook is still affecting the world by being the origin of misinformation and leaking the personal data of 533 million users.
According to a new poll from Pew Research Center, roughly half of US adults say they get news from social media sites “sometimes” or “often”.
Social media sites where a lot of information flows are extremely easy for misinformation to spread.
Moreover, news publishers known for putting out misinformation got six times the number of likes, shares, and interactions on the platform as did trustworthy news sources, such as CNN or the World Health Organization.
Recently, health misinformation related to COVID-19 on Facebook has obtained billions of views.
“Facebook’s algorithm is a major threat to public health. Mark Zuckerberg promised to provide reliable information during the pandemic, but his algorithm is sabotaging those efforts by driving many of Facebook’s 2.7 billion users to health misinformation-spreading networks,” said Fadi Quran, campaign director at Avaaz, an advocacy group.
There was another ‘information issue’ on Facebook.
Personal data from 533 million Facebook accounts have reportedly leaked online for free on April 4, 2021, according to security researcher Alon Gal. Insider said it verified several of the leaked records.
“The exposed data includes personal information of over 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries, including over 32 million records on users in the US, 11 million on users in the UK, and 6 million on users in India,” according to Insider. “It includes their phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, bios, and — in some cases — email addresses.”
Bad actors will certainly use the information for social engineering, scamming, hacking and marketing.
Facebook has not been doing well for consumers, but it has been popular ever since Mark Zuckerberg created it in 2004.
After being punished by the Harvard administration for making Facemash, a site that compares the faces of Harvard students, Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook using the idea of fellow students who wanted him to program ‘the Harvard Connection’ they were planning.
It started with Harvard university students, continued to develop, and spread in the United States, and even around the world.
The key to success was the ability to connect people regardless of time and place in cyberspace.
Currently, Facebook has 2.85 billion active users and Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook has 122.7 billion USA dollars.
The influence of a large company like Facebook is very great.
Facebook is no longer a small company that only connects Harvard university students.
Amid numerous issues and criticisms surrounding Facebook, Facebook seems to need to show consumers quality improvement.
Sourses:
Misinformation gets more fame than facts
Health misinformatioon gets billions of veiws
530m users data leaked – Insider
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