2021 was one of the most difficult years for Facebook. The web was flooded with statuses where users announced their intention to leave the platform at the expense of others, some at the beginning of the journey, but which did not collect personal data at every step.

This happened after supporters of Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol and violently demonstrated their dissatisfaction with the election of Joe Biden as president. American democracy has never been closer to a coup d’état than it was then.

Protesters then organized on Facebook, flooding the network with fake news and messages inciting violence. Later investigations by American journalists showed that attempts by Meta, the parent company of Facebook, to control content that incites violence started too late and were ineffective.

It was an episode that clearly showed the power of this platform with its inherent vulnerabilities.

However, the scandal did not subside, but continued to grow after former employees of Facebook or Meta publicly spoke about continuous violations in the company, many in the field of “privacy”, that is, the collection, sharing or storage of user data.

One such former employee was Frances Haugen, a former product manager who provided the Wall Street Journal with evidence that Facebook knew about the negative impact on public health that its sister platform Instagram was having, and while it had the means to fix it problem, they chose not to. It later states with subject and predicate that Zuckerberg’s organization “prioritises profit over security.”

Read in full at Panorama.ro