Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg really just wants us all to be friends, or to be more precise, the aim is to make everyone in the world a Facebook friend of someone. While that intention isn’t necessarily a bad thing, the path taken has led to many seeing the social media giant as a danger to both privacy and truth on a massive scale. By some s, about one-third of the world’s population have active s on Facebook, but growth is likely to become quite a bit harder in 2021. The US government has filed an antitrust lawsuit. On top of that, the company’s data collection practices are being revealed to all by Apple.
Zuckerberg’s first website, launched in 2003 while attending Harvard University, was called FaceMash. It was similar to an existing looks rating website, Hot Or Not, and was meant to compare the looks of two people posted side by side. FaceMash included the instructions ‘Who’s Hotter? Click to Choose.’ The website was quickly shut down by Harvard istration, citing copyright and privacy violations, since the photos were used without permission. Zuckerberg was 19 at the time, so perhaps this inauspicious beginning should be forgiven. It's difficult not to see the privacy issue parallels with Facebook today, though. Harvard dropped the charges and, in 2004, an early version of Facebook launched as an online directory of Harvard students. By 2006, the public version of Facebook had opened to anyone with an email address who was 13 or older.
There are many and varied troubles bearing down on Facebook in 2021. The United States government has officially surprisingly aggressive, with full-page newspaper ads that some felt were not entirely honest.
Why Facebook Is In Trouble
Facebook is a business, not a non-profit organization, so no-one should be surprised that it wants to make money. It uses the same formula as many other internet businesses: free services and free information provided to s in exchange for advertising placement. That’s Facebook is the surprising amount of personal information collected and how that information has been used and abused over the years. The data it collects has at times been sold to unscrupulous political operatives and relentless rs. Charges against 19-year-old Zuckerberg for the tasteless FaceMash website were dropped, but the mega-corporation Facebook may not get the same from most s when the vast amount of data collection and tracking is revealed. At some point, the size of a corporation changes the rules. That is part of the reason for the Congressional hearing.
There are also ongoing concerns about when and a big thumbs down to Facebook.
Source: Statista