The company removed more than 1,800 accounts and pages that were being operated from Russia, Thailand, Ukraine and Honduras. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it was announced that the internet regulatory committee would block access to Facebook. On October 30, 2019, Facebook deleted several accounts of the employees working at the Israeli NSO Group, stating that the accounts were « deleted for not following our terms ». The deletions came after WhatsApp sued the Israeli surveillance firm for targeting 1,400 devices with spyware.
Why I Love Facebook
In July 2019, cybersecurity researcher Sam Jadali exposed a catastrophic data leak known as DataSpii involving data provider DDMR and marketing intelligence chicken road app company Nacho Analytics (NA). Branding itself as the « God mode for the internet », NA through DDMR, provided its members access to private Facebook photos and Facebook Messenger attachments including tax returns. DataSpii harvested data from millions of Chrome and Firefox users through compromised browser extensions. Jadali, along with journalists from Ars Technica and The Washington Post, interviewed impacted users, including a Washington Post staff member.
Facebook was criticized for allowing InfoWars to publish falsehoods and conspiracy theories. Facebook defended its actions in regard to InfoWars, saying « we just don’t think banning Pages for sharing conspiracy theories or false news is the right way to go. » Facebook provided only six cases in which it fact-checked content on the InfoWars page over the period September 2017 to July 2018. In 2018, InfoWars falsely claimed that the survivors of the Parkland shooting were « actors ». Facebook pledged to remove InfoWars content making the claim, although InfoWars videos pushing the false claims were left up, even though Facebook had been contacted about the videos. Facebook also allowed InfoWars videos that shared the Pizzagate conspiracy theory to survive, despite specific assertions that it would purge Pizzagate content.
- After registering, users can create a profile revealing personal information about themselves.
- Users can also communicate directly with each other with Messenger, edit messages (within 15 minutes after sending), join common-interest groups, and receive notifications on the activities of their Facebook friends and the pages they follow.
- In 2020, the government of Thailand forced Facebook to take down a Facebook group called Royalist Marketplace with one million members following potentially illegal posts shared.
- In March 2019, Facebook confirmed a password compromise of millions of Facebook lite application users also affected millions of Instagram users.
Product Personalization
An experiment in 2012 involved showing Facebook users pictures of their friends who reported that they had voted; users who were shown the pictures were about 2% more likely to report that they had also voted compared to the control group, which was not encouraged to vote. In 2020, Facebook announced the goal of helping four million voters register in the US, saying that it had registered 2.5 million by September. In a Bahraini uprising that started on February 14, 2011, Facebook was utilized by the Bahraini regime and regime loyalists to identify, capture and prosecute citizens involved in the protests.
Content disputes and moderation
In 2018, Facebook said that during 2018 they had identified « coordinated inauthentic behavior » in « many Pages, Groups and accounts created to stir up political debate, including in the US, the Middle East, Russia and the UK. » As a dominant social-web service with massive outreach, Facebook has been used by identified or unidentified political operatives to affect public opinion. Some of these activities have been done in violation of the platform policies, creating « coordinated inauthentic behavior », support or attacks. Various such abusive campaign have been revealed in recent years, best known being the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. In 2021, former Facebook analyst within the Spam and Fake Engagement teams, Sophie Zhang, reported more than 25 political subversion operations and criticized the general slow reaction time, oversightless, laissez-faire attitude by Facebook. In July 2018, it stated that it would « downrank » articles that its fact-checkers determined to be false, and remove misinformation that incited violence.
In January 2020, Facebook launched the Off-Facebook Activity page, which allows users to see information collected by Facebook about their non-Facebook activities. In April 2021, The Guardian reported approximately half a billion users’ data had been stolen including birthdates and phone numbers. Facebook alleged it was « old data » from a problem fixed in August 2019 despite the data’s having been released a year and a half later only in 2021; it declined to speak with journalists, had apparently not notified regulators, called the problem « unfixable », and said it would not be advising users. In September 2024, Meta paid a $101 million fine for storing up to 600 million passwords of Facebook and Instagram users in plain text.
This enabled spammers and other users to manipulate these features by creating illegitimate events or posting fake birthdays to attract attention to their profile or cause. Zuckerberg apologized for the site’s failure to include appropriate privacy features. Users then gained control over what types of information are shared automatically with friends. Users are now able to prevent user-set categories of friends from seeing updates about certain types of activities, including profile changes, Wall posts and newly added friends. Each registered user on Facebook has a personal profile that shows their posts and content.
As of December 2023update, Facebook claimed almost 3.07 billion monthly active users worldwide. As of July 2025update, Facebook ranked as the third-most-visited website in the world, with 23% of its traffic coming from the United States. Facebook is an American social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, its name derives from the face book directories often given to American university students.
On February 23, 2010, Facebook was granted a patent on certain aspects of its News Feed. The patent covers News Feeds in which links are provided so that one user can participate in the activity of another user. The sorting and display of stories in a user’s News Feed is governed by the EdgeRank algorithm.
When users personal and business accounts are breached, many are forced to go through small claims court to regain access and restitution. « Democracy is at risk from the malicious and relentless targeting of citizens with disinformation and personalised ‘dark adverts’ from unidentifiable sources, delivered through the major social media platforms we use every day, » Damian Collins, DCMS Committee Chair The company pledged full cooperation in Mueller’s investigation, and provided all information about the Russian advertisements. Members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees have claimed that Facebook had withheld information that could illuminate the Russian propaganda campaign.
Data Used to Track You
In late July 2018, Facebook suspended the personal profile of InfoWars head Alex Jones for 30 days. In early August 2018, Facebook banned the four most active InfoWars-related pages for hate speech. There are ads on Facebook and Instagram containing sexually explicit content, descriptions of graphic violence and content promoting acts of self harm. Many of the ads are for webnovel apps backed by tech giants Bytedance and Tencent. Force v. Facebook, Inc., 934 F.3d 53 (2nd Cir. 2019) was a case that alleged Facebook was profiting off recommendations for Hamas. In 2019, the US Second Circuit Appeals Court held that Section 230 bars civil terrorism claims against social media companies and internet service providers, the first federal appellate court to do so.
In August 2013 High-Tech Bridge published a study showing that links included in Facebook messaging service messages were being accessed by Facebook. In January 2014 two users filed a lawsuit against Facebook alleging that their privacy had been violated by this practice. The M virtual assistant (U.S.) scans chats for keywords and suggests relevant actions, such as its payments system for users mentioning money.
For example, the « like » button that appears on third-party websites allows the company to collect information about an individual’s internet browsing habits, even if the individual is not a Facebook user. For example, a Facebook user can link their email account to their Facebook to find friends on the site, allowing the company to collect the email addresses of users and non-users alike. Over time, countless data points about an individual are collected; any single data point perhaps cannot identify an individual, but together allows the company to form a unique « profile ». When you choose to use third-party apps, websites, or other services that use, or are integrated with, our Products, they can receive information about what you post or share. For example, when you play a game with your Facebook friends or use a Facebook Comment or Share button on a website, the game developer or website can receive information about your activities in the game or receive a comment or link that you share from the website on Facebook. Also, when you download or use such third-party services, they can access your public profile on Facebook, and any information that you share with them.
The format of individual user pages was revamped in September 2011 and became known as « Timeline », a chronological feed of a user’s stories, including status updates, photos, interactions with apps and events. In 2007, Facebook launched Facebook Pages for brands and celebrities to interact with their fanbases. In June 2009, Facebook introduced a « Usernames » feature, allowing users to choose a unique nickname used in the URL for their personal profile, for easier sharing. Facebook can be accessed from devices with Internet connectivity, such as personal computers, tablets and smartphones. After registering, users can create a profile revealing personal information about themselves. They can post text, photos and multimedia which are shared with any other users who have agreed to be their friend or, with different privacy settings, publicly.
- In late July 2018, Facebook suspended the personal profile of InfoWars head Alex Jones for 30 days.
- The site was comparable to Hot or Not and used photos from online face books, asking users to choose the ‘hotter’ person ». Zuckerberg was reported and faced expulsion, but the charges were dropped.
- Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, its name derives from the face book directories often given to American university students.
- Data is processed in batches to lessen the number of times needed to read and write under high demand periods.
- Over a million people installed the Facebook application « US Politics on Facebook » in order to take part which measured responses to specific comments made by the debating candidates.
In November 2021, a report was published by Fairplay, Global Action Plan and Reset Australia detailing accusations that Facebook was continuing to manage their ad targeting system with data collected from teen users. The accusations follow announcements by Facebook in July 2021 that they would cease ad targeting children. DataSpii exploited Facebook’s practice of making private photos and Messenger attachments publicly accessible via unique URLs.
They included more than 15,000 pages combined and were viewed by 140 million US users per month. This was in part due to how Facebook’s algorithm and policies allow unoriginal viral content to be copied and spread in ways that still drive up user engagement. As of September 2021, some of the most popular pages were still active on Facebook despite the company’s efforts to take down such content.
Messenger Kids
Moreover, statistics from Verizon Communications subsidiary Flurry Analytics show 96% of all iOS users in the United States are not permitting tracking at all, and only 12% of worldwide iOS users are allowing tracking, which some news outlets deem « Facebook’s nightmare », among similar terms. Despite the news, Facebook stated that the new policy and software update would be « manageable ». On May 13, 2015, Facebook in association with major news portals launched « Instant Articles » to provide news on the Facebook news feed without leaving the site.
Previously, Facebook had its privacy settings spread out over 20 pages, and has now put all of its privacy settings on one page, which makes it more difficult for third-party apps to access the user’s personal information. In addition to publicly apologizing, Facebook has said that it will be reviewing and auditing thousands of apps that display « suspicious activities » in an effort to ensure that this breach of privacy does not happen again. In a 2010 report regarding privacy, a research project stated that not a lot of information is available regarding the consequences of what people disclose online so often what is available are just reports made available through popular media.
DataSpii demonstrated how a compromised user exposed the data of others, including the private photos and Messenger attachments belonging to a Facebook user’s network of friends. Facebook has experienced a steady stream of controversies over how it handles user privacy, repeatedly adjusting its privacy settings and policies. Since 2009, Facebook has been participating in the PRISM secret program, sharing with the US National Security Agency audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs from user profiles, among other social media services.