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Facebook announced publicly that it would be using code on third-party
websites to track and surveil people—thus reneging on the promise it had used
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data with the rest of the company, which it then did.
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of privacy violations, including Cambridge Analytica and lying about its facial
recognition software. And in January of this year, Facebook said it would not
limit political ads, even false ones. It also won’t fact-check ads or prevent them
from targeting particular groups, which is precisely what happened with
Cambridge Analytica. Currently, the company is facing intense criticism over its
proposed cryptocurrency, Libra.
To scholars like Srinivasan, this is a classic example of a monopoly leveraging
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loop where, as a site gathers users, it becomes more attractive because of those
users, making it particularly hard for a competitor to gain traction. While a
company’s size isn’t an indication that it has abused its power, we put up with
privacy invasions from Facebook because we don’t have alternatives.
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