and hate speech”, so a “surface-level transition”
turning the focus to groups and private
messaging “isn’t going to fix Facebook’s
underlying content moderation or privacy
issues.” The crux of the problem is that
Facebook’s business model is “built on learning
as much as possible about its users”.
On well-established social media portals,
you could theoretically keep privacy worries
at bay simply by locking down content to
prevent people outside a close social circle
from accessing it. However, even this strategy
evidently could fail. For example, as recently as
January, Twitter disclosed that a security flaw
had left the “private” tweets of some Android
users exposed for years.
Along similar lines, it’s not just the Cambridge
Analytica scandal that has shown the potential
perils of Facebook’s close relationships with third
parties. In December, Facebook admitted to
yet another data leak, with this one allowing
876 developers to, through possibly as many
as 1,500 apps, see Facebook account holders’
photos that these developers were supposed to
be barred from seeing.
What is especially ironic about this particular
scandal is that when you do want to share
photos on the Facebook-owned Instagram, you
could find the options... well, disappointingly
limited. For example, it is difficult to share
content previously posted by other users. While
HubSpot has shared solutions for this issue,
some of them require you to download an extra
app – and besides, you need written permission
from the original content producer before you
can share the content in question.
Image: Michael Nagle