Facebook: Connecting the World or Interrupting Privacy?

    Facebook is a prominent example of issues our technologically driven world is facing today in the fight between advancing our ability to connect through social medias and protecting our Fourth Amendment privacy rights. As new cases rise to through the court systems regarding big-tech companies overreach into our personal information, several first hand experiences of people who worked for companies such as Facebook and Twitter give us a glimpse into the depth of privacy violations those companies have made. Facebook, led by famed Mark Zuckerberg, has entrenched its employees with their motto of connecting people across the world and has obviously been successful in doing so. Since Facebook's start in 2004, the site has gained over 2 billion users worldwide along with a great amount of detailed information on each user.

This website provides a great visual of Facebook's growth in users!

(https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/)

    With the development of intricate algorithms which track Facebook users' likes, views, and activity, the corporation has been able to increase users' engagement by updating their newsfeeds with content they would be more inclined to view, thus making their experience more enjoyable. While this concept sounds like Facebook has its users best interest in mind, taking a deeper look into how much information Facebook uses is somewhat scary as a user myself and is brought up in arguments today among many privacy law experts. Many of Facebook's former employees in the documentary The Facebook Dilemma expressed a shift in Facebook's focus once their popularity soared from gaining more users to developing algorithms to improve users' newsfeeds. Beginning with paying closer attention to users' activity on the site, Facebook started using ads based on their frequently visited sites and web searches to further increase engagement. This brings in questions of privacy violations because of Facebook's access to so much information of users' activity outside of their Facebook usage. 

This website has a great, up-to-date explanation of how Facebook's algorithms work:

    https://blog.hootsuite.com/facebook-algorithm/

                                 An interesting timeline of Facebook's developments in their algorithms:

  

  Facebook's developments in their algorithms have proven to be successful for the company in terms of user engagement, but it is interesting to consider how far the company will go to reach even more of the world's population. Even though each user agrees to terms of use and privacy agreements upon registration of their account, Facebook has been criticized for creating non user-friendly agreements. Facebook was criticized even further when it was their arrangements with third-party data brokers who used Facebook users' information and messages to collect data on their activity. Though the investigations into Facebook's possible violations of Privacy of the Fourth Amendment are ongoing, it is important for Facebook users to consider how much information they choose to put on their social media accounts and what they choose to give Facebook access to when connecting with the world.