By Syed Wahib
Day by Day, social media increasingly plays a more important role in our lives and a certain set of privacy and code of ethics is expected from all social media enterprises. However there have been certain violations or perhaps the lack of submission towards a particular protocol by these very companies and at times by others. A particular incident happened in August 2017 to a Facebook related company where an apparent ‘bug’ was inserted into the company software affecting millions of accounts and their private information.
Cyber-security firm RepKnight played a fundamental role in highlighting the damage caused by this leakage of data. Another violation of this company was its content ownership which was mentioned as ‘To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you’. This lead to heavy criticism as it did not ensure the right of privacy deemed important by many members and there was no such mechanism or method to control the misuse of user data and information. Perhaps the most outrageous moment was the revelation of the ties between Facebook and Cambridge Analytics which showed reported involvement in political misinformation and political advertising.
More than 50 million users information for malicious political purposes and to spread ideas related to certain political parties and the outrage which followed resulted in the loss of image for Facebook as a whole. There are also potentials of that information being used in the encouragement of the British exit from the European Union. This is merely the tip of the iceberg with several companies like Twitter, Snapchat and many other being affected for malicious purposes and in the end losing the consumers trust in the media. Fortunately, awareness is being raised to combat such issues and pressurize the companies to respect their own ethics and procedures. Several NGO’s and activist groups are being formed for this matter and for the short term it looks bright but time will tell.
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