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You're Not Alone Anymore: Privacy in the Digital Age (2010s-Present) | Opinions Throughout History: Social Media - Credo Reference

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EPIC - Electronic Privacy Information Center

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Over the past two decades, social media platforms have become vast and powerful tools for connecting, communicating, sharing content, conducting business, and disseminating news and information. Today, millions or billions of users populate major social networks including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and dating apps like Grindr and Tinder.

But the extraordinary growth of social media has given platforms extraordinary access and influence into the lives of users. Social networking companies harvest sensitive data about individuals' activities, interests, personal characteristics, political views, purchasing habits, and online behaviors. In many cases this data is used to algorithmically drive user engagement and to sell behavioral advertising-often with distortive and discriminatory impacts.

The privacy hazards of social networks are compounded by platform consolidation, which has enabled some social media companies to acquire competitors, exercise monopolistic power, and severely limit the rise of privacy-protective alternatives. Personal data held by social media platforms is also vulnerable to being accessed and misused by third parties, including law enforcement agencies.

As EPIC has long urged, Congress must enact comprehensive data protection legislation to place strict limits on the collection, processing, use, and retention of personal data by social networks and other entities. The Federal Trade Commission should also make use of its existing authority to rein in abusive data practices by social media companies, and both the FTC and Congress must take swift action to prevent monopolistic behavior and promote competition in the social media market.

Social Media & Surveillance Advertising

Social media companies-and in particular, Facebook-collect vast quantities of personal data in order to "microtarget" advertisements to users. This practice, also known as surveillance advertising or behavioral advertising, is deeply harmful to privacy, the flow of information, and the psychological health of social media users.

As former FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra wrote in his dissent from the FTC's 2019 Facebook order, "Behavioral advertising generates profits by turning users into products, their activity into assets, their communities into targets, and social media platforms into weapons of mass manipulation." Chopra went on to explain how surveillance advertising operates in Facebook's case:

To maximize the probability of inducing profitable user engagement, Facebook has a strong incentive to (a) increase the total time a user engages with the platform and (b) curate an environment that goads users into monetizable actions.

To accomplish both of these objectives, Facebook and other companies with a similar business model have developed an unquenchable thirst for more and more data. This data goes far beyond information that users believe they are providing, such as their alma mater, their friends, and entertainers they like. Facebook can develop a detailed, intimate portrait of each user that is constantly being updated in real time, including our viewing behavior, our reactions to certain types of content, and our activities across the digital sphere where Facebook's technology is embedded. The company can make more profit if it can manipulate us into constant engagement and specific actions aligned with its monetization goals.

As long as advertisers are willing to pay a high price for users to consume specific content, companies like Facebook have an incentive to curate content in ways that affect our psychological state and real-time preferences.

Notably, tracking and behavioral advertising by social media companies is not limited to the platforms themselves. Firms like Facebook use hard-to-detect tracking techniques to follow individuals across a variety of apps, websites, and devices. As a result, even those who intentionally opt out of social media platforms are affected by their data collection and advertising practices.

Social Media & Competition

Data collection is at the core of many social media platforms' business models. For this reason, mergers and acquisitions involving social networks pose acute risks to consumer privacy. Yet in recent years, platforms that have promised to protect user privacy have been repeatedly taken over by companies that fail to protect user privacy.

For many years, the United States stood virtually alone in its unwillingness to address privacy as an important dimension of competition in the digital marketplace. With the 2020 wave of federal and state antitrust lawsuits against Facebook and Google-and with a renewed interest in antitrust enforcement at the FTC-that dynamic may finally be changing. But moving forward, it is vital that antitrust enforcers take data protection and privacy into account in their antitrust enforcement actions and assessments of market competition. If the largest social media platforms continue to buy up new market entrants and assimilate their users' data into the existing platforms, there will be no meaningful opportunity for other firms to compete with better privacy and data security practices.

Social Media & Data Breaches

Without federal comprehensive privacy legislation, users often have little protection against data breaches. Although social media companies typically publish privacy policies, these policies are wholly inadequate to protect users' sensitive information. Privacy policies are disclaimers published by platforms and websites that purport to operate as waivers once users "consent" to them. But these policies are often vague, hard to interpret, full of loopholes, subject to unilateral changes by the platforms, and difficult or impossible for injured users to enforce.

EPIC's Work on Social Media Privacy

For more than a decade, EPIC has advocated before Congress, the courts, and the Federal Trade Commission to protect the privacy of social media users.

Beginning in 2008, EPIC warned of the exact problem that would later lead to the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal. In Senate testimony in 2008, then-EPIC President Marc Rotenberg stated that, "on Facebook ... third party applications do not only access the information about a given user that has added the application. Applications by default get access to much of the information about that user's friends."

In 2009, EPIC and nine other public interest organizations filed a complaint with the FTC detailing how Facebook changed its privacy settings to begin disclosing information to third-party applications and the public which users had sought to keep private. Facebook implemented these changes without obtaining affirmative consent from its users or even giving them the ability to opt out. In 2011, the FTC announced that Facebook had settled charges that it deceived users by failing to keep its privacy promises and credited EPIC with providing the factual basis for its complaint against Facebook.

In March 2018, news broke that Facebook had allowed Cambridge Analytica, a political data mining firm associated with the Trump campaign, to access personal information on 87 million Facebook users. EPIC and a coalition of consumer organizations immediately wrote a letter to the FTC urging it to investigate this unprecedented disclosure of personal data. The groups made clear that by exposing users' personal data without their knowledge or consent, Facebook had violated the 2011 Consent Order with the FTC, which made it unlawful for Facebook to disclose user data without affirmative consent. The groups wrote that, "The FTC's failure to enforce its order has resulted in the unlawful transfer of [87] million user records ... [i]t is unconscionable that the FTC allowed this unprecedented disclosure of Americans' personal data to occur. The FTC's failure to act imperils not only privacy but democracy as well."

EPIC also submitted an urgent FOIA request to the FTC following the Cambridge Analytica revelations. The request sought all the privacy assessments required by the FTC's 2011 Order and all communications between the FTC and Facebook regarding those privacy assessments. Following the FTC's release of heavily redacted versions of the assessments, EPIC filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to obtain the full, unredacted reports from the FTC.

In 2019, following a proposed settlement between the FTC and Facebook in connection with the Cambridge Analytica breach, EPIC moved to intervene in United States v. Facebook to protect the interests of Facebook users. EPIC argued in the case that the settlement was "not adequate, reasonable, or appropriate."

In 2020, following President Trump's threat to effectively ban social network TikTok from the United States, Oracle reached a tentative agreement to serve as TikTok's U.S. partner and to " independently process TikTok's U.S. data." In response, EPIC sent demand letters to Oracle and TikTok warning both of their legal obligation to protect the privacy of TikTok users if the companies entered a partnership. The deal would have paired one of the largest brokers of personal data with a network of 800 million users, creating grave privacy and legal risks. "Absent strict privacy safeguards, which to our knowledge Oracle has not established, [the] collection, processing, use, and dissemination of TikTok user data would constitute an unlawful trade practice," EPIC wrote. In 2021, the Oracle-TikTok deal was effectively scuttled.

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Over the past two decades, social media platforms have become vast and powerful tools for connecting, communicating, sharing content, conducting business, and disseminating news and information. Today, millions or billions of users populate major social networks including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and dating apps like Grindr and Tinder.

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We've all heard about the data breaches of Facebook and cybercriminals wanting to gain access to our financial details. What most people do not know about are the more subtle, covert ways on how social media is invading our privacy. Most users are also not aware of just how sensitive the information that analysts have access to can be.

Do you know how social media platforms are invading your privacy? Are you aware of the data exposure you provide online?

The average probability that an organization will have a data breach of some kind has increased from 25.6% to 27.7% in the past year?

As for citizens, almost two-thirds of Americans have had some form of data stolen from them.

How is social media invading privacy?

Social tracking

Social media platforms tend to track various things about the way that you use these networking sites. For example, the people that you follow or add as a friend, the posts you like, the statuses or photos you post and also the profiles that you visit the most. They can analyse this activity to find out more about the type of person you are and what content can be fed to you.

Should social media platforms have access to this sensitive data so easily? The material that you engage with and the people that you want to interact with online should remain private and is none of their concern.

Data collection and analysis

Data analysts can create profiles for you through the information that you post on your social media profile. By analysing the type of websites you visit, adverts you click on and your personal information, analysts determine the type content that is likely to interest you. This information can then be sold to various businesses for their financial benefit.

Content serving has allegedly affected the results of elections and has the ability to shape the opinions of users for the desired outcome of the server. Due to the lack of regulation from the government, the collection of information without consent was legal for a considerable amount of time.

Even after the introduction of the GDPR law, which ensured that users could prevent the analysis and sale of their data, around half of social media users do not trust sites or the government to protect their information.

Information leaks

This is relatively well known as a data privacy breach. Offenders include technology giants such as Facebook and Whatsapp. In 2018, an attack on Facebook's computer network left the data of 50 million users exposed. This was the biggest security breach in the history of the company, leaving users questioning the values of the platform regarding privacy and security.

In 2019 it was revealed that the software of one of the largest instant messaging apps in the world, Whatsapp, was used to install spyware on the phones of its users. This led to many individuals deleting the app and moving to more secure platforms to ensure that their information was safe and protected.

Phishing

Typical examples of Facebook phishing messages are "look what they're saying about you..." and "is this video yours?" alongside a link. This is a typical way that criminals gain access to a variety of personal information. This can include passwords or financial information.

If you receive a message of this type, do not click on the link and delete the message. If the account sends you another message, you can block the account from accessing your profile.

Malware (Malicious software)

If somebody has clicked on the link that was sent to them through messages described in the previous point, their account can be compromised. Their computer could also be affected, exposing the data that it stores.

This means that advertisements can be targeted, which is known as adware and sensitive information can be stolen. This is known as spyware. More serious issues can involve the extortion of money from the individual, which is known as ransomware.

Bot attacks

A bot is an automated account that can follow people and create posts just like a regular social media account. They can steal data, share malware and and help cybercriminals to hack into accounts and gain personal information.

Now that you know the number of different ways on how social media is invading your privacy, you may feel scared to use it. However, there's no need to worry. There are ways to increase the security of your social networking profiles and prevent your information being stolen.

How can we solve the issue of privacy invading on social media?

#1 Change your privacy settings.

You can choose who can access your profile, stories and content on your account through the settings feature on most social networking sites. Another thing to ensure is that your account is private, rather than public. If your account is private, people have to request to follow or friend you. This means that if your account is private, strangers will not have access to your profile.

#2 Don't click on fraudulent links, videos, photos, or messages.

Trust your instincts and do not click on any links that look suspicious. Such links come with particular sentences devised to attract the attention of social media users. Avoid any of these that you come across and remove any account which shares them from your profile.

#3 Be careful of what your friends post online.

Even if you have taken care of your privacy settings this does not mean that those around you have taken the same precautions.

You can untag yourself from any photos that your friends post if you do not want it to be associated with your account.

#4 Read pop-up notices about cookies before clicking accept

We are all guilty of mindlessly clicking 'allow' or 'accept cookies', but you would be surprised by the things they can hide in the small print.

Make sure that you are happy with everything that they can do with your data before clicking accept. It is also good practise to read through the terms before agreeing to something in order to protect yourself in the future.

#5 Be responsible and reserved online

Think about what you post. Only post pictures, videos or statuses that you feel comfortable remaining on the internet forever. You can 'delete' them, but this does not mean that they cannot be retrieved. Anything that you post on the internet will remain there. Consider how future employers, family members and your enemies would view the information that you post on social media.

#6 Use strong passwords to protect your accounts

This is the best way to protect your social media account. If you use the same password for all of your profiles and if your password is your name or birthday, you and your information are highly vulnerable to cyber attacks. You must use strong passwords. Include capital letters or numbers where possible.

If you don't want to worry yourself with all this, we have a solution. Not all social media are invading your privacy.

We can defend ourselves from cyber-attacks and social media can be safe.

Fourview is our new privacy focussed, security driven social media platform. Our ethos is to protect you and your information.

We advocate for increased security and our network is completely ad-free. Therefore, your information cannot be used by data analysts to serve you with targeted ads. Sure, everything that you post is for the audience that you intend only. On this social media, there's no invading privacy.
The lack of security on hugely popular social networking platforms is an invasion of privacy.
If you would like safer online engagement, the promise to protect your information and an ad-free experience Fourview is for you. You can take back the ownership of your online data by joining our network today.

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How Is Social Media Invading Privacy? | Fourview

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We've all heard about the data breaches of Facebook and cybercriminals wanting to gain access to our financial details. What most people do not know about are the more subtle, covert ways on how social media is invading our privacy. Most users are also not aware of just how sensitive the information that analysts have access to can be.