Facebook is Involved in Some Really Shady Business
Facebook has come under a lot of flak recently, for spying on its users and leaking private information. But you may be surprised to learn just how much shady business the platform is actually involved in. Read on to discover a few shocking truths about the social media giant.
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Shadow Profiles
When Facebook users add their phone details to their profiles, the company is able to create “shadow profiles” for all the saved contacts who are not using Facebook. If a contact has multiple friends using the platform, the company can quickly piece together their entire social circle.
This a great way for Facebook to achieve its mission to build a community. When a person with a shadow profile joins the forum, this data is used to send relevant friend suggestions. Although it can help new users to find their friends easily, the ethicality of the company becomes questionable. They acquire the names and numbers of people from their friends’ phone details without informing any of the parties.
Secret Transcripts
It came to light in 2019 that Facebook had been listening in on their users’ conversations. The company had hired third-party transcriptionists to transcribe recordings of voice conversations taking place over Facebook Messenger. Some of the files contained sensitive information. Despite that, no reason was given by the company as to why this was necessary.
Facebook didn’t want this information to go public but their contractors revealed their shady attentions. Consequently, they were forced to admit that the users were being taped via their phone microphones. They also mentioned that it was not illegal because they had permission. It is necessary to give this permission if you want to use voice messaging. However, nothing in Facebook’s policies suggests that users’ information can be shared with third parties.
The company stated that the transcriptions were used only to test Facebook’s speech-recognizing AI. They also claimed that the project had been terminated. Whether or not this was true, there could be no doubt that user privacy had been violated.
An Attempt to Grab Bank Details
The Wall Street Journal broke this story in 2018. Facebook tried to obtain the account balances and credit card transaction history of its users. For this purpose, they approached a lot of banks including Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, and Citigroup.
In return, the social media giant offered the banks to feature them on their Messenger app. It was a great deal given billions of users on Facebook Messenger. None of the banks fell for that as it could have done massive damage to their public relations. It was really a wise choice, considering Facebook’s record with maintaining users’ privacy.
Moderators Have PTSD
In 2019, The Verge published a 7500-word paper detailing their investigation of the working lives of Facebook’s moderators. These are people tasked with ensuring that graphic, offensive, and illegal content does not appear in users’ feeds. They reported extreme dissatisfaction with their work conditions. They claimed that their jobs barely keep them afloat financially and described employer expectations as being “inhumane”.
This only compounds the stress experienced due to the nature of the job itself. The posts moderators are required to review feature horrors such as child abuse and graphic violence. Moderators often turn to smoke marijuana to relax. Similarly, some of them enter sexual relations due to “trauma bonding”. Many have experienced nervous breakdowns, with some developing PTSD symptoms. Paranoia is also pretty common due to overexposure to conspiracy theories.
Facebook Profits from Violence
A Channel 4 journalist went undercover as a Facebook moderator in 2018 to gather material for a documentary called “Inside Facebook: Secrets of the Social Network”. He took the position with a contractor called ‘CPL Resources’ that has worked with Facebook since 2010.
In the course of this training, he was told that certain offensive posts are allowed to persist. Amongst these was the actual footage of a toddler being beaten by a grown man. This video was flagged as inappropriate in 2012. Likewise, a meme depicting a little girl being drowned was captioned “when your daughter’s first crush is a little negro boy”.
After the documentary was telecasted, Facebook stated that both the posts should have been deleted. According to a CPL trainer, “If you start censoring too much, then people lose interest in the platform. It’s all about making money at the end of the day.”
Computer Scientist by qualification who loves to read, write, eat, and travel