Read about the saga of Facebook's failures in ensuring privacy for user data, including how it relates to Cambridge Analytica, the GDPR, the Brexit campaign, and the 2016 US presidential election.
553,000,000 Reasons Not to Let Facebook Make Decisions About Your
Another day, another horrific Facebook privacy scandal. We know what comes next: Facebook will argue that losing a lot of our data means bad third-party actors are the real problem that we should
One Response to the Cambridge Analytica Scandal: Block Facebook's
With Facebook in a dominant position in hosting a huge portion of the world’s social conversation, we’ve been worried about the incredible power the company has accumulated and the risks that poses
Privacy concerns with Facebook
Facebook and other services by Meta Platforms (doing business as Meta) have faced a number of privacy concerns. These stem partly from the company's revenue model that involves selling information collected about its users for many things including advertisement targeting. Meta has also been a part of many data breaches that have occurred within the company. These issues and others are further described including user data concerns, vulnerabilities in the company's platform, investigations by pressure groups and government agencies, and even issues with students. In addition, employers and other organizations/individuals have been known to use Meta for their own purposes. As a result, individuals' identities and private information have sometimes been compromised without their permission. In response to these growing privacy concerns, some pressure groups and government agencies have increasingly asserted the users' right to privacy and to be able to control their personal data.
Facebook may stop the data leaks, but it’s too late: Cambridge Analytica’s models live on
Long after the training data has been deleted, the models can continue being improved and used to influence future voters.
2021 Facebook leak
In 2021, an internal document leak from Facebook (now Meta Platforms, or Meta) showed it was aware of harmful societal effects from its platforms, yet persisted in prioritizing profit over addressing these harms. The leak, released by whistleblower Frances Haugen, resulted in reporting from The Wall Street Journal in September, as The Facebook Files series from journalist Jeff Horwitz, as well as the Facebook Papers, by a consortium of news outlets the next months.
Facebook Shouldn't Give Politicians More Power Than Ordinary Users
Amidst escalating rhetoric about alleged "anti-conservative bias" on social media, Facebook has doubled down on its policies exempting (some) politicians from its ordinary fact-checking and from its
Facebook Fact Checks Were Never Going to Save Us. They Just Made Liberals Feel Better.
Billionaires gonna billionaire — and lick the boots of whoever will bring them more riches and impunity.
Widely Viewed Content Report: What People See on Facebook | Transparency Center
Facebook regularly publishes reports to give our community visibility into community standards enforcement, government requests and internet disruptions
Project 'Ghostbusters': Facebook secretly spied on Snapchat data, docs allege
New docs from a monopoly lawsuit shed light on Facebook's "Ghostbusters" project.
Facebook’s Attack on Research is Everyone's Problem
Facebook recently banned the accounts of several New York University (NYU) researchers who run Ad Observer, an accountability project that tracks paid disinformation, from its platform. This has
Dan Shipper 📧 on Twitter / X
The smallest technical decisions become humanity's biggest pivots:The same-origin policy—a well-intentioned browser security rule from the 1990s—accidentally created Facebook, Google, and every data monopoly since. It locks your data in silos—and you stayed where your stuff… pic.twitter.com/G87qsuPHxN— Dan Shipper 📧 (@danshipper) July 9, 2025
How Facebook got addicted to spreading misinformation
The company’s AI algorithms gave it an insatiable habit for lies and hate speech. Now the man who built them can't fix the problem.
Hack of Age Verification Company Shows Privacy Danger of Social Media
We’ve said it before: online age verification is incompatible with privacy. Companies responsible for storing or processing sensitive documents like drivers’ licenses are likely to encounter data
B-Sides: Permissioned data is a love triangle - Nick's Blog
This is a B-sides post with unpolished thoughts that didn’t make it into the main article.
Facebook's alleged use of APIs to crush competition is a warning to other data companies
Forget Instagram and WhatsApp. The real villains in the FTC lawsuit are Facebook's abuse of data and APIs.
Facebook pays teens to install VPN that spies on them | TechCrunch
Desperate for data on its competitors, Facebook has been secretly paying people to install a "Facebook Research" VPN that lets the company suck in all of
