







Comcast, AT&T and Verizon pose a greater surveillance risk than Facebook – but their surveillance is much harder to avoid
Former Facebook executive says Google, Facebook are 'surveillance states' and risk more regulation
Chamath Palihapitiya's holding company, which also includes former Twitter executive Adam Bain, hit the public markets on Thursday.

Why Are People More Scared of Facebook Violating Their Privacy than Washington?
Why doesn't domestic surveillance stir more outrage?

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

As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening for Tech Giants (Published 2018)
Internal documents show that the social network gave Microsoft, Amazon, Spotify and others far greater access to people’s data than it has disclosed.

Why you should bet big on privacy | TechCrunch
Ever felt like you were being watched online? You know, like when you read something about New York, and the next site you visit shows you ads for New York hotels? As it turns out, on my computer, there were more than 130 companies tracking my every move. These companies are basically engaging in mass surveillance.

We Need More Alternatives to Facebook
Chastened by the negative effects of social media, Mark Zuckerberg says he will tweak his service and upgrade society in the process. Should any company be that powerful?

Facebook and Google’s pervasive surveillance of billions of people is a systemic threat to human rights
There needs to be a radical transformation of Facebook and Google's surveillance business model as it poses a systemic threat to human rights,

Who Has More of Your Personal Data Than Facebook? Try Google
Google’s data-gathering empire is bigger and more pervasive than Facebook’s—and while it hasn’t been plagued by scandal, it can’t evade scrutiny forever.
Opinion | Zuckerberg’s So-Called Shift Toward Privacy (Published 2019)
Facebook is happy to protect user data when doing so decreases the company’s civic responsibilities — but not when it threatens advertising revenue.

Facebook Ads Are All-Knowing, Unblockable, and in Everyone’s Phone
Sheryl Sandberg borrows some concepts from the past to keep the money flowing at the world’s largest social network.

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

The Internet is a surveillance state | CNN
Bruce Schneier says our surveillance state is efficient beyond the wildest dreams of George Orwell, and consumers are given little chance to opt out

Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica problems are nothing compared to what’s coming for all of online publishing
Let’s start with Facebook’s Surveillance Machine, by Zeynep Tufekci in last Monday’s New York Times. Among other things (all correct), Zeynep explains that “Facebook makes m…

Facebook will shut down its spyware VPN app Onavo | TechCrunch
Facebook will end its unpaid market research programs and proactively take its Onavo VPN app off the Google Play store in the wake of backlash following

Facebook Plans on Backdooring WhatsApp - Schneier on Security
This article points out that Facebook’s planned content moderation scheme will result in an encryption backdoor into WhatsApp: In Facebook’s vision, the actual end-to-end encryption client itself such as WhatsApp will include embedded content moderation and blacklist filtering algorithms. These algorithms will be continually updated from a central cloud service, but will run locally on the user’s device, scanning each cleartext message before it is sent and each encrypted message after it is decrypted. The company even noted that when it detects violations it will need to quietly stream a copy of the formerly encrypted content back to its central servers to analyze further, even if the user objects, acting as true wiretapping service...
Criticism of Facebook
Facebook (and parent company Meta Platforms) has been the subject of criticism and legal action since it was founded in 2004.[1] Criticisms include the outsize influence Facebook has on the lives and health of its users and employees, as well as Facebook's influence on the way media, specifically news, is reported and distributed. Notable issues include Internet privacy, such as use of a widespread "like" button on third-party websites tracking users,[2][3] possible indefinite records of user information,[4] automatic facial recognition software,[5][6] and its role in the workplace, including employer-employee account disclosure.[7] The use of Facebook can have negative psychological and physiological effects[8] that include feelings of sexual jealousy,[9][10] stress,[11][12] lack of attention,[13] and social media addiction that in some cases is comparable to drug addiction.[14][15]