I hate to say it, but the #DeleteFacebook movement is nothing more than a cut-rate conspiracy theory. Sure, the recent demise in FB stock, having lost more than 16% since March 16th, appears as if this grassroots protest is having a positive impact. If anything, powerful people now know that they can’t mess with the collective.
Or do they? I’m not sure what the #DeleteFacebook folks hope to accomplish here. Even if the entire United States population were to delete their FB accounts, it wouldn’t even represent a quarter of the company’s more than two billion active user list. And let’s be real – the majority of our population will never #DeleteFacebook, not even close.
Furthermore, I’m not convinced that people truly understand the Facebook controversy. From what we know, FB isn’t guilty of directly violating their users’ privacy to advance a political cause. Rather, a third-party entity gained access to public profiles under a false premise; instead of an innocent quiz, this entity was collecting information on potential voters during the 2016 election cycle.
Data mining under a false premise isn’t actually illegal under Facebook policy. What is illegal is sharing that information to another organization, which is what happened here. Thus, the Facebook controversy is a disclosure violation, not an infringement of user privacy.
And that’s just the facts. The other question is, who cares? Did you honestly believe that FB or any other social media platform would not mine your data for political or social engineering purposes? I mean, let’s get real, people! Facebook is a data goldmine. All sides of the political spectrum find the platform incredibly useful, and this present Facebook controversy will not be the last of its kind…not by a long shot!
Plus, you’d better get used to FB being around indefinitely. Supposed government threats about a social media crackdown is all bark and no bite. How do you think advertisement companies survive in this day and age? Facebook is a real-time platform of consumer habits, for one thing. Thanks to data mining efforts, companies are much more proficient at selling you their crap.
Do you think the government will jeopardize corporate profits in this manner? That’d be a wild conspiracy theory that exactly no one would believe. Unfortunately, the reality is that no matter how much you may dislike the FB platform, #DeleteFacebook will never happen.
There’s simply too much money involved for anyone to initiate a true crackdown.
