For a couple of weeks now, the war continues between the American edition of the New York Times and Facebook. I don’t know how journalists suddenly began to dig under Mark Zuckerberg, but it turns out they are doing good. Back in mid-December, the newspaper rolled out a detailed article that the social network sells its users to technology companies. The material was based on an analysis of internal Facebook documents, from which it turned out that more than 150 partner companies had benefited from this collaboration.
This criticism of the social network has not stopped. Media executives even decided to troll their opponents by posting on Facebook an advertising post on how to… refuse Facebook! Step-by-step instructions on how to stop a social network once and for all. Moreover, solely with this social network. And not because it takes away all free time or causes depression, but because of constant data leaks and “loss of trust”.
Mark Zuckerberg and other company executives were seriously offended. Say, journalists in their materials expose the company to a monster greedy for someone else’s data, little caring about the user’s privacy or the integrity of American politics. At the same time, they “deliberately ignore the nuances of the Internet sphere” in order to put Facebook in the worst light.
I don’t know what kind of nuances it’s about, but the journalists at NYT still have a reason. Still, there are some problems with confidentiality of the social network. In September last year, the data of 50 million users was leaked, some of which were subsequently put up for sale on the darknet. In November, an announcement on the sale of personal data of FB users at a price of 10 cents per account appeared on the Blackhatworld forum. The seller claimed that he had 120 million such accounts at his disposal. You need to ask Facebook experts how these data were made available to third parties.
These and other scandalous cases of neglecting the security policy have played a cruel joke with the management of the company. Facebook shares are falling in price, while the company continues to pursue lawsuits, investigations and penalties around the world.
In these circumstances, the New York Times only joined the trend that had been outlined for a long time. Since spring 2018, the hashtag #deletefacebook is gaining popularity in the network. Users delete accounts and switch to other platforms. And some even go to court. Among the claims are not only data flow to third parties, but also strict political censorship, which the network management has been conducting recently. Such an approach of Zuckerberg and Co. to many cases does not suit, is it worth it to charge journalists that they only point to obvious things: Facebook is slowly but surely sinking to the abyss.