"Is the security of our personal information on internet platforms really a façade or does it hold its ground?"

 

This question has recently sneaked into the back of the minds of netizens, the hashtag delete facebook controversy being the catalyst. The heavy amount of attention the matter has garnered from the likes of Elon Musk and Brian Acton and many more have led to the delete Facebook fever reach its peak. To understand the issue thoroughly, we have to go to the very basis of where the matter started; that is the Cambridge Analytica disputation.

The ongoing scandal regarding the 2016 US Presidential Elections and role of Facebook in the outcomes of the elections lays the foundation for the issue. Cambridge Analytica has allegedly been used for using data from 50 million Facebook profiles to help the Trump campaign strategically frame its political adverts, which ultimately led to Trump’s win. The revelations are such that, Facebook, even after knowing that the company had access to the cache of its users’ data, and had known that they could have misused the authority, which it eventually did, only asked them to delete such data but never followed up after it. Such recklessness on the part of Facebook executives has generated distrust in people.

The fuel to the fire was added when Brain Acton, a former executive of Facebook and co-founder of WhatsApp (which is now owned by Facebook), tweeted: "It is time. #deletefacebook," Other public figures to voice their opinions against Facebook include Jim Carrey, who tweeted a sketch of Zuckerberg alongside a quote "they trust me, dumb f*cks" made by Zuckerberg during the initial years of Facebook. He captioned the picture as a warning, stating "Who are you sharing your life with? #regulatefacebook" Even Elon Musk has deleted the respective Facebook pages of SpaceX and Tesla in response to Acton's tweet. Aditya Sondhi, AAG, High Court of Karnataka, sarcastically commented: "Facebook is as safe as a cricket ball in an Aussie's hand".

Various opportunists took hold of such uprising and accused similar causes for the Brexit, used by Pro-Brexit candidates, but such accusations were disregarded on the ground of lack of evidence.

 

The gravity of the situation lies in the fact that even after knowing such grave consequences of sharing personal data on platforms like Facebook, are we really ready to quit such addictive pills of social media? Currently, the answer that I can perceive is a clear no. We have remained oblivious to such matters in the past and at the time when individuals indulge more in the internet community than the reality of life, are we willing to sacrifice such convenience and luxury, wherein the bigger picture we only see ourselves as a mere speck who's participation won't as such affect the overall scenario? It has become an indispensable part of most of the people's lives. Another thing that bewilders me is that, is deleting facebook, in fact, the only solution, or should we aim at better regulation of our personal data by such companies and improved data privacy and security to be provided? Where one seems like a change that is truly far-fetched, the other a feeble one if past incidents are to be taken into account.

In a recent post on Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg made a seemed-to-be apology and enlisted the steps they were going to take to prevent such happenings in the future. Now the questions arises: can facebook regain the status and trust of people they had a priori to the rise of such disaster for them, for which they had to incur a loss of 37 billion dollars and a 7% fall in the stocks of the social media platform? It is high time we become aware our activities and what we share on social media.