Video Editor: Purnendu Pritam
Cameraperson: Athar Rather
Facebook users have not been too happy with the social networking site of late, in the wake of recent revelations about the data breach. In that regard, two millennials from The Quint fight it out to understand if it is indeed time to #Delete Facebook or continue using it.
#DeleteFacebook
Right after the Facebook data breach, the rage of several Facebook users who took part in the #deletefacebook campaign took centrestage, calling out to other users to stay out of Facebook in the wake of the revelations.
The #deletefacebook campaign won support from the likes of Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors and Space X who expressed his dislike for the social networking site.
Elon Musk was joined by Bollywood’s Farhan Akhtar, who announced on Twitter about deleting his Facebook page.
Anand Mahindra, Chairman of the Mahindra Group, encouraged the idea of floating an Indian social networking company and announced his intent to fund it.
What Triggered the Trend?
Facebook came under the scanner, when the personal data of 50 million Facebook users was harvested by Cambridge Analytica (CA), the British data analysis firm to allegedly influence the US elections and Brexit with personalised political advertisements based on the psychological profile of the users.
The information about the breach was brought forward by Christopher Wylie, a former employee at CA and a whistleblower. Wylie worked with CA researcher Aleksander Korgan, who built an application named ‘This is Your Digital Life’, the app that was used to leak the data of over two lakh users.
In an interview with The Observer, Wylie said, “We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people’s profiles and built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons. That was the basis the entire company was built on.”
Facebook came under scrutiny and faced strong backlash for its security policies and for suspending the firm and the Cambridge university researcher (who harvested user data from Facebook) earlier this month despite knowing about the breach since 2015.
Two Sides of the Same Coin?
Facebook has been accused of allegedly aiding political campaigns like US Presidential elections and Brexit by influencing voter behaviour.
Ahead of the 2019 Assembly elections in India, one might fear being targeted by Facebook and its applications for political gain.
However, is Facebook the only source of information for a user? Several other platforms such as newspapers, TV channels, radio, news websites, applications can be easily accessed by a user to help remain better informed.
In an age where the world is in the grip of social media, a site like Facebook is privy to the personal life and preferences of its users. The users now feel betrayed over misuse of personal data.
However, some argue that Facebook has also helped users get in touch with suitable employers and been an aid in promoting their work to reach a wider audience. Facebook is the sole reason why people and communities across the world have been connected using minimum effort.
But Facebook has spun quite a web around it. If you have been using your Facebook login to access applications like Pinterest, Spotify, Instagram , Airbnb, Zomato and even Tinder, logging into them would be another problem once you delete your Facebook accounts.
The Debate Continues
But as questions of security and privacy concerns loom large, will Facebook’s contribution, however little, be swept under the blanket of rage over data breach? The debate continues...
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)