Facebook’s efforts to add transparency to their website and ads have turned up to be a failure and resulted in an investigating. Through recent use of “Paid for by” ads, clickbait, and even the terms of the agreement, the ways that our information gets compromised has become more diverse, and less detectable. The “Paid for by” disclosure at the top of each ad that is related to politics supposedly tells the user to pay for the ads.
Seven days before the midterms, VICE News investigated if Facebook has made any progress since the 2016 election. VICE News requested to buy fake ads behalf of all the 100 Senators. All the ads were approved without a hitch. This indicated that anyone can pose as major U.S. officials and release fake ads.
Facebook was already under scrutiny due to the attack on its computer network that uncovered personal information of almost 50 million users. The data integrity of Facebook user’s information is in question, as well as has been compromised. The information was kept and used by a British analytics group, which led to the leaking of private information, as well as conflicts amongst countries and its users.
Facebook said it had secured the vulnerabilities and alerted law enforcement officials.
“Facebook does not have the right to share my personal information… there are laws that prohibit Facebook from doing such actions,” said Arshad Tahir
“Breaches don’t just violate our privacy. They create enormous risks for our economy and national security,” said Rohit Chopra, a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission.
Since the 2016 election, Facebook has been criticized for taking too long to acknowledge the fabricated campaign run by Russian operatives.
Due to recent affairs of Facebook, officials from nine different countries are advocating for Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Executive, to appear at hearing in regards to Facebook confidentiality conflict.
The official representing Canada, Charlie Angus said, “You have lost the trust of the international community,” to Facebook.