Editing The World Wide Web And Your Privacy (section)

== Harmful Impacts ==

While Facebook is extremely profitable, it comes with great societal, emotional and political costs. In early-2019, leaked internal Facebook documents revealed it has engaged in [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/mar/02/facebook-global-lobbying-campaign-against-data-privacy-laws-investment global lobbying against data privacy laws]. In fact, the company has tried to influence legislators by promising, or threatening, to withhold investment -- a successful strategy in both Canada and Malaysia, where the prospect of new data centers and the associated job creation won legislative guarantees.

Not only is Facebook a toxic host sucking users' digital wells dry, but it has also enforced a real user name policy to aid profiling, and regularly censors users and news it finds unpalatable. Further, it is regularly targeted by advanced adversaries because the treasure trove of personal data makes it an attractive target. <ref>For example, Facebook forms a core part of the NSA's PRISM program.</ref>

Chronic use of Facebook is linked with negative physiological effects like jealousy, stress, and social media addiction. <ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook#Criticisms_and_controversies</ref> Facebook is also fond of conducting unannounced psychological experiments, such as feeding users selective (biased) articles via its News Feed algorithm to skew opinions. <ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20210618035331/http://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/facebook-news-feed-displays-political-bias-1.2211055</ref> In another case, Facebook manipulated the emotions of users by secretly changing information that was posted on 100s of thousands of home pages. <ref>https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-users-emotions-news-feeds</ref>

In a fashion similar to Google, Facebook has also abused its monopolistic power in late-2018, by purging hundreds of pages and accounts <ref>In an apparent coordinated strike with Google, which is highly suggestive of government pressure on both companies.</ref> which it vaguely referred to as engaging in "coordinated inauthentic activity". <ref>https://about.fb.com/news/2018/10/removing-inauthentic-activity/</ref> Facebook confirmed that it was "banning… Pages, Groups and accounts created to stir up political debate,” which cynical observers have noted includes accounts (with millions of followers) like: <ref>Notably the spectrum of censorship has broadened from alleged fake Russian accounts in 2016, to censoring political and other speech of US and non-US citizens alike in 2018. While ostensibly targeted at "misinformation", the real effect is to suppress undesirable speech.</ref>
* News outlets with views counter to mainstream channels.
* Accounts agitating for political change.
* Accounts tracking (alleged) crimes and misbehavior by Police.

Perhaps worst of all, any data harvested by Facebook is likely to be kept indefinitely. Facebook keeps broadening the scope of their data collection over time, and is now threatening the privacy of individuals who avoid their services altogether. For example, automatic facial recognition software has already been applied to uploaded photos, which means that if a person's photo is also tagged by name, Facebook now has a permanent and identifiable face-print linked to a unique individual. <ref>https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/178777-facebooks-facial-recognition-software-is-now-as-accurate-as-the-human-brain-but-what-now</ref> The significant privacy concerns posed by Facebook are explored in further depth below.