Facebook is a social media platform that roughly has 1 billion active users. That is about 17% of our entire world population. From my own experience, many users use this platform to communicate with others especially friends, relatives, and family members. Others love to show their Facebook friends what they are doing, what they are eating, and what is on their mind. Personally, I loved Facebook until older people, our parents, started to infiltrate our personal social media platform. I stopped using Facebook religiously because my family members started to use Facebook more and I do not want them to find out that I am a weirdo. I only use Facebook whenever my Facebook family group is active, and communicate with family members via messenger. I knew for a fact that social media platforms were scary and suspicious but I’ve read many articles and heard many stories that social media platforms can take real-life data without you even knowing. So, why do we still have our Facebook?
Facebook has always been a product that requires personal user data. I have heard stories that people were talking about a certain subject, for an example scuba diving, and the next day, on the Facebook App, it will show scuba diving equipment ads. Facebook’s default settings are hard to find and Facebook does not let you know you have this specific setting on. For an example, Facebook has a default setting that allows other search engines to search you up on their database. There are targeted ads that have been auto-generated for you without you even knowing. In their own Facebook log in page, small text is hard to read and their privacy policy is not enforced for the user. It is like Facebook’s website is purposely built to fool it’s users. As we know, Facebook’s business model is solely based on personal user data. They purposely make settings hard to find and default each user’s setting that can be harmful to each user’s virtual and physical privacy. Having a Facebook can also danger your friends and family who do not even own a Facebook. After experiencing the Facebook debate in class, there is a high chance that I will delete my Facebook for good. If my family members cannot contact me, too bad.