Facebook Is Falling Apart so Fast We Can't Keep Up
Anyone who reads The Daily Stirrer regularly will know we have never been fans of Facebook, Google or any of the other multi - billion dollar internet corporations which operate business models based on abusing users privacy. We have always predicted retribution would one day be delivered when the public finally woke up to how these companies trick users into revealing personal information about themselves and all their friends and contacts, and then try to use that data to manipulate the way users behave.
It seems retribution has arrived for Facebook at least, after a year of alienating public opinion through a series of public relations disasters, a new scandal seems to be the straw that broke the Camel's back.
US Senator Demands Zuckerberg ‘Be Subpoenaed’ to Testify Under Oath
from The AntiMedia
As the damning details of Facebook’s largest-ever data breach at the hands of pro-Trump data firm Cambridge Analytica continue to pour in — and as the social media giant’s share price continues to plummet as a result—Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) on Monday called on CEO Mark Zuckerberg to “testify under oath” before Congress to explain why his company took so long to notify users that their information had been compromised.
“Zuckerberg ought to be subpoenaed to testify if he won’t do it voluntarily,” Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told reporters late Monday, echoing demands of other lawmakers. “He owes it to the American people who ought to be deeply disappointed by the conflicting and disparate explanations that have been offered.”
Blumenthal’s request comes amid growing calls — both in the U.S. and overseasfor Zuckerberg to answer for his company’s failure to ban Cambridge Analytica in 2015, when the platform first, discovered that the personal information of millions had been harvested in violation of company policy.
Since details of Cambridge Analytica’s exploitation of Facebook were published by the New York Times and the Observer over the weekend, the social media giant has downplayed the incident, argued that it doesn’t constitute a data breach at all, and maintained that Cambridge Analytica is solely to blame for the improper harvesting of personal data.
But privacy advocates have argued that while Cambridge Analytica should be held accountable for its actions, Facebook cannot be let off the hook.
Facebook Lost $50 Billion in Market Value In Two Days Over Privacy Scandal
The scandal that has hit Facebook over IT firm Cambridge Analytica using Facebook to trick users into revealing information in exactly the same way as Facebook itself pulls off the scam has hit Facebook investors where it hurts most — in their bank accounts.
Investor confidence hhas been hit too, as the world speculates on which of Facebook's many unethical business practoces will be put under the microscope next. Last Friday, before the full impact of the story was felt, the social media giant’s closing stock price was $185.09, making it worth about $538 billion, vastly overvalued for a company that has never paid a dividend, but but sanity and stock market valuations for tech corporations never had a working relationship. The scandal went viral over the weekend as it emerged thatdata consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, which worked with Donald Trump on the 2016 election, had allegedly obtained unauthorized access to some 50 million Facebook accounts.
The effects were felt immediately, and not just in the area of privacy concerns. Facebook shares tumbled nearly seven percent on Monday. That’s a loss of about $35 billion in market value, making it the worst day of trading the company has seen in four years.
The slide continued on Tuesday, spurred on by the news that the Federal Trade Commission will launch an investigation into the handling of user data and calls from lawmakers for Facebook executives to testify before Congress on the subject.
The further 2.6 percent drop, which put the stock price at around $168, means that Facebook lost roughly $50 billion in market value over the course of two days. That’s after slightly recovering from an even further dip of around six percent.
But it’s not just the company as a whole that’s hurting. The Cambridge Analytica debacle is affecting the man at the top, as well. CNBC reported on Tuesday:
“Mark Zuckerberg’s wealth status has changed — he’s lost more than $9 billion in stock wealth over the past 48 hours." Well it couln't have happened to a more deserving piece of shit.
Lawsuits Accumulate As #DeleteFacebook Movement Grows
After the mayhem of earlier this week, Facebook must have hoped things would start to stabilise on Wednesday as CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he would publicly address the company's relationship with Cambridge Analytica some time during the next 24 hours.
At the same time however, another lawsuit has been brought against the company, the second since the New York Times and the Observer reported over the weekend that the company had failed to stop CA from using data improperly gathered from tens of millions of users, a Maryland woman sued Facebook Tuesday in a San Jose, Calif. court. Her suit was filed on behalf of other Facebook users whose data were accessed by CA without their explicit permission, Bloomberg reported.
Zuckerberg, the company's founder and CEO said the delay in his making a statement was due to his desire to say something "meaningful" rather than delivering a quick, boilerplate comment, Axios reported.
On Tuesday, a group of Facebook investors filed a lawsuit against the company in a San Francisco federal court. The class action claims investors had suffered losses after the company disclosed that it had severed ties with Cambridge Analytica after blaming the company for "misleading" Facebook by saying it had deleted a cache of user data, when Facebook says it actually kept the data. CA has denied the allegations and said it didn't use Facebook data for its work on the 2016 Trump campaign. Investors who purchased shares of Facebook between Feb. 3, when it filed its annual report and cited security breaches and improper access to user data, and March 19, the Monday after the exposes were published, are eligible to join the lawsuit.
Throughout that period, “defendants made false or misleading statements and failed to disclose that Facebook violated its own data privacy policies by allowing third parties access to personal data of millions of Facebook users without their consent,” according to the complaint.
As Bloomberg explains, investors have a strong case so long as they can prove their decisions to invest in Facebook were based on false or misleading information released by the company. By not policing app developers' use of its users data, it could be argued that Facebook misled investors about how it handled and safeguarded private user data.
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey has opened a civil probe into the company and Connecticut AG George Jepsen has sent a written inquiry to answer questions about Cambridge Analytica. The Federal Trade Commission has also opened a data-privacy investigation into the company.
European Union Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova plans to meet with Facebook officials in Washington on March 21. She called the data misuse "horrifying, if confirmed" and "not acceptable."
Four days after the allegations first surfaced, #DeleteFacebook started trending on Twitter late Tuesday as users complained about "trust issues" regarding how the company shares their personal data. It gained a notable booster when WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton tweeted that the time has come for Facebook users to delete their accounts.
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Facebook's Privacy Priacy
Once again Facebook are in trouble over their contempt for users privacy. It is quite astounding that this upstart corporation that is quite open about its ambition to control the internet does not seem to understand there are lines that cannot be crossed when it comes to broadcasting or "sharing" details of users private lives.
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