In an era of hacks and data leaks, Facebook stands alone as the supreme social media empire, a singular giant hoarding over 1.5 billion people‘s daily posts, messages, photos and likes. Let‘s ground this staggering figure – that‘s almost 1 in 5 humans entrusting their personal information to a single company.
As of January 2023, Facebook commands a formidable 67% market share of the global social media landscape. To put Facebook‘s dominance in perspective, its main competitor TikTok holds just 7.5% market share.
For comparison, Google has 92% of global search traffic. Yet unlike ephemeral browsing queries, Facebook chronicles our lives from first crush to marriage to childbirth…and monetizes it all.
Should we find it alarming that one platform, however beloved,charts so much of humanity‘s interconnections and intimacies? As an online privacy expert and technologist, I argue centralizing this much sensitive personal data breeds catastrophe.
Cambridge Analytica Scandal – The Straw that Broke Trust‘s Back
Facebook‘s careless data practices first landed the company in hot water in 2018, when the New York Times exposed the egregious Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The Brexit-linked data analytics firm illicitly harvested personal info from 87 million Facebook users to psychographically profile and microtarget voters with political ads. This represented one of the most expansive known personal data extractions in history.
Yet Facebook only learned of the data breach when the whistleblower went public. Meaning users‘ sensitive information circulated beyond Facebook‘s walled garden completely unchecked.
Research now suggests the psychometric targeting tactics employed shifted votes enough to impact both Brexit and the 2016 US presidential elections.
This privacy catastrophe shattered user trust, evidenced by Facebook‘s plummeting favorability. A 2021 Consumer Reports survey found 81% of users believe Facebook does only a fair to poor job safeguarding personal data.
And Cambridge Analytica is but one egregious example in a pattern of slippery data practices. Just last year over 533 million Facebook users had their phone numbers and other account details scraped and leaked onto a hacker site in 2021.
The World‘s Juiciest Data Honeypot
As web applications architect, I contend allowing one company to centralize vast silos of personal data is asking for trouble. Consolidating several billion users‘ sensitive life details, contacts, locations, messages, creates an irresistible treasure trove for hackers.
And Facebook‘s infrastructure presents a massive attack surface. The social media juggernaut runs on sprawling, complex backend server networks. As employees told Parliament recently, Facebook struggles just to map its own dizzyingly complex systems. Needless to say, hardened cyber criminals have an easier time navigating the labyrinth.
Case in point, hacking collective Lapsus$ recently infiltrated Facebook‘s developer backend, obtaining source code for core apps like Instagram and WhatsApp. While no user data got compromised, it further evidences the platform‘s vulnerabilities.
This centrally consolidated data honeypot model starkly contrasts with the open, decentralized ethos of web3. Blockchain-based social networks allow users to selectively disclose information peer-to-peer, without entrusting all their personal data to a central authority. Facebook‘s closed-off server fortress figuratively contradicts and technically imperils the open interconnectivity that defines the internet itself.
Antitrust Actions to Break Up a Juggernaut
Governments worldwide are now scrutinizing if Facebook‘s history of copying competitors features, buying up rivals like Instagram and WhatsApp, and cutting off outside developer access constitutes illegal monopolization.
Critics contend Facebook has long pursued anticompetitive practices to protect their market dominance. Buying WhatsApp helped eliminate an emerging threat in global mobile messaging. Copying Snapchat and TikTok stories preempted younger users from migrating.
And by repeatedly changing APIs to block API access, Facebook hampered innovative developers from building on top of their social graph. Facebook‘s walled garden is designed as much to lock users in as keep disruptors out.
Dissolving Facebook through antitrust measures would ostensibly introduce much needed competition to the social networking market. However Facebook‘s deep war chest ensures any legal battle would prove protracted.
Is "Meta" the Next Frontier for Data Extraction?
As public uproar sharpens over lax privacy protections and cavalier data practices, Facebook is attempting to rebuild user trust and address vulnerabilities. The company doubled safety and security staff to 40,000 last year, while introducing encrypted messaging and ephemeral content features.
However, Mark Zuckerberg seems more fixated on future "metaverse" possibilities than addressing urgent real-world data protection needs. As consumers barely trust Facebook with photos and messages, now they are to populate Facebook‘s virtual worlds with 3D avatars, virtual goods purchases, and immersive behavioral biometrics?
This augmented reality future promises to intensify rather than temper surveillance capitalism data extraction. Until Facebook meaningfully curtails its monopolistic stranglehold and reforms data collection practices, decentralized social networking provides the best path to reclaiming ownership over personal information. The time has come to distribute control and agency back to the users.