Essay on Social Media Platforms: Risks and Challenges of Global Communication

Introduction

Communication all over the globe is improving and new means of communication being introduced each day. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, What sup, telegram, and others have gained a lot of users who upload their details when opening up accounts. The information provided to the social medial platforms is prone to manipulation and used to violate the privacy of users without their knowledge (Ricciardelli et al., 2020, pg. 27). The risks associated with social media users have raised concerns about whether they are more harmful than helpful. There are also no proper laws developed to regulate and manage the threats present in social media privacy. The essay will discuss how social media and new technologies threaten personal privacy.

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Facebook is one of the popular social media platforms with the highest number of users. The objective of Facebook was to create a more open and connected world. The inventor was Mark Zuckerberg, who was a student at Harvard University (Bonneau et al., 2010, pg. 12). The company kept the promise to protect the user's data and only give out when permission is granted. Despite the security assurance from the company, Facebook has faced essential issues of privacy, safety, and democracy. It has been used in interacting democracy across the world and by ethnic movements. Facebook has failed to protect the illegal use of user's details, the spread of fake news, and disinformation in the platform resulting in the dilemma of its existence.

Facebook has two personal information aggregation techniques, which are connection and instant identification (Khan, 2018, pg.10). If information was not intended for the public and is saved on Facebook, anyone can access it. The connection is created when the like button is clicked, and such information is treated as public and displayed on the Facebook page. Instant personification shares Facebook account data with the affiliated sites. It enables information leakage without the user's knowledge (Zhang et al. 2010, pg. 40). As soon as the related pages are visited, they can access information in the Facebook account such as name, location, picture anything the user liked.

There is a lot of concern on Facebook being used for surveillance and data mining. It enables when users to agree Facebook share their information with other companies related to it. Facebook does not provide means of users to close their accounts fully as the private data remains in the servers (Ricciardelli et al., 2020 pg. 30). Facebook has been slow on focusing on the wrong things. It could be used but instead focuses on the right things. Facebook was able to understand its users by the things they like inside Facebook.

Facebook has been used to wake the Arab Spring, the fake new spread of Russia, facilitated Ukraine's assault, and played a role in the 2016 U.S presidential elections (Wu et al. 2013 pg. 22). A lot of warnings have been raised about the use of the platform, but the company was reluctant to respond until it was forced to. The lack of government regulations has caused lousy use of social platforms. The Facebook Dilemma helps use acknowledge that Facebook knows much about its use as the users know about it.

Article: We Need a Law to Save Us From Dystopia. By Charlie Warzel

Clearview AI is an app developing company using facial recognition that risks to the end of privacy. The company uses social media networks to create a repository of many images, such as Facebook, Venmo, and YouTube (Bonneau et al., 2010, pg. 18). Using the app, government agencies, and law enforcement bodies get more information about a person by uploading a photo of the subject. David Scalzo, the inventor of the company, said that due to the constant increase in data, there should be no privacy. He added that laws have to decide that it is prohibited, but technology cannot be banned. The perception of the founder remains that, even with dystopia, technology should continue without legislations, and privacy is compromised.

Technologists believe that there is always the best use of technology; however, in society, there shall emerge the unfortunate people who misuse technology. The face recognition technology requires a strong privacy law to keep the privacy of people protected (Khan, 2018 pg. 15). Companies tend to use private law loopholes in using private data such as location without the owner's knowledge. Mass surveillance involves identification, correlation, and discrimination as the main components that require to be handled by privacy laws.

Facial recognition apps depend on other surveillance industry to function, such as Facebook, which has weak privacy regulations allowing the user photos to be scraped against the agreed terms of service with the users. Proper laws should be framed on when and how companies should discriminate persons. However, the rules require more in-depth thinking and the making of informed choices that are based on societal norms. Same as ring door cameras need proper handling as instead of providing security could end up exposing one's privacy matters (Bonneau et al., 2010 pg. 22). Porch generality requires policing to uphold privacy.

Article: We're Banning Facial Recognition and missing the point. By Bruce.

Aim of modern mass surveillance is treating people differently. The face for recognition technology is a fraction of the entire process. Several areas in the United States are banning facial recognition technology due to privacy issues in an attempt to fight modern surveillance (Wu et al. 2013, pg. 26). Advanced monitoring cannot be avoided by banning a part of it as it's applied in individual nations. In China, the way of enabling mass surveillance is built by the government for purposes of social control.

In the U.S, surveillance is mostly used by corporations to influence our buying decisions. Also, it's applied by the authorities incidentally. Modern surveillance, which has three modules, facial technology takes part in identification. Facial recognition technology can identify people without their knowledge (Khan, 2018, pg. 25). It Reliance much on small cameras, which are now more powerful to capture the face at a distance. It again makes use of machine learning technologies that can match the outputs of the small cameras with photos from a database that already has a collection of existing images. Other techniques can replace facial recognition and identify people, such as the use of fingerprints, iris patterns, or even heat beat.

Other collected data other times is then correlated once we are identified with what we are and do. The data could be of our daily movements, spending patterns, profession, which we talk to lifestyle and others. There is an industry of data brokers who earn by selling our analyses data collected by all types of companies without our consent (Khan, 2018 pg. 49). There are many and unregulated data brokers in the U.S who earn their profits through the trading of our information. Large internet companies such as Google and Facebook operate in the industry.

All the process of purchasing data is for treating each person differently by the companies and the government (Wu et al. 2013, pg. 28). The information is used in designing which ads to see in interment and the credit cards offered. Therefore, to address the system, the three components need to be appropriately regulated. The three steps, identification, connection, and discrimination, require strict rules and regulations at each level.

Currently, I have accounts on all the social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Gmail, and more. It puts me at more risk of being manipulated with cookies and my information being traded without my knowledge (Khan, 2018 pg. 55). When I was young, I was a little involved in social networks. I had more privacy when young opposed to today.

Works Cited

Bonneau, Joseph, and Soren Preibusch. "The privacy jungle: On the market for data protection in social networks." Economics of information security and privacy. Springer, Boston, MA, 2010. 121-167. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4419-6967-5_8

Khan, Md. Rise of New Media and the Changes in the Perceptions of Reality. Diss. BRAC University, 2018. http://dspace.bracu.ac.bd/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10361/11251/13363003_ENH.pdf?sequence=1

Ricciardelli, Lauren A., et al. "Social media use, attitudes, and knowledge among social work students: Ethical implications for the social work profession." Social Sciences & Humanities Open 2.1 (2020): 100008. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590291119300087

Wu, Shan-Hung, et al. "Is Somebody Watching Your Facebook Newsfeed?." arXiv preprint arXiv:1308.5168 (2013). https://arxiv.org/abs/1308.5168

Zhang, Chi, et al. "Privacy and security for online social networks: challenges and opportunities." IEEE network 24.4 (2010): 13-18. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/5510913