The Facebook post caused a serious scandal
Despite its apparent relevance, the Facebook post caused a serious scandal in the first days after its launch. Many users found the News Feed to be quite intrusive - they complained that they were tired of constantly bumping into boring notifications from friends like "Frank added Johnny as a friend". But the main problem was different: thousands of people didn't want their updates to go to the feed. They were worried that their friends would know too much about them.
They couldn't turn off the news feed, but they were able to create communities of like-minded people in which they opposed the new feature. In just a few days, nearly 700,000 members joined one of the most popular groups — nearly 10 percent of all Facebook users .
But Mark Zuckerberg was adamant. The founder of the social network wrote on his page: "Calm down, breathe, we can hear you." He explained that the data could be hidden, but it turned out to be so tricky that only a few took his advice.
I wonder how Zuckerberg explained the company's desire to keep the news feed. According to him, the function is required to "reduce the total number of page views on the web". That is, the head of Facebook hinted that the social network will lose a lot of money on advertising , but it "facilitates communication between users." But, as time will show, this change will become an inexhaustible source of income for him.
Users of the Russian "VKontakte" recall a similar scandal when in 2010 the social network presented its news feed called "Status 2.0". Before that, all discussions about posts took place on the personal pages of users (then they were called “walls”). Due to the nature of The Wall , people could not leave comments on any news they saw - instead, they had to write a separate post, which was also displayed on the profile page. It turned out to be a mixture of comments, writings and songs, in which it was difficult to find the thoughts of the author himself. There was also no separate page for viewing updates from all audiences, so you had to go through each group of interests and search for news manually.
Most of the VKontakte audience did not want to switch to a new communication format. But the progress could not be stopped, and contrary to the wishes of the majority, the head of the company, Pavel Durov, decided to experiment.
" Facebook also once had a similar ' wall '. Then came the microblogging mode. Users were angry, now they use it with pleasure. We developed our own concept. If we don't change and move forward, more modern and advanced users will leave us. And we are working for tomorrow" Vladislav Tsyplukhin, the minister and then press on VKontakte , responded with anger .
Tens of thousands of users begged the founder of the social network to cancel the changes, otherwise they threatened to delete their accounts. Threats did not help - innovation remained. But a new picture was born called " Durov , bring back the wall."
Gradually, all popular services, including Instagram , Twitter and YouTube , switched to algorithmic delivery of content in the feed.
Gradually, users of Facebook, and then almost all other popular social networks, stopped controlling what they saw in their news feed. Platforms gradually changed the power of choice, giving them unlimited power over their most valuable resource - user interest.
The massive development of algorithmic feeds allowed social networks to process thousands of parameters and find out the most intimate things about users. All this information is useful for the next step in the evolution - creating personalized ads. Now those who pay money to Facebook, Instagram and YouTube can reach those who will definitely buy their products.
In 2010, Facebook's revenue was only 1.2 billion dollars, in 2012 it grew to 5 billion dollars, and in 2014 - to 12.4 billion dollars. In 2019, it already reached $70.7 billion, and 2020 ended with a third increase in revenue at once - to nearly $86 billion.
Almost all of this money is earned from advertising - today it is the main and practically the only source of income for social networks.
Facebook knows everything
The world realized the amount of information that social networks collect about users for advertising only in 2018. Then Facebook was discovered in the leakage of data of 87 million users by the British company Cambridge Analytica, which is involved in influencing user behavior on social networks.
This company distributed the test app This Is Your Digital Life, which collected account data. The program consists of a series of questions that can be used to build psychological portraits of people. In addition, the service collected personal data of all friends of users who filled out the questionnaire. Cambridge Analytica sold the obtained information to third party organisations, including political headquarters. It is believed to have been used by Donald Trump's team during the 2016 US presidential election.
The app was based on a personality test developed by four researchers from Michigan State University. It gives a comprehensive characterization of a person according to five criteria: openness, awareness, extraversion, benevolence and neuroticism. The test is performed in the form of statements that must be answered in the range from "This is definitely about me" to "This is definitely not about me". Users rated dozens of phrases such as: "I'm not talkative," "I hide my feelings," "I rarely feel sad," "I'm the soul of the company," and "I hardly feel bad." Everyone who logged into the Internet underwent such trivial tests, but not everyone knew that their result could be used to subsequently push a person to a certain action.
After information about the plum became public, the Facebook administration had to disclose exactly what they knew about each user. The list of data turned out to be huge: many had the impression that social networks store literally every sneeze on their servers. The list of data that Facebook monitors includes contacts, SMS history, call history, camera usage, file names and types on disk, installed applications, purchases on sites, mouse movement, battery level, free disk space.
The social network also collects data on the nearest Wi-Fi points and cell towers (and can track someone on them), data on mobile operators, and reads information from smart TVs. In addition, Facebook stores metadata about all photos (for example, when and where they were taken). And this is the part that the developers revealed - they probably know a lot about the users.
The leak of this data clearly showed that the story of creating an algorithmic news feed for the convenience of users is a myth. In fact, all developers' actions are aimed at making a profit in any way - whether it is personalized advertising or the sale of user data to third parties.
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