I think every thing that happened during the Arab Spring should have been a warning to facebook.Unfortunately, at that point in time Facebook was more focused on growth, they were looking at the numbers and the impact the platform was making and the excitement it inspired was humungous.
The company was trying to make money and the Arab Spring was the perfect push and drive Mark Zuckerberg needed. He was going to build an advertising business out of his platform once it went public.
It was time to go public and they were looking at a 100 Billion valuation of the platform. In the fog of all this cacophony what Mark Zuckerberg and his new assistant Sheryl Sandberg constantly forgot about was how they were going to protect all the personal user data the platform was collecting.
"We are focused on Privacy", was a common phrase from facebook's management teams, but it seemed only wind. Words to cajole users assuring them of perceived security.
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Data Brokers are companies that depend on data metrics to operate and make profit, they collect data about Your Name, your relatives and friend, what you like to eat, what you like to read, the movies and TV you love to watch, where you shop and much more, they use this data to influence how you make future decisions in their favor.
About 4 or 5 months before Facebook's Initial Public Offering (IPO), big companies that were looking at expanding their market reach signed contracts with facebook.
Given facebook's continuous humongous growth these companies were looking at making a kill using the platform in terms of influence and market reach. Facebook's role was to profile its users then sell them the necessary ads from these conglomerates.
Facebook was slowly becoming a Data Broker.
Everything was there and available.
Facebook had literally become the Internet.
Whenever people talked about the Internet, they meant facebook. Or Vice Versa.
In May of 2012 after its Initial Public Offering listed under NASDAQ, facebook acquired all the major social networking platforms like Instagram and Whatsapp, and on its way to becoming the most valuable company in the world it also created its own whatsapp-like messaging application, facebook Messenger.
At that moment in time, the Company was 15 Billion rich.
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Sockpuppetry refers to the act of creating a false online identity for purposes of deception. The purpose is usually to influence or make fun of something on the internet without being known.
At the American Department Of Defence, researchers were looking at the possibility of people using social media as a weapon.
The fact that people were willingly giving out their data meant that they could easily be manipulated to do anything. The social platforms could manipulate you to buy something, they could manipulate to go somewhere and they could manipulate you to Vote for something or someone.
For the Department Of Defence, this was a potential threat to National Security.
The users of the platforms had become the ultimate targets of manipulation.
In an act of sockpuppetry a conglomerate, government or institution could easily create many fake accounts to use them to influence how people made decisions on voting and deciding the future.
In St. Petersburg (Russia), a secret government-aided propaganda factory called the Internet Research Agency had been created where hundreds of Russians would use social media to influence the conversation and fight the anti-Russian government in Ukraine.
"They arrested him and they nailed him on the cross like Jesus", a supposed witness in one of the videos said. The video was being promoted by the Russian propagandist machinery against the Ukrainian army. It was to be later discovered that the video was a fake and the female witness was an actor for the Russian Propagandist machinery.
Russia was using facebook to meddle in Ukraine politics.
Facebook had been Weaponised.
