Leaf&Core

Facebook’s Lack of Privacy will Destroy It

Danielle from Leaf and Core
Reading Time: 5 minutes.
Facebook logo with stick-figure-like people. Dollar signs are above each person's head.

Your data is too profitable to waste time protecting you.

A couple of weeks ago, I finally deleted the Facebook app from my phone. I use Facebook for the usual things, sharing articles, photos, life updates, and communicating with my neighbors. But this was the last straw. A user found that the camera was active in the background, behind the news feed, despite watching video and scrolling through content due to a bug that caused the news feed layer to be misaligned on his screen. He could clearly see both the news feed and the camera active at once, implying Facebook regularly has your camera active.

Any app that has access to your camera can access it without you knowing at any time during use. Scary, right? Instagram likely has this right, as does Snapchat and others. But you expect that apps would not abuse that permission. Facebook might have been.

Facebook has since claimed that it was a bug, that the camera wasn’t supposed to be active. I  never gave Facebook this permission, so I know I was safe, but it occurred to me. I never gave them that permission because I never trusted Facebook with it. Now Facebook is everywhere, from Messenger, to Instagram, to WhatsApp. Surely you have camera access enabled on one of those.

Should you?

Was this actually a bug? Obviously letting the user know the camera was activated was a bug, but has Facebook been intentionally keeping your camera activated in the background to spy on you?

Now ask yourself, do you trust any response that comes out of Facebook?

Was it a Bug?

I’m an Android developer. I have seen a similar bug, when the camera was not deactivated when the user left the app. I caught it immediately, but it’s possible that Facebook’s team of thousands of people let this one slip through.

Try opening your camera on your iPhone and just letting it go. Your iPhone will probably get quite warm. You’d notice that while using Facebook. It’s possible they only open the camera during certain interactions, such as watching video (how this bug was discovered) to track how users are engaging with video. In fact, if Facebook was only doing AI on the photos or live video to determine if you were looking at the phone, it actually wouldn’t make their statements of “we don’t collect video” (paraphrased) any less true. That’s just the kind of loopholes we’ve come to expect from Facebook.

Just Another Lie?

Mark Zuckerberg speaking to congress. Photo: JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images

In fact, Facebook has lied about every scandal. Whether it was Cambridge Analytica, hate speech from Presidents, or genocide in Myanmar, Facebook has obscured the truth through carefully crafted statements for years now. They’re the social network who cried wolf. I no longer believe anything they’re saying.

So, since the camera can be activated from a swipe in Instagram, it’s possible Facebook was experimenting with a similar feature for the Facebook app. It’s also possible that the bug, activated during video, was part of an AI routine to see how people engaged with video content and ads. We just won’t know for sure unless someone subpoenas records from Facebook.

What’s most important is what you think. Do you think it was a bug? Is Facebook collecting more information on you than it says? Do you wonder why Facebook uses up so much battery life, despite being on the screen as much if not less than your other apps?

Chances are, you don’t trust Facebook. And that’s their problem: they’ve done nothing to deserve our trust.

No Trust, No Like

Facebook has a cool Portal camera that you’ve likely seen advertised a lot right now for the holidays. Buying it would be incredibly stupid. A microphone and a camera in your house or apartment at all times? From the company that may have been secretly collecting data on users through their cameras? No thank you. Even if Facebook isn’t doing anything with them now, they’re likely using a mixture of machine learning, microphones, and object recognition to bolster their data collection.Why would Facebook sell a camera? They’re not actually in the business of connecting people, they’re in the business of collecting people. To sell. Why trust them with anything?

While Facebook is a giant now, its day is quickly approaching. Lies, deception, genocide, hate speech, and racism/sexism within the company will not make it popular. Younger users are leaving the service in droves, wise to its misleading narratives. Older folks will either catch on eventually or stop using it for another reason.

Facebook’s user base is skewing older, and that’s not a sustainable business model. Creating distrust for the sake of data collection is not going to be a viable business model in just a few years. At this rate, Facebook may have less than a decade left. Perhaps that’s why they’re diversifying, with apps like Instagram, and communication apps, and even VR.

Freeing

You know what it feels like to delete your Facebook app? I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything. Group chats? Check. Notifications? Sure, I still have Facebook in the browser to peek in on. Plus, I still use Facebook for this site. However, I no longer feel the constant need to check on something. I don’t have to read up on every thing. And you know what? As I check it less often, I’ve found that there are often no good notifications to check in on. Facebook’s pushing false ads, propaganda, and hate speech directly into our feeds now. Why would I want that? Once you get rid of the data addiction, which honestly takes a day or two, it’s a wonderful feeling. Liberating.

Let’s face it, deleting my profile completely, or just using it for messenger, is possible, but clunky and Facebook will still collect data on me. Simply reducing my use and only using it containerized? That makes data collection just about worthless.

Which is what Facebook is since they don’t respect our privacy or our right to the truth.

Facebook is worthless.

Deleting Facebook

Deleting your account or disabling your profile is helpful, but it’s not your only option. You can (and should) just delete the app. This will disable a lot of tracking, including constant access to your photos or camera. You can still access Facebook through the web browser. On iOS, this will be far more secure, and largely more secure on Android as well. It’ll also make tracking you via location or your camera roll more difficult.

On iOS, you can install web apps on the home screen, but I wouldn’t even recommend doing that. Just make it a bookmark in Safari. On iOS, Facebook will show you a web app instead of their website within a webpage if you bookmark the site, and this is a far worse experience on Facebook. This is, of course, intentional, to push you into using the native app.

I highly recommend deleting the Facebook app right now. You’ll still be able to access it on the web, which I recommend solely doing through a desktop browser like Firefox, which puts all of Facebook’s apps in their own little container, so Facebook can’t see what else you’re doing on the web. This is the more secure way to use an inherently insecure service.

Memento Mori, Facebook

No one should trust Facebook. Every day, fewer people do. Eventually, that mistrust is going to lead to incidents, like this one, where we’re not sure if Facebook is lying or not. When these days come, it will be someone’s final straw.Facebook may be beyond repair. Their image is permanently damaged. The brand is ruined.

Potentially recording you during use was the last straw for me. I’ve used Facebook while coming out of the shower, for crying out loud. I’m sure you have too. For me, this was it, this was my dropping off point. I deleted the app. Many others have as well, and you should too. It’s the first step to letting the app rot away, like Myspace.

One day, Facebook will die. It will be because of the hate speech they emboldened. The genocide they caused. It will be because of the distrust they sowed. It will be because it deserves to die.

If it’s not worth your trust, it’s not worth your time.

It’s time we kill Facebook.

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