Facebook has come under fire recently for privacy after the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Cambridge Analytica was a firm which accessed data of tens of millions of Facebook users, without their explicit consent, and used it to sell their ad targeting capabilities to political entities. The firm was recently caught boasting about their tactics, including extortion, bribery and entrapment by a Channel 4 documentary in the UK.
In response to this, Brian Acton, WhatsApp co-founder, has tweeted that users should delete Facebook, and take advantage of more private solutions, like Signal. Acton previously sold WhatsApp to Facebook for $19 billion dollars in 2014.
While Acton’s interest in Signal seems quite self-interested on the face of it, Facebook really has stepped in it this time. The company is facing summons and inquiries from both US and European legislators, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been absent from the conversation.
Similarly, many tech publications have taken advantage of the zeitgeist, with how-to guides urging users to delete Facebook.
Facebook might end up inadvertently shape the future of privacy on social media, and push it into a more private sphere than it had previously existed in.