2018
- January: Surpassing Facebook
The possibility that WhatsApp may one day surpass Facebook, with its 1.5 billion monthly active users, is not farfetched.
- March 17: Cambridge Analytica
Cambridge Analytica was one of the firms that were responsible for Trump’s campaign in 2016. They were able to gather information from over 87 million Facebook users via quiz tools. Personality information was retrieved while influencing their final voting.
- April: Facebook On The Hill
Zuckerberg is brought before the senate to testify regarding the recent data privacy scandals. A warning of regulation is given.
- June 3: More Data Privacy Scandals
Facebook’s agreement with other device makers over sharing personal data comes to light. This results in high scrutiny from customers and more regulations on the company’s data handling.
- June 20: Instagram over Facebook
At the time of the never-ending privacy scandals, Instagram is getting bigger as more users prefer it over Facebook. Instagram now has over 1 billion active users per month, which surpasses its rival, Snapchat.
- September: Still On The Hill
Sheryl Sandberg is brought before the Senate to testify. The company soon claims that due to the platform getting hacked, all confidential data was exposed. Facebook also faced an exodus of executives within the year.
- November: Enlightening news
The New York Times revealed that the COO was aware of a plan to hire a secret political research firm. The communications team of Sandberg was asked to look into the financial interests of George Soros.
- December: Rectifying the Situation
Zuckerberg promises to have people working on better security and commits to investing “billions of dollars” in annual security on the platform.
2019
- January: Irish Data Protection Commission raises worry over Facebook’s merger with WhatsApp and Instagram
The body that controls Facebook in the EU assembled an earnest conference with Facebook Ireland to examine plans for its merger with Instagram and WhatsApp.
The DPC wants to intently follow advancements in the venture, especially concerning the process of data sharing and processing.
It underlined that the merger couldn’t get successful in the EU in the event that it didn’t meet the necessities of the GDPR.
- February: Personal information shared to Facebook by third-party apps
According to a report by the Wall Street Journal revealed – Intimate personal information such as heart rate, menstrual cycle, and weight was shared with Facebook from third-party apps. There was no user consent.
- March: Facebook’s lobbying against data privacy laws got under the spotlight.
Released inward reports uncover Facebook’s worldwide exertion of boosting legislators to campaign against data security laws.
Reaction over abuse of security phone numbers.
Facebook users have been approached to include their telephone number as two-factor authentification since 2011. Reaction from the editor of Emojipedia Jeremy Burge claims that the data can be utilized to look through clients, as well, with a vague opt-out framework.
- April: Facebook records exposed on Amazon cloud servers
Third-Party Facebook application engineers put away client data on Amazon’s servers in a manner that permitted it to be downloaded by the general population, as indicated by a report from UpGuard, a cybersecurity firm.
- June: Introducing Libra
Facebook officially announced it’s one of the most anticipated projects- A cryptocurrency named Libra on June 18, 2019. Affirmation that Facebook proposed a cryptocurrency previously rose in May 2019. At this time it was known as “GlobalCoin” or “Facebook Coin”.
Initially, the project began with a bang with its high profile partners. But with the time, it has started to bleed the partners due to the concerns from the world’s biggest economies.
Read More: PayPal Exits Facebook’s Libra Association
- August: WhatsApp’s “end to end encryption” Failed?
Forbes reports that Facebook can ‘wiretap’ WhatsApp and bypass encryption.
Facebook is not without its faults, but it’s not the only thing they have going for them. For better or worse, it redefined the world of networking and connectivity.
So, what’re your thoughts on the next big step from Facebook? Let us know and be with Markedium.
