E-commerce case 8.2 Facebook Privacy watch the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ajrt_U_UrUQ

summary

The business model of Facebook is to collect as much personal information on its users as is technically possible, and socially acceptable, and then to sell that information to advertisers in the form of targeted advertising on Facebooks website, mobile site, and mobile apps, and on partner websites, who use the information to personalize ads. This video provides some suggestions for how users can gain greater control over their personal information that they have placed on their Facebook pages. L: 3:13.

case

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, once proclaimed in an interview that the age of privacy had to come to an end. According to Zuckerberg, social norms had changed and people were no longer worried about sharing their personal information with friends, friends of friends, or even the entire Web. This view is in accordance with Facebooks broader goal, which is, according to Zuckerberg, to make the world a more open and connected place. Many Facebook features are premised on this position. Supporters of Zuckerbergs viewpoint believe the 21st century is an age of information exhibitionism, a new era of openness and transparency. Although Facebook started out at Harvard and other campuses with a simple privacy policy of not giving anyone except friends access to your profle, this quickly changed as its founder Mark Zuckerberg realized the revenue-generating potential of a social networking site open to the public. Facebook has a long history of invading the personal privacy of its users. In fact, the very foundation of Facebooks business model is to sell the personal information of its users to advertisers. In essence, Facebook is like any broadcast or cable television service that uses entertainment to attract large audiences, and then once those audiences are in place, to sell air time to advertisers in 30- to 60-second blocks. Of course, television broadcasters do not have much if any personal information on their users, and in that sense are much less of a privacy threat. Facebook, currently with over 2 billion users worldwide, clearly attracts a huge audience. In late 2017 and 2018, concerns about Facebook and privacy invasion came to the fore with the Cambridge Analytica scandal mentioned in the video. In March 2018, Facebook announced changes to its privacy settings, which are discussed in the video.

What changes to privacy settings did Facebook announce?