Study & Write T11 (Online censorship and privacy cases)

In this post I will describe three cases: first two of them are connected to the internet censorship and the last one is a privacy issue. These 3 cases are quite fresh, and interestingly, all of them are connected to Facebook.

 

Venezuela president's Facebook page was frozen

On the 27th of March it became known that Facebook has frozen the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's page for 30 days. It happened, because he promoted a thyme-based remedy, Carvativir that, as he says, is supposed to cure COVID-19. It wasn't the first time he mentioned this medicine, so Facebook decided to ban his account for repeated violations of its policy against spreading misinformation. Facebook said it followed World Health Organization guidance showing no evidence of any cure for the disease. In my opinion, it is not right for Facebook to filter what others say. Also, the whole misinformation rule looks quite absurd. Does Facebook know everything and it can always get the most recent information? Not really.

 

Facebook removes French town's page

On 19 March a mayor of the small French town of Bitche with a population of approximately 5,000 said that the town official Facebook page was removed for violating site rules (the town seemed to suffer from a bad interpretation of the English swear word). Though, the problem was fixed fast, this incident shows that such censorship systems not only create a feel of digital totalitarianism, but also may block the content that they are not supposed to.

 

Facebook personal data breach

On 19 March a huge database of 533 million Facebook records was leaked for free on one hacking forum. The exposed data includes the personal information of Facebook users from 106 countries and it contains their phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, bios, and, in some cases, email addresses. A Facebook spokesperson said that the data had been scraped because of a vulnerability that the company patched in 2019. Though it does not contain login credentials, it allows cybercriminals to impersonate users and
scam them into handing over login credentials. Facebook didn't report the 2019 vulnerability that it knew was already used then to sell users' phone numbers, which is a negligence of users' data.

 

Sources:

https://www.engadget.com/facebook-freezes-venezuela-president-maduro-page-160517623.html

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-venezuela-exclusive-idUSKBN2BJ03Z

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56731027 

https://www.businessinsider.com/stolen-data-of-533-million-facebook-users-leaked-online-2021-4