Has Facebook’s Outage Taught Us Anything on our Social Media Dependency ?

6

October

2021

No ratings yet.

As I am sure you are all aware, Facebook had one of the longest outages it has ever recorded on Monday evening here in Europe, lasting about 6 hours ((Barry, 2021). The outage was worldwide, and affected the normal flow of information as a whole. Despite an estimated $50 billion decrease in market value (Sweney, 2021), the negative impact it had on users worldwide was significantly more important. This has led many people to question whether we as a society are over-dependant on social media applications such as the Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp of the Facebook group.


Different regions in the world attach different importances to “western social medias” such as Facebook. In developing countries, notably in Latin America, where the emergence of internet and smartphones has been close to twofold in the last two years (TechCrunch Is Now a Part of Verizon Media, 2021), social medias are borderline a necessity for the daily functions of locals. Indeed, the free nature of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp means that more people rely on these social networks than on regular sim contracts or sim based communications. In Latin America, 85% of all internet users have a social media account. This only highlights what kind of devastating impact the failure of Facebook can have on local inhabitants.

It has been seen that more developed regions of the world, namely Europe, are less influenced by free social media. As opposed to the aforementioned 85%, only 50% of europeans actively depend on Facebook and its applications for communications (Sweney, 2021).

But as we move further east, there is a trend for a smaller usage of Facebook’s social media platforms. Unexpectedly, Russia reports a mere 8.8% of people using Facebook, as many Russians prefer local alternatives such as OdnoKlassniki (OK.ru). Further East, we can see that the usage pattern of Western social medias is smaller than elsewhere. The biggest economies in Asia, namely China, Japan and South Korea, all have comparatively low usage rates for Facebook despite such a prominent GDP per capita. In China, the Facebook company is totally banned. Nevertheless, less economically developed countries in Asia, such as India, follow the same trend as Latin America as they have abnormally large usage rates for free social medias.

Some have pinned the timing of Facebook’s outage as mitigating, as it occurred during the Indian Night time. For a country with over 500 million Whatsapp users (Sweney, 2021), the impact of this outage could have been significantly more pronounced if it had happened a couple of hours later.

This highlights the fragility that lies on relying solely on social medias for communications. It also underlines how the perspective on over dependency on social medias depends strongly on geographic placement.
Furthermore, this outage has pushed many people to express further concerns on security, as the source of the issue has not been explained in a clear and detailed manner.

REFERENCES

  • Barry, E. (2021, October 5). Messenger Apps Signal and Telegram Benefit After Facebook Outage. Time. https://time.com/6104151/signal-downloads-facebook-outage/
  • Sweney, M. (2021, October 5). Facebook outage highlights global over-reliance on its services. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/05/facebook-outage-highlights-global-over-reliance-on-its-services
  • TechCrunch is now a part of Verizon Media. (2021, September 22). TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/22/latin-americas-second-wave-of-digital-transformation/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAADqC0VgYnPsGg02YWG2uVJZRj6w1KfmshCPtU8Mo7upu0qonam70DxE93UhNwfKAUpHDSaR4RoZ77p3A4v24BqvdYPk_W79haMBOZDJjmO6fRUPtJ6sUcjUAuPu5xoK_BmPm5qjJJ8SKQKR1sMOSEsHvWIOJHz-mjHy2bJQoPif0

Please rate this

How Facebook uses our information to make money

30

September

2021

5/5 (3)

Facebook is seen as the largest social media platform in the world. It was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004, and it currently bolsters a monthly active user base of 2.85 billion users (Statista, 2021). It has since become one of the world’s wealthiest companies, and one may dare to ask, how can Facebook make so much money whilst not charging its users any fees. The answer to that partly lies in the data that Facebook has on us, and more specifically, the data we give Facebook about us. 

Facebook relies on data monetization to acquire additional revenues. The latter can be defined as the process whereby companies use their data to acquire additional revenues. Facebook has developed a natural feel for data, and data now plays a critical role in Facebook’s revenue strategy. The data that we provide to Facebook is of a certain value to Facebook, but it is of even greater value to third parties, such as advertisers and other brands. 

As opposed to what many people believe, Facebook does not simply sell the data that we as users provide to it (Gunnars, 2020) . Information relevant to our names, age, gender, preferences and so on remain within the Facebook database. Yet, this data is not merely stored for information purposes only, it is often used to satisfy the needs and requirements of third parties. 

If we take the example of a newly established fictive urban clothing brand called DreeX, the latter is seeking to increase its awareness in the hope of attracting new customers. It thus pays Facebook to promote their Facebook page and to place advertisements on user’s feeds, but not on any random user’s feed, but on a user who is potentially interested by this brand’s feed. How does one establish who that person may be?  Well, that’s when Facebook’s data plays its role. 

As user’s, anything that we like, comment, share and create on Facebook is stored and remembered in Facebook’s database. Patterns and trends can be assimilated following this information, and if the latter is deemed to match the visions of DreeX, then this user will be more likely to get DreeX advertisements in their feed. 

Therefore, it can be safely said that Facebook’s treatment of our data is how the brand makes money off our data.  In combination with a plentitude of advertisement requests, Facebook’s data strategy can be seen as if the company was sitting on a gold mine. That is why Facebook is far from being the only social media network to use such a strategy. Facebook’s Messenger and Instagram applications also use a variant of this strategy (Shead, 2019). Other new and arising social networks such as TikTok also monetise user data to procure additional revenue. 
Yet, one may wonder about the ethics that lay behind the usage of our data for the benefit of other companies. But that is another question that is an ongoing debate and will probably remain so for the years to come. 

References

  • Statista. (2021, September 10). Countries with the most Facebook users 2021. https://www.statista.com/statistics/268136/top-15-countries-based-on-number-of-facebook-users/
  • Gunnars, K. B. (2020, February 17). How Does Facebook Make Money? 7 Main Revenue Sources. Stock Analysis. https://stockanalysis.com/how-facebook-makes-money/
  • Shead, B. S. (2019, December 18). Facebook owns the four most downloaded apps of the decade. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50838013

Please rate this