Critics and the general public is not about to let Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg off the hook probably in the next few months. As more people are trying to #deleteFacebook and taking back their content, they are discovering things that make the social network look even worse in the public eyes. The latest one is that they have not deleted unpublished videos that users created then changed their minds about posting. But the beleaguered company has promised they are now deleting the saved videos.
Some people have discovered that when they downloaded their data from Facebook (because they will probably delete their account or something), that included in this are videos that they did not publish but were apparently saved by the social network. According to the social network, this was caused by a bug that allowed drafts to be saved even though they were eventually deleted. They are now apologizing for the inconvenience (a shot every time they have said this the past months) this has caused and that they will now be deleting these videos.
Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg responded to criticism from Apple’s Tim Cook who said in not so many words that because Facebook is a free service, they consider that people and their data are the product. The Facebook CEO gave an interview to Vox and said that it is “extremely glib” to assume that they don’t care about people just because they’re not paying and they have an ad-supported model. He says that any business that doesn’t engage with people who can’t afford to pay for services will never be able to achieve the reach that they need.
Facebook has been facing a lot of backlash ever since the recent revelations about how they allowed third-parties to have access to users’ personal data and that they have been used to allegedly manipulate voters in the 2016 US presidential election. Several people have been calling for a #deleteFacebook campaign, including WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton.
