Facebook Messenger: Facebook’s Trojan Horse

Your Privacy On Facebook

I was recently lecturing to a class of undergraduates at the University of Colorado Denver talking about social media and privacy. Most of those students believed their Facebook content was private and belonged to them– including their Facebook message conversations. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Facebook has been data-mining its users since its inception. The data users’ contribute is what makes Facebook such a valuable commodity. Until recently Facebook focused on mining your public content, now it wants to analyze your private data.

“Facebook historically has focused on friends and public content. Now, with Messenger and WhatsApp, we’re taking a couple of different approaches towards more private content as well,” Zuckerberg said during an earnings call in Q2 of 2014. “That’s an ecosystem that’s growing incredibly quickly. ”

Zuckerberg Contradictory On Facebook Messenger

Around the time that Facebook purchased WhatsApp they publicly stated they wouldn’t be changing its core functionality. This seems to be contradictory to what Mark Zuckerberg stated during Facebook’s earnings call. How can they be keeping WhatsApp as is, but still making strides towards mining users private data?

The recent push by Facebook to have users install Facebook messenger is not by chance. Facebook needs to have users install this app for increased functionality and access to mine their private data. Our entire lives are interwoven with our mobile devices, and Facebook knows it. Lets call the new Facebook Messenger push what it truly is, Facebook’s Trojan horse.

Facebook cannot ignore something as valuable as private data. It’s the next evolution of data mining, something Google has been doing with Gmail for the past few years. Much of the recent conversation around Facebook messenger has focused on the app wanting to access things like your microphone or contacts list. The focus is on the wrong things.

We don’t know what Facebook has going on under the hood. They claim they want users to migrate to get access to new features, but they aren’t fooling anyone. They’re not doing this to increase the satisfaction of their users. They’ve been working to migrate their users worldwide for months to set themselves up for the future of big data– The future of mining your private data.