Why I’m Leaving Facebook and You Should Too.

After years of abusive privacy invasions by the social media giant, the recent leak regarding Cambridge Analytica is causing a hemorrhage of users and advertiser dollars.

Earlier this month, Facebook acknoweldged that data from over 50,000,000 users had been illicitly obtained by data mining and political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica. The data, while legally obtained by the social media site, Facebook, had been taken from friends of friends who did not consent to the collection by Cambridge Analytica. After the breach of trust was disclosed to Facebook, the company failed to notify affected users, instead opting to allow Cambridge Analytica to promise to delete the illicitly obtained information.

While a loss of data may not seem like an issue of great importance to some, the fact remains that Facebook identified the loss of data and took steps to conceal the breach, and failed to insure that the illicit data was destroyed.

This breach of public trust is a symptom of a much larger issue among Facebook’s higher-ups, best illustrated by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s previous statement about users.

“They trust me. Dumb fucks.”

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, when asked why users submitted data to the website.