Criticism of Facebook
has been the subject of criticism and legal action since it was founded in 2004. Criticisms include the outsize influence Facebook has on the lives and health of its users and employees, as well as Facebook's influence on the way media, specifically news, is reported and distributed. Notable issues include Internet privacy, such as use of a widespread "like" button on third-party websites tracking users, possible indefinite records of user information, automatic facial recognition software, and its role in the workplace, including employer-employee account disclosure. The use of Facebook can have negative psychological and physiological effects that include feelings of sexual jealousy, stress, lack of attention, and social media addiction that in some cases is comparable to drug addiction.
Facebook's operations have also received coverage. The company's electricity usage, tax avoidance, real-name user requirement policies, [|censorship policies], handling of user data, and its involvement in the United States PRISM surveillance program and Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal have been highlighted by the media and by critics. Facebook has come under scrutiny for 'ignoring' or shirking its responsibility for the content posted on its platform, including copyright and intellectual property infringement, hate speech, incitement of rape, violence against minorities, terrorism, fake news, Facebook murder, crimes, and violent incidents live-streamed through its Facebook Live functionality.
The company and its employees have also been subject to litigation cases over the years, with its most prominent case concerning allegations that CEO Mark Zuckerberg broke an oral contract with Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra to build the then-named "HarvardConnection" social network in 2004, instead allegedly opting to steal the idea and code to launch Facebook months before HarvardConnection began. The original lawsuit was eventually settled in 2009, with Facebook paying approximately $20 million in cash and 1.25 million shares. A new lawsuit in 2011 was dismissed. This, alongside another controversy involving Zuckerberg and fellow co-founder and former CFO Eduardo Saverin,
was further explored in the 2010 American biographical drama film The Social Network. Some critics point to problems which they say will result in the demise of Facebook. Facebook has been banned by several governments for various reasons, including Syria, China, Iran and Russia.
Censorship
While Facebook operates transparent policies around certain types of content moderation—such as the removing of hateful speech and images which contain sex or violence—the company has been criticized for selectively censoring information in nontransparent ways. Some examples of this include:Censorship of criticism of Facebook
Newspapers regularly report stories of users who claim they've been censored on Facebook for being critical of Facebook itself, with their posts removed or made less visible. Examples include Elizabeth Warren in 2019 and Rotem Shtarkman in 2016.In the context of media reports and lawsuits from people formerly working on Facebook content moderation, a former Facebook moderator has claimed that specific rules existed to monitor and sometimes target posts about Facebook which are anti-Facebook or criticize Facebook for some action, for instance by matching the keywords "Facebook" or "DeleteFacebook".
Facebook's search function has been accused of preventing users from searching for certain terms. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch has written about Facebook's possible censorship of "Ron Paul" as a search term. MoveOn.org's Facebook group for organizing protests against privacy violations could for a time not be found through searching, the word privacy was also restricted.
Censorship around global politics
In 2015, it was reported that Facebook has a policy to censor anything related to Kurdish opposition against Turkey, such as maps of Kurdistan, flags of Kurdish armed terrorist groups, and criticism of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of Turkey.In 2016, Facebook banned and also removed content regarding the Kashmir conflict.
During a podcast, Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook suppressed all the coverage of Joe Biden's son's email leaks during the 2020 United States elections due to a general request from the FBI. The censored news claimed that the son of Joe Biden, who was vice-president in Obama's administration, used his father's influence to fix a deal with a Ukrainian businessman.
Following outreach from the United States Department of Justice, Facebook removed a Facebook group that was used to share information about Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Censorship in line with US foreign policy
In 2021, Facebook was accused of censoring messages critical of Israel and supportive of Palestine. During conflict over the Sheikh Jarrah property dispute in 2021, Facebook was accused of deleting hundreds of posts critical of Israel. Senior Facebook officials apologized to the Palestinian Prime Minister for censoring pro-Palestinian voices.In October 2021, a secret blacklist of "dangerous individuals and organizations" maintained by Facebook was discovered by The Intercept, which revealed censorship in the MENA region was stricter than in USA. Critics and scholars have argued the blacklist and the guideline stifles free discussion, as well as enforcing an uneven enforcement of the rules.
Privacy issues
Facebook has faced a number of privacy concerns; for instance, in August 2019, it was revealed that the company had enlisted contractors to generate transcripts of users' audio chats. The contractors were tasked with re-transcribing the conversations in order to gauge the accuracy of the automatic transcription tool. In part these concerns stem from the company's revenue model that involves selling information about its users, and the loss of privacy this could entail. In addition, employers and other organizations and individuals have been known to use Facebook data for their own purposes. As a result peoples' identities have sometimes been revealed without their permission. In response, pressure groups and governments have increasingly asserted the users' right to privacy and to control their personal data.Psychological/sociological effects
In addition to noting with evolutionary biologist George C. Williams in the development of evolutionary medicine that most chronic medical conditions are the consequence of evolutionary mismatches between a stateless environment of nomadic hunter-gatherer life in bands and contemporary human life in sedentary technologically modern state societies, psychiatrist Randolph M. Nesse has argued that evolutionary mismatch is an important factor in the development of certain mental disorders. In 1948, 50 percent of U.S. households owned at least one automobile. In 2000, a majority of U.S. households had at least one personal computer and internet access the following year. In 2002, a majority of U.S. survey respondents reported having a mobile phone. In September 2007, a majority of U.S. survey respondents reported having broadband internet at home. In January 2013, a majority of U.S. survey respondents reported owning a smartphone.Facebook addiction
The "World Unplugged" study, which was conducted in 2011, claims that for some users quitting social networking sites is comparable to quitting smoking or giving up alcohol. Another study conducted in 2012 by researchers from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in the United States found that drugs like alcohol and tobacco could not keep up with social networking sites regarding their level of addictiveness. A 2013 study in the journal CyberPsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking found that some users decided to quit social networking sites because they felt they were addicted. In 2014, the site went down for about 30 minutes, prompting several users to call emergency services.In April 2015, the Pew Research Center published a survey of 1,060 U.S. teenagers ages 13 to 17 who reported that nearly three-quarters of them either owned or had access to a smartphone, 92 percent went online daily with 24 percent saying they went online "almost constantly". In March 2016, Frontiers in Psychology published a survey of 457 post-secondary student Facebook users at a large university in North America showing that the severity of ADHD symptoms had a statistically significant positive correlation with Facebook usage while driving a motor vehicle and that impulses to use Facebook while driving were more potent among male users than female users.
In June 2018, Children and Youth Services Review published a regression analysis of 283 adolescent Facebook users in the Piedmont and Lombardy regions of Northern Italy showing that adolescents reporting higher ADHD symptoms positively predicted Facebook addiction, persistent negative attitudes about the past and that the future is predetermined and not influenced by present actions, and orientation against achieving future goals, with ADHD symptoms additionally increasing the manifestation of the proposed category of psychological dependence known as "problematic social media use".
In October 2023, court documents in the US alleged Meta of designing its platforms deliberately to develop addiction in children using them. The company knowingly allowed underage users to hold accounts, violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. According to whistleblower Frances Haugen, the company intentionally targets children below the age of 18.