Can Facebook Be Trusted with Libra? U.S. Presidential Candidate Elizabeth Warren Doesn’t Think So

With its more than 2.38 billion members using the platform for an average 20 minutes per day and 2.1 billion new photos uploaded every week, the platform generates a huge amount of data on its users and their friends. Given the scale of these stats, it is easy to assess the huge impact Facebook has on people’s everyday lives. Naturally, a company with so much influence over people’s lives has the power to disrupt several industries, and perhaps even government institutions. The concentration of so much power under a single corporation has long been considered a potential problem, with many believing that big corps like Facebook should be split up. Most recently, this sentiment was echoed by U.S. presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren who has been campaigning to break up big tech — even erecting a billboard for the cause. In a recent tweet, Warren also took a swipe at Facebook, highlighting the company’s precarious past when it comes to handling (or mishandling) user data. Arguably the most prominent of which was the recent Cambridge Analytica Scandal, where a third party company Cambridge Analytica harvested Facebook user data without their consent and used it to target them with political ads.

Warren Takes on Facebook

Beyond this, Facebook has also been linked with a host of other controversies including Buddhist extremism, Islamophobia, Rohingya Genocide, and a recent report about depraved working conditions for its outsourced employees. Now, the company that has been repeatedly blasted for being untrustworthy is now gearing up for the launch of its recently announced cryptocurrency — Libra. Not only will the project help the company further penetrate into people’s daily lives, but it will also solidify its position as one of the most influential companies in the world — after all, money is power. This raises the obvious question… Can Facebook be trusted with its own cryptocurrency? After each past scandal, the company has modified its platform guidelines, algorithms and policies to apparently better protect its users and improve transparency. The fact that these scandals occurred at all indicates that the social media giant is not equipped to deal with its own size. With that said, Facebook subsidiary calibrate does appear to be taking precautions, outlining plans to keep customer financial data well away from Facebook in its customer commitment document.  However, as Facebook’s Libra continues to be scrutinized by regulators and governments, it remains unclear whether it will genuinely fulfill its goal of banking the unbanked, or if it is another data disaster just waiting to happen. What is your opinion on Libra? Do you think Facebook can be trusted with its user intimate financial details? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!