**To a certain extent, Facebook is dangerous for society due to the loads of misinformation, data breaches, fraud, and negativity present on the site.** For starters, I don’t think Facebook is necessarily an evil force that needs to be banned. It does have its uses. Personally, I use Facebook to keep in touch with relatives and friends who I do not communicate with on a daily basis. It’s pleasant to be able to see what they are up to, their latest accomplishments, and what information they’d like to share. I’ve also used Facebook to keep up-to-date on missing persons cases to events happening in my city. That being said, Facebook definitely has a “dark side”. The first being Mark Zuckerberg himself. Zuckerberg’s net worth sits at nearly 123 billion USD, and most of Facebook’s revenue comes from advertisements within Facebook and the connected apps Instagram and WhatsApp (fun fact: ads were responsible for [98% of Facebook’s 86 billion dollar revenue](https://www.kamilfranek.com/how-facebook-makes-money-business-model-explained/) in 2020). Zuckerberg’s connection between Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp makes him a dangerous player in the social media game. As shown just recently on October 4th, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp all experiences outages that effected quite literally the entire world. The danger here is that one company owns all of these essential communication apps, and Zuckerberg has been able to monopolize on all of them to continue gathering insane amounts of wealth. Additionally, Facebook has become quite the toxic place for misinformation, hate speech, and other nonsense. During the 2016 and 2020 U.S presidential elections, Facebook essentially became a political hellscape that has continued to worsen throughout the pandemic. Tech columnist Jason Aten covers the recent Facebook outage and outlines Zuckerberg’s role in the climate of Facebook in [this article](https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/the-facebook-whistleblower-revealed-what-everyone-already-knew-its-biggest-problem-is-mark-zuckerberg.html), which, though biased, presents some interesting facts about how engagement, even with negative content, creates a higher revenue for Facebook. So, putting that all together, many people engage with negative content on Facebook, whether that be political, vaccination-related, health-related, or even small differences of opinion. If users are gathering even a part of their information via Facebook, it is indeed bad for society because there is often no scholarly or real-life merit to arguments made on the site. It’s a small window for people to gain insight to slices of life- not the whole picture. Thousands of scams happen over Facebook, especially money laundering schemes from fake GoFundMe’s or Make-A-Wish posts. Facebook struggles to keep up with all of the fraudulent activity because of the sheer number of users on the site. People, especially of older generations, are more likely to get scammed because of their lack of familiarity with online safety and transactions. There are several more things I could go on about regarding Facebook, wealth inequality, and the ethics of ads and scams, but I think the more important statement here is, even if Facebook is not the most present danger to society, it doesn’t seem to be overall “good” for us.

**Whistleblower Frances Haugen's [testimony to Congress](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/video/2021/oct/05/frances-haugen-facebook-harms-children-and-stokes-division-video) against Facebook is pretty damning** - Haugen said Facebook routinely prioritises its profits and growth over the safety of its users. - When it comes to oversight and accountability she said "the buck stops with Mark" - referring to Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of the company. - Several lawmakers pointed to research that suggests Facebook and Instagram worsen teenagers' body image issues and promote eating disorders. Haugen told lawmakers that Facebook intentionally targets teens, including children under the age of 13. - Committee Chairman Richard Blumenthal called the company "morally bankrupt" and said parents and bullied teens, among others, were watching their actions closely now. - Haugen suggested Facebook was harmful to democracy and had taken away many safeguards it had in place for the 2020 election. - Haugen argued the company has a culture of insularity that leads to a lack of accountability. This comes off the back of a [Wall Street Journal](https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-instagram-is-toxic-for-teen-girls-company-documents-show-11631620739) report on FB's _own internal reporting_ on its impact on teens. “We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,” said a slide from one internal presentation in 2019. “Thirty-two per cent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse,” said a report in 2020 “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression. This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.”

**Is Facebook’s algorithm sociopathic?** • Facebook uses [algorithms](https://adespresso.com/blog/facebook-algorithm/) based on artificial intelligence to maximise user engagement and keep you scrolling through your phone. Research suggests that these algorithms can be harmful to our health, security, and society as a whole. Some allege that they magnify and prioritise antisocial behaviour, political extremism, and racism in order to engage users, and go as far as to label Facebook’s algorithms [‘sociopathic’](https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-algorithm-sociopath-management-too-greedy-to-stop-it-2020-5?r=US&IR=T). • Researchers have found that many people suffer from Facebook addiction, which they define as [“excessive, compulsive Facebook use for the purposes of mood alteration, with negative personal outcomes”](https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp-rj.2016.111203). Facebook’s algorithms, which are designed to present content it predicts will interest you, make this addictive. Like any addiction, this can be debilitating, affecting personal life, sleep patterns, and overall health. Recent research has found that Facebook can have many [negative effects on mental health](https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/10/05/1036519/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-algorithms/), including eating disorders, jealousy, and feelings of inadequacy. • Several studies imply the potential dangers of sharing your information over a social media platform like Facebook. Facebook’s algorithms analyse your online habits to predict your future behaviour. They then use this to create an [online persona or behavioural profile](https://www.forbes.com/sites/tonyewing/2021/01/03/warning-facebook-and-twitter-are-dangerous-even-if-youve-never-used-them/) for you, which has become so sophisticated that it can mimic your actions, desires, thoughts, and even your voice with 95% accuracy. Many feel that this poses a security risk as, hypothetically, someone could impersonate you online and no one would be able to tell.

**Facebook is so cartoonishly bad it's almost as if they don't care about how the public perceives them.** -It is absolutely not a hot take to say "Facebook = bad", its almost a given considering their history of controversies and their ongoing blunders. -The increasing scope of Facebook's now parent company Meta has influenced the general public to some degree; whether it's through trapping its users into a political echo chamber, or by affecting the mental health of its Instagram users. -This is due in part to the [platforms mechanisms and algorithm](https://scholar.utc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1030&context=honors-theses) with its fundamental purpose being influencing and altering people's moods and behavior -This controversial business model of altering the emotions of its users encourages mores likes on publications and posts, clicks on more ads, and more time spent on the platform. The way this affects your mental health has been reported multiple times, including the arguments posted above^^^. -Facebook's latest announcement; the introduction of the ["metaverse"](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/metaverse-facebook-virtual-augmented-reality-hubs/) has been characterized as dystopian capitalism to the point of satire. Having a cooperate-controlled metaverse is straight up the antagonistic premise of [Snow Crash]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash), the first book that coined the term metaverse. It's almost as if Facebook read the book and said it be a good idea to play the antagonistic role as part of their business practices. -Even its most loyal investors think the metaverse is not the best idea. Roger McNamee, one of Facebook's earliest investors, [told BBC News]( https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-59154520): "It's a bad idea and the fact we are all sitting and looking at this like it's normal should be alarming everyone." -You almost have to ask, are Facebook higher-ups aware of their terrible public image? perhaps Mark Zuckerberg lives in his bubble and is unfaced by critics and public opinion. Maybe they are aware of how dangerous they are to society but they don't care since at the end of the day we still log in to use their platforms.

Depends on what pages you follow. I mainly follow engineering, automotive, meme and cat pages. The only dangers I encounter is uncontrollable laughter at times. Fainted twice because it was so bad.