How to Log in to Facebook: Simple Steps & Troubleshooting
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. The developer, Meta Platforms, Inc., indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. In 2018, Zuckerberg claimed that “Internet.org efforts have helped almost 100 million people get access to the internet who may not have had it otherwise.” Owing to the same reasons, Facebook also removed 687 pages and accounts of Congress because of coordinated inauthentic behavior on the platform.
For example, a Facebook user can link their email account to their Facebook to find friends on the site, allowing the company to collect the email addresses of users and non-users alike. The phone numbers of at least 200 million Facebook users were found to be exposed on an open online database in September 2019. On June 7, 2018, Facebook announced that a bug had resulted in about 14 million Facebook users having their default sharing setting for all new posts set to “public”. According to Kaufmann et al., mothers’ motivations for using social media are often related to their social and mental health.
For example, the “like” button that appears on third-party websites allows the company to collect information about an individual’s internet browsing habits, even if the individual is not a Facebook user. A “shadow profile” refers to the data Facebook collects about individuals without their explicit permission. The company eventually used its tool Onavo to initiate man-in-the-middle attacks and read users’ traffic before it was encrypted.
- Facebook teamed up with ABC and Saint Anselm College to allow users to give live feedback about the “back to back” January 5 Republican and Democratic debates.
- The service, called Free Basics, includes various low-bandwidth applications such as AccuWeather, BabyCenter, BBC News, ESPN, and Bing.
- Facebook passed 100 million registered users in 2008, and 500 million in July 2010.
- But apps and websites you use will not be able to receive any other information about your Facebook friends from you, or information about any of your Instagram followers (although your friends and followers may, of course, choose to share this information themselves).
- Developers can build chatbots into Messenger, for uses such as news publishers building bots to distribute news.
After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it was announced that the internet regulatory committee would block access to Facebook. The company removed more than 1,800 accounts and pages that were being operated from Russia, Thailand, Ukraine and Honduras. In July 2019, Facebook advanced its measures to counter deceptive political propaganda and other abuse of its services.
Shadow profiles
They included 133 million US users, 18 million from the UK, and 50 million from users in Vietnam. In January 2014 two users filed a lawsuit against Facebook alleging that their privacy had been violated by this practice. Facebook has been criticized for allowing users to publish illegal or offensive material. Over the 2008–2018 period, the percentage of users under 34 declined to less than half of the total. Region-wise, the highest number of users in 2018 are from Asia-Pacific (947 million) followed by Europe (381 million) and US-Canada (242 million). The highest number of Facebook users as of April 2023 are from India and the United States, followed by Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico and the Philippines.
Community Q&A
The Cambridge Analytica data scandal offered another example of the perceived attempt to influence elections. ProPublica noted that their system enabled advertisers to direct their pitches to almost 2,300 people who expressed interest in the topics of “Jew hater”, “How to burn Jews”, or, “History of ‘why Jews ruin the world”. By the 2016 election, political advertising to specific groups had become normalized. A poll by CBS News, UWIRE and The Chronicle of Higher Education claimed to illustrate how the “Facebook effect” had affected youthful voters, increasing voting rates, support of political candidates, and general involvement.
In 2017, Facebook partnered with fact checkers from the Poynter Institute’s international fact-checking network to identify and mark false content, though most ads from political candidates are exempt from this program. The company has come under criticism both for allowing objectionable content, including conspiracy theories and fringe discourse, and for prohibiting other content that it deems inappropriate. Facebook relies on its users to generate the content that bonds its users to the service.
Previously, Facebook had its privacy settings spread out over 20 pages, and has now put all of its privacy settings on one page, which makes it more difficult for third-party apps to access the user’s personal information. Facebook apologies have appeared in newspapers, television, blog posts and on Facebook. In November 2021, a report was published by Fairplay, Global Action Plan and Reset Australia detailing accusations that Facebook was continuing to manage their ad targeting system with data collected from teen users.
In January 2020, Facebook launched the Off-Facebook Activity page, which allows users to see information collected by Facebook about their non-Facebook activities. In May 2018, several Android users filed a class action lawsuit against Facebook for invading their privacy. In September 2024, Meta paid a $101 million fine for storing up to 600 million passwords of Facebook and Instagram users in plain text. Jadali’s investigation elucidated how DataSpii disseminated private data to additional third-parties, including foreign entities, within minutes of the data being acquired. This allowed NA members to access the private content within the restricted time frame designated by Facebook.
Meta Business Suite
Finally, we’ll remind you which apps you’ve given access to your information – so you can shut off the ones you don’t want anymore. The company has also been unclear whether or not it is possible for a person to revoke Facebook’s access to their “shadow profile”. This practice has been criticized by those who believe people should be able to opt-out of involuntary data collection. Over time, countless data points about an individual are collected; any single data point perhaps cannot identify an individual, but together allows the company to form a unique “profile”.
Facebook has experienced a steady stream of controversies over how it handles user privacy, repeatedly adjusting its privacy settings and policies. Commentators have accused Facebook of willingly facilitating the spread of such content. Specifics include copyright and intellectual property infringement, hate speech, incitement of rape and terrorism, fake news, and crimes, murders, and livestreaming violent incidents.
Jadali, along with journalists from Ars Technica and The Washington Post, interviewed impacted users, including a Washington Post staff member. DataSpii harvested data from millions of Chrome and Firefox users through compromised browser extensions. The controversy led Facebook to end its partnerships with data brokers who aid advertisers in targeting users. We’re also investigating every single app that had access to large amounts of data before we fixed this. You may have heard about a quiz app built by a university researcher that leaked Facebook data of millions of people in 2014.
Community highlights
- Microsoft announced that it had purchased a 1.6% share of Facebook for $240 million ($364 million in 2024 dollars), giving Facebook an implied value of around $15 billion ($22.7 billion in 2024 dollars).
- The company has also been subject to criticism over its psychological effects such as addiction and low self-esteem, and over content such as fake news, conspiracy theories, copyright infringement, and hate speech.
- Low effort (“what do you think of this person”) or spam posts will be delated and may result in a temporary or permanent ban
- Since 2009, Facebook has been participating in the PRISM secret program, sharing with the US National Security Agency audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs from user profiles, among other social media services.
If you’re still having trouble logging in, we’ll guide you through some troubleshooting steps you can try, including resetting your password and updating the contact info you used to sign up. All you need to do is visit the Facebook website or open the Facebook app on your iPhone, iPad, or Android device. Our teams have solved many crashes, fixed issues you’ve reported and made the app faster.
They claimed that Facebook protected prominent figures from scrutiny instead of removing content that violates its rules and that the special treatment was financially driven. On March 6, 2018, BlackBerry sued Facebook and its Instagram and WhatsApp subdivision for ripping off key features of its messaging app. Its most prominent case addressed allegations that Zuckerberg broke an oral contract with Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra to build the then-named “HarvardConnection” social network in 2004.
ShareChat – Videos & Status
Ahead of the 2019 general elections in India, Facebook has removed 103 pages, groups and accounts on Facebook and Instagram platforms originating from Pakistan. Facebook banned political ads to prevent the manipulation of voters in the US’s November’s election. Facebook has used several initiatives to encourage its users to register to vote and vote. Over a million people installed the Facebook application “US Politics on Facebook” in order to take part which measured responses to specific comments made by the debating candidates. Facebook users took part in debate groups on specific topics, voter registration and message questions.
Specific posts and videos that violate community standards can be removed on Facebook. Facebook stated that content that receives “false” ratings from its fact-checkers can be demonetized and suffer dramatically reduced distribution. As of 2018, Facebook had over 40 fact-checking partners across the world, including The Weekly Standard. In addition to publicly apologizing, Facebook has said that it will be reviewing and auditing thousands of apps that display “suspicious activities” in an effort to ensure that this breach of privacy does not happen again. This led Apple to temporarily revoke Facebook’s pin up app Enterprise Developer Program certificates for one day, preventing Facebook Research from operating on iOS devices and disabling Facebook’s internal iOS apps. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission sued Facebook on December 16, 2020, for “false, misleading or deceptive conduct” in response to the company’s unauthorized use of personal data obtained from Onavo for business purposes in contrast to Onavo’s privacy-oriented marketing.
Contents
In May 2014, Facebook introduced a feature to allow users to ask for information not disclosed by other users on their profiles. In June 2009, Facebook introduced a “Usernames” feature, allowing users to choose a unique nickname used in the URL for their personal profile, for easier sharing. The format of individual user pages was revamped in September 2011 and became known as “Timeline”, a chronological feed of a user’s stories, including status updates, photos, interactions with apps and events. PHP was used to create dynamic content and manage data on the server side of the Facebook application. Facebook has often been criticized over issues such as user privacy (as with the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal), political manipulation (as with the 2016 U.S. elections) and mass surveillance. After registering, users can create a profile revealing personal information about themselves.
They can post text, photos and multimedia which are shared with any other users who have agreed to be their friend or, with different privacy settings, publicly. An experiment in 2012 involved showing Facebook users pictures of their friends who reported that they had voted; users who were shown the pictures were about 2% more likely to report that they had also voted compared to the control group, which was not encouraged to vote. By 2008, politicians and interest groups were experimenting with systematic use of social media to spread their message. Facebook provides a development platform for many social gaming, communication, feedback, review, and other applications related to online activities.
App Privacy
Facebook used a combination platform based on HBase to store data across distributed machines. Facebook users may advertise events, which can be offline, on a website other than Facebook, or on Facebook. Posts can be changed to be seen by everyone (public), friends, people in a certain group (group) or by selected friends (private).
In August 2018, Facebook removed the app in response to pressure from Apple, who asserted that it violated their guidelines. Nevertheless, NA provided real-time access to these unique URLs, which were intended to be secure. DataSpii exploited Facebook’s practice of making private photos and Messenger attachments publicly accessible via unique URLs.
Some of these activities have been done in violation of the platform policies, creating “coordinated inauthentic behavior”, support or attacks. In late July 2018, Facebook suspended the personal profile of InfoWars head Alex Jones for 30 days. Facebook pledged to remove InfoWars content making the claim, although InfoWars videos pushing the false claims were left up, even though Facebook had been contacted about the videos. The story was subsequently picked up by other news outlets such as the New York Daily News, PinkNews, and LGBTQ Nation.


