San Francisco – Most of Facebook’s U.S. users have remained loyal to the social network despite revelations that a political consultancy collected information about millions of accounts without owners’ permission, a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Sunday showed.
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Facebook has faced pressure from regulators, privacy advocates and shareholders since it said in March that political consultant Cambridge Analytica wrongly obtained personal data through a quiz app connected to Facebook. U.S. lawmakers grilled Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg for two days on the matter.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll adds to other indications that Facebook has so far suffered no ill effects from the episode, other than a public relations headache.
The national online poll, conducted April 26-30, found that about half of Facebook’s American users said they had not recently changed the amount that they used the site, and another quarter said they were using it more.
The remaining quarter said that they were using it less recently, had stopped using it or deleted their account.
That means that the people using Facebook less were roughly balanced by those using it more, with no clear net loss or gain in use.
Among all adults, 64 percent said they use Facebook at least once a day, down slightly from 68 percent who said so in a similar poll in late March, shortly after news organizations reported Cambridge Analytica’s activity.
Full poll results: https://tmsnrt.rs/2JWt0Eq
Analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities said Facebook is lucky the data apparently has been used only for political ads and not more nefarious purposes.
“I have yet to read an article that says a single person has been harmed by the breach,” he said. “Nobody’s outraged on a visceral level.”
Facebook declined to comment. Its executives have apologized for the data-harvesting, pledged to investigate others who collected Facebook user data and reduced the amount of data available to similar app developers now.
The Cambridge Analytica scandal broke on March 16, sparking interest online in the hashtag #deletefacebook.
In its first quarter results, however, Facebook said the number of monthly users in the United States and Canada rose to 241 million on March 31 from 239 million on Dec. 31, growth that was roughly in line with recent years.
According to the poll, more Facebook users said they knew how to guard their personal information on the site than users of other social media platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr.
It found that 74 percent of Facebook users said they were aware of their current privacy settings, and 78 percent said they knew how to change them.
In comparison, 60 percent of Instagram users said they knew their current privacy settings and 65 percent said they knew how to change them. And 55 percent of Twitter users knew their privacy settings, and 58 percent knew how to use them.
Despite their understanding of Facebook’s privacy settings, only 23 percent of its users said they have “total control” over the information they store on the platform. Another 49 percent said they have “some control,” and 20 percent said they had “no control.” The remaining 9 percent said they do not know how much control they have.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in English throughout the United States. It gathered responses from 2,194 adults, including 1,938 Facebook users, 1,167 Twitter users and 1,237 Instagram users. It has a credibility interval of 3 percentage points, meaning that the results could vary in either direction by that amount.
I never know why people in the know are surprised, most people know as soon as they get on the internet for anything you are tagged for something. I hope they didn’t think that most people are that innocent or stupid that they don’t get it. What I am surprised is that the people in charge or their anti people are surprised about the response of the users. We Know too bad they don’t.
The whole Cambridge debacle is silly fake news . So no suprise . But hey isn’t it a fact that Cambridge abused FB data . Yes but what did they do already with that data ? And what data did they get ? So the found out that a guy named John smith ( maybe not even his real name ) attends a church that leans towards trump principals . They went to the church and hung a # maga sighn and then also sent some ads to john smith . John smith x those ads like I do on vin and never paid much attention . This is as far as they got . Many claim they never even used the data at all .
This whole thing is much ado over nothing . Nothing happened but if it discredits trump somehow then it’s a scandal
True facts but hyped up stories and scandals . Fake news at its peak .