On Christmas 2012, Randi Zuckerberg posted a photo of her family to her private Facebook page. Randi, the sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and a former senior Facebook executive, soon found that her photo had leaked to the general public and had been tweeted to thousands of people. Randi tweeted Callie Schweitzer, Director of Marketing at VOX Media, who had first posted the photo to Twitter: “Not sure where you got this photo. I posted it friends only on FB. You reposting it to Twitter is way uncool.” This incident came only 11 days after Facebook had released new privacy controls meant to help Facebook users understand who is able to see the content they post.

In late 2011, Facebook settled a suit filed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that charged Facebook with deceiving its customers about privacy issues since 2009. (The FTC regulates companies that take credit card information from consumers.) Facebook claimed that it would not share personal information with advertisers, that third-party applications would only be given the information they needed to function properly, that no one could access photos or videos from deleted accounts, and—perhaps most relevant to Randi Zuckerberg’s experience—that information posted to an individual’s Friends List would remain private. The FTC found that the company had not delivered on any of these claims. 

As part of the settlement, Facebook agreed to stop these practices until they had a better disclaimer and opt-out procedure. Mark Zuckerberg also issued a statement saying that, over the course of the previous 18 months, Facebook had introduced 20 new tools to address these and other privacyrelated concerns. However, by August 2012, the FTC had launched a new investigation into Facebook privacy practices. Facebook had partnered with Datalogix—a company that collects credit card purchasing information, such as where users are shopping and what they buy. Facebook users were included in Datalogix advertising research although they were not informed of this. Moreover, if Facebook users did, in fact, find out about the use of their private data, they could only opt out of the research by going to the Datalogix homepage.

In September 2012, Facebook acquired Instagram, a social media application that allows users to upload photos for long-term storage and sharing. Instagram boasted a user-base of 100 million users. On December 17, 2012, Instagram posted a privacy notice claiming the right to sell all photographs posted to its site without compensation to the user. The company further claimed that it could sell any other metadata associated with the photo, such as usernames, gender, addresses, mobile phone number, and email addresses—all information users were required to provide when setting up an account.

Instagram asked users who did not agree with the notice to remove their accounts within a few weeks. The new policy would go into effect for all users who accessed their accounts after January 19, 2013. On December 18, 2012, Instagram clarified that, despite the notice, the company had no current plans to sell users’ photos.

A: how many privacy issues in this case and what are they?

B: Describe a privacy issue so serious that it would cause you to stop using Facebook and Instagram.