How frequently do you update your Facebook status and browse Instagram? Regularly?

Then this is the article for you. How Facebook is Using Big Data are synonymous phrases that have acquired significance in the modern world. But what is it exactly? And exactly how are they related?

Big data refers to raw data that is too huge, fast, or complex to process using traditional methods. It is possible to access and store vast amounts of data for examination over a prolonged period of time. You can examine a “flashback” of posts, likes, and photographs on Facebook, such as on your birthday or the anniversary of when you became friends with someone. As a result, you have seen Facebook’s utilisation of Big Data in its services.

According to a McKinsey analysis, businesses with over 1,000 workers stored 200 terabytes of consumer data in 2009. Consider the volume and increase of data received by social media networks since that time. It is hard to keep up with the current deluge of tweets, Facebook likes, and other social media data on the Internet.

Innovation and cost-cutting can be realized through extensive social media participation. Companies working in a wide variety of industries are using social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to market, promote, and even sell their products and services.

Facebook is the most popular social networking site in the world, with over two billion monthly active members. By October 2019, Facebook expects to have over 183 million users in the United States alone. Facebook’s market capitalization of about $475 billion ranks it outside of the world’s top 100 publicly traded firms. Along with Google, Facebook may be the only corporation with this level of granular customer insight. The more Facebook users there are, the more information they collect. Facebook has made significant investments in its data collecting, storage, and analytical capabilities, but its work does not stop there. 

Facebook uses a variety of tactics, in addition to analysing user data, to develop a better knowledge of its users. For instance:

• Facebook uses tracking cookies to track its users’ Internet activity. This means that Facebook may track the websites that users visit while logged in to the social network.
• Face recognition and image processing technologies are among Facebook’s most recent investments. Image data from Facebook users can be used to track individuals throughout the Internet and on other Facebook profiles.
• Facebook uses face recognition and image processing to suggest people to tag in photos.
• Popularity Research: Recent research shows that analysing Facebook Likes can properly predict a variety of extremely sensitive individual characteristics. Your Facebook Likes habits, according to Cambridge University and Microsoft Research, can predict your sexual orientation, level of life happiness, IQ and emotional stability, religion, alcohol and drug usage, and relationship status.

What does Facebook say about Big Data?

“Big Data is critical to the company’s existence,” says Ken Rudin, Facebook’s head of analytics. Hadoop is an open-source technology that solves problems by clustering low-cost servers; Facebook relies on a massive Hadoop installation “He goes on. Facebook’s own hardware is being developed for this reason. Facebook makes use of a variety of Big Data technologies, including Hadoop.

Recent changes to how it tracks consumer behaviour have heightened concerns. Facebook recently improved its monitoring tools to track how long a user “hovers” their cursor over various portions of the website. It was alleged last month that this information is put into the algorithms that select the advertisements we see. The Data Science team at Facebook is in charge of the company’s data strategy. It is standard practice for them to post updates on fresh insights acquired from analysing the site’s millions of visitors’ behaviour.

The team has created methods for accurately predicting people’s IQ, political opinions, and emotional stability. They can also anticipate whether a user’s relationship status will change from “single” to “in a relationship” weeks in advance.

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All of this helps Facebook sell more targeted adverts, which is a positive development. Generally, advertising for items that are relevant to your interests is advantageous. Worryingly, non-democratic governments may use this information for their own ends. Using social media, would they be able to hunt down opponents and even manipulate their emotions?

What would happen if Facebook’s database was breached?

Marketers and many Facebook users are aware that the social media giant collects user data via third-party apps and browsing patterns. This information is one of the main reasons why Facebook outperforms its competitors in terms of targeted and trackable digital advertising activities. Facebook has approximately 2 billion monthly active users, generating a large amount of data. In 2014, a researcher collected data from users who took personality tests and their friends via the app “thisisyourdigitallife.” 

The researcher had informed Facebook that he planned to use the data for academic purposes.

The programme has been downloaded 270,000 times, and all of those users have given their consent to the collection of their personal information as well as the information of their contacts. Because of this, the app was able to collect the personal information of over fifty million users. It was estimated that there were 87 million individuals in all. This presents a problem since many users were not told of how their data was collected and utilised, and others were not even aware that the programme existed. This was a problem because it was a problem because many users were not informed. After some time, Cambridge Analytica was able to obtain access to this material through the researcher. 

Donald Trump, former US president engaged Cambridge Analytica for his 2016 US presidential election campaign. The commercials that Cambridge Analytica ran focused on voters who were on the fence. As a direct consequence of this, Facebook is currently being investigated for a data breach that may have played a role in the election victory of Donald Trump. The White House issued an executive order in 2021 that stated, and we quote, “We need more than simply regulations to fix this problem.