To curb the spread of misinformation and also to know how social media will impact the democracy during elections, Facebook has urged its users to deactivate their accounts for 1-6 weeks for which it is ready to pay anything between $10- $20 on a weekly basis.
The deactivation is been targeted during the 2020 US Presidential Elections and might be implemented at the beginning of October this year.
A source from the tech giant said that the deactivation request will also work in the other way for FB, as the cyber threat of ‘Account Hijack’ will be eliminated on a permanent note if all goes as per the plan. However, a tweet from Facebook posted on Thursday says that it will hold a survey on this note in the second week of September’2020 for three days and only those who get an invitation may speak up their mind on the payment rates offered as compensation for deactivating accounts.
Mark Zuckerberg led company aims to include around 200,000 users in the survey only with their willingness to take part.
The plan to deactivate accounts is been studied by a group of engineers at the headquarters of Facebook and is likely to be implemented by the end of September 2020. All the users need to do is to not access their accounts for 1-6 weeks or till the election date of November 3rd, 2020.
Note 1- In July this year, many noted Twitter accounts were hijacked by a hackers group who then urged for donations in cryptocurrency. The latest victim to fall for the scam is Indian Prime Minister Shri Narender Modi Ji, whose Twitter account was hijacked in early hours of September 2nd, 2020.
Note 2- A security analyst from Kaspersky reacted to the news and said that it is just a publicity gimmick as the social media giant wants to show its prominence in influencing the elections by threatening the politicians with “deactivation” threat. Also, as the company earns billions in profits, paying a minute compensation is not a big deal for the tech giant.
Note 3- What if the survey also questions its users on Who will be the next president of US in 2020…because in 2015 FB related company Cambridge Analytica indulged in a similar survey…..aren’t they?
