Technological mediation of social interaction and the risks of its instrumentalization. The case of the Facebook platform

Online Social Networks (OSNs) have become inescapable mediators of social interaction dynamics. Platforms such as Facebook have grown integrating services that turn them into ecosystems of leisure, consumption and business in practice essential for a third of the human population. Based on a contextualized study of known security breaches and incidents between 2014 and 2018, my work analyzes the risks of a large-scale instrumentalization of Facebook by private and state actors under a triple hypothesis: (1) such risks worsened or materialized largely as a result of the design and features implemented in the Facebook platform; (2) those features were closely linked to its core business, once defined and successfully exploited; and (3) the policy of acquisitions of companies or services from third parties -Instagram and WhatsApp, among others- reinforced its orientation as a global service under profitability criteria, in detriment of the guarantees for users' privacy and the platform's reliability. Among other results, some aspects linked to the design/management of OSNs with broad social implications are identified, and would require substantial adjustments in the regulatory framework.