A LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF FACEBOOK PRIVACY POLICIES

Facebook has come a long way since its founding by Mark Zuckerberg and others in 2004. From a Harvard website for students, to the world leader in social media, Facebook has changed and grown enormously. Currently, 2.32 billion people are active on Facebook every month. The privacy of information it collects has been under increasing scrutiny. The manuscript examines the volatile Facebook privacy policies from its beginnings in 2005 to present day. The polices were collected via the Internet Archive and represent a selected day from each year from 2005 through 2018. A comprehensive qualitative, linguistics and sentiment analysis on these policies was performed. This review finds significant similarities and differences in Facebook privacy policies over the years. Overall, Facebook privacy policies have become increasingly complex and legalistic, but also more positive in sentiment and more individually oriented. Implications and opportunities for further research are presented.