This meme, sourced from Tumblr, speaks to the ongoing conflicts between Facebook, their privacy policies, and how the government has tried to keep them accountable when they haven’t really done so themselves. Broader information behind Facebook’s numerous scandals goes to show that the public is very well aware of how much information was accessed and sold. This meme builds upon that though by also pointing to the governments’ previous ways of tapping into personal information of its’ citizens. The government was at the forefront of invading privacy through surveillance and still do so to this day under the guise of “national security.” This may very well be true but to a point. Every single conversation that is had most likely is not a threat to national security.
This meme expresses more so than anything that the government “appears” to be concerned with privacy, but is scapegoating it on Facebook because of their scandals too. Avoiding responsibility in accounting for privacy is key to the message of this meme and brings to light the fact that privacy is hard to manage and maintain, whether an entity is a private company or the government itself.
Privacy 