Facebook Messenger: New Features at the Cost of Privacy

The social media giant, Facebook, has just announced two new additions to their mobile app. Big Likes can now be used to express a greater enjoyment from someone else’s post or content. What is more interesting, however, is the ability to easily record and send a video to any friend on the network. It was already possible to share photos and videos taken previously, but the new change allows to do so while in the middle of typing up a messages, making the process more streamlined. However, the new Facebook Messenger features may yet again come at the cost of privacy. The company’s policy protecting user information has been a growing concern in the past several years.

The new features are a part of the ongoing attempt to improve the platform’s slowly decreasing popularity. Many analysts and journalists are already predicting eventual downfall of Facebook. Digiday reported that the social website is losing among young adults, where it originated from during its first days as a college student networking platform. The company also faces a growing competition from other social networks such as Twitter, used by 43.7 percent of 18 to 25-year-old people back in November 2013. Facebook has even tried to duplicate some of Twitter’s signature elements, like hashtags, albeit without much fanfare.