An internal document written by Facebook engineers reveals that the social network does not know how to manage the data of its users. In particular, it reveals that Facebook does not have “an adequate level of control” to comply with confidentiality measures.
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After child abuse that is not properly moderated, Facebook is at the heart of a new controversy. This time, it concerns the privacy of its users. The escape of a internal document written by social network engineers reveals that it is unable to handle much of its users’ personal data.
Privacy engineers from Facebook’s Ad and Business Product team authored the report last year. We do not know if it has been read by the management of Meta, which is the parent company of Facebook. In any case, the report describes a social platform that does not master the management of personal data. A rather worrying finding for a platform bringing together approximately 1.9 billion users.
Facebook struggles to comply with numerous user privacy regulations
In fact, the document of the engineers of Facebook describes how the social network could respond to regulations on data use. Countries like India and South Africa have effectively adopted new data usage laws with which Facebook must comply.
According to the engineers, we do not have an adequate level of control and explainability over how our systems use data, and therefore cannot confidently make controlled policy changes or external commitments such as ‘we will only use not data X for purposes Y’ “. Nevertheless, ” this is exactly what regulators expect of us, increasing our risk of errors and misrepresentations “warn the engineers.
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Managing data on Facebook is like pouring a bottle of ink into a lake and trying to get the ink back
Apparently this data management issue is caused by the use of “open” systems. These mix proprietary user data, third-party user data, and sensitive data. There is a lack of “closed” systems so as not to mix data. The engineers used an interesting metaphor to describe how complicated data tracking is on Facebook.
According to them, it’s like pour a bottle of ink into a lake and try to put the ink back in the bottle. « This ink bottle is a mix of all kinds of user data (3PD, 1PD, SCD, Europe, etc.). You pour that ink into a lake of water (our open data systems; our open culture)…and it flows…everywhere. How do I put this ink back in the bottle? How do you organize it again, so that it only flows to the authorized places of the lake? A Facebook employee did not hesitate to denounce this problem more directly. For him, the management of data in Facebook’s systems is a ” shitshow “, which translates to ” shit show ” in French.
Source : Engadget
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