Meta Outlines Evolving Protections for Data Privacy Day

Today is Data Privacy Day, and to mark the occasion, Meta has outlined its ongoing investment in data privacy and security. Which has long been a sensitive area for the company.

Indeed, Meta has come under intense regulatory pressure, and it’s responded with a range of measures, which it’s outlined in a new post.

As per Meta:

“Today, as we work to build for the future of human connection, nearly four billion people across the globe use our products and services. We are keenly aware of the incredible opportunity and deep responsibility we have to manage privacy risk for our community; we’re upholding that by investing our vast engineering capabilities into building cutting-edge privacy technology. We are committed to this work as we help shape the future of data protection.”

Meta says that its current privacy infrastructure is due in large part to an agreement that it reached with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) back in 2019. Meta was fined $5 billion for breaches stemming from the Cambridge Analytica incident, in which the CA team posed initially as academic researchers in order to then access and utilize Facebook audience data for targeted political campaigning.

That forced Meta to implement enhanced data protections, and since then, Meta has been much more cautious about how people’s information can be accessed, and who exactly is able to do so.

Meta’s also been forced to align with evolving data protections in Europe, with the EU Commission looking to get ahead of data misuse, and ensure that EU citizens remain in control of how their personal information is used.

The combined enforcement and response efforts have seen Meta greatly improve its data protections, and that, hopefully, will also extend to its newer projects, including AI, AR, and VR initiatives.

And there are concerns here. Just this week, Meta launched a new initiative that will see your Facebook and Instagram information incorporated into its AI chatbot to personalize its responses.

Which makes sense, in terms of capitalizing on Meta’s key market advantage, and providing a better user experience. Meta’s also building massive new data centers to store more and more information to power its next-level pushes, and it does seem concerning that a single corporation can gather and maintain this level of data, on billions of people around the world.

The potential power of that data trove is significant, which is why Meta needs to keep a tight leash on its permissions. But even then, Meta itself has all that information, to use as it sees fit.

It’s good that others can’t access it as freely as they once could, but still, Meta can, and Meta’s also a big business.

There’s not a lot we can do about that, as that’s the advantage of creating such popular platforms, that so many people use. But while Data Privacy Day is a reminder of these initiatives, it’s also a prompt that social apps do have all this data, and that it can be used to influence you, in various ways.