Facebook Privacy Engineers Admit They Can't Control Where User Data Goes

pcmag.com:

Privacy engineers at Facebook admit they have very little control over where user data collected by the social network goes or what it's used for, describing it like ink flowing into water and going everywhere.

As Vice reports, this revelation comes via a leaked internal Facebook document written by engineers in the Ad and Business Product team and meant to "advise leadership on preparedness, investments and technology plans with respect to inbound regulations." The document is available to read in full online.

Facebook is facing a situation where different governments and regulators around the world are increasingly going to demand the social network restricts user data from being used for specific purposes. What this document reveals is that Facebook can't do that, it simply doesn't have enough control over the data it collects.

As the executive summary explains:

"We do not have an adequate level of control and explainability over how our systems use data, and thus we can’t confidently make controlled policy changes or external commitments such as “we will not use X data for Y purpose.” And yet, this is exactly what regulators expect us to do, increasing our risk of mistakes and misrepresentation."

Clearly Facebook needs to fix this situation, but the document states, "Addressing these challenges will require additional multi-year investment in Ads and our infrastructure teams to gain control over how our systems ingest, process and egest data." In other words, it's going to require fundamental changes to the way in which Facebook's systems function, which will take years to achieve at great cost.

In response to the internal document leak, a Facebook spokesperson told Vice:

"Considering this document does not describe