Facebook Doesn’t Know What It Does With Your Data, Or Where It Goes: Leaked Document – VICE

According to an article in Vice published in late April 2022,

Facebook is facing what it describes internally as a “tsunami” of privacy regulations all over the world, which will force the company to dramatically change how it deals with users’ personal data. And the “fundamental” problem, the company admits, is that Facebook has no idea where all of its user data goes, or what it’s doing with it, according to a leaked internal document obtained by Motherboard.

“We’ve built systems with open borders. The result of these open systems and open culture is well described with an analogy: Imagine you hold a bottle of ink in your hand. This bottle of ink is a mixture 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,” the document read. “How do you put that ink back in the bottle? How do you organize it again, such that it only flows to the allowed places in the lake?” (You can read the full article here)

What does this mean in simple terms for your everyday privacy?

To industry insiders, none of this comes as a surprise. Facebook has long had a reputation for poor internal data governance and lack of focus on privacy controls, so in this sense the story is nothing new.

For you as an everyday user, what this article does is emphasize that, if you care about privacy, you should seek to minimize what you put on Facebook (including Instagram or Whatsapp, which are owned by Facebook) and delete any accounts or information you’re no longer using.