Narrative: Facebook Threatens Privacy

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    WhatsApp ‘enterprise’ platform for businesses already in app – Business Insider (Jan 12, 2017)

    The reporting here is based on a Twitter account that claims to be looking into WhatsApp’s code to find hints about what the app’s future business features might look like. Facebook has already said it wants to take WhatsApp in a similar direction to Messenger, with more hooks for businesses to communicate with users manually and through bots, and these would appear to be early signs of that happening in practice. WhatsApp is a challenging property for Facebook in this respect, because it has always eschewed advertising, and anything that smacks of that direction will likely be poorly received by its users, so Facebook is going to have to tread even more carefully than usual as it pursues this strategy. On the other hand, Facebook didn’t spend $22 billion to buy WhatsApp just to shut off its only revenue stream – this was always inevitable.

    via WhatsApp ‘enterprise’ platform for businesses already in app – Business Insider

    Facebook Doesn’t Tell Users Everything It Really Knows About Them – ProPublica (Dec 27, 2016)

    The headline doesn’t do the focus of the article justice – the point the article makes is that Facebook buys in offline data sources to supplement the data it collects itself, to create a fuller picture of its users when it comes to targeting ads. It isn’t transparent with its users about this, however, which some consumer advocacy groups find bothersome. The fact is, this data is gathered and used pervasively throughout the consumer marketing industry, but it’s a different flavor of data gathering and targeting from what we’re used to with Facebook.

    via Facebook Doesn’t Tell Users Everything It Really Knows About Them – ProPublica

    Facebook kills off exact location sharing in Nearby Friends, adds “Wave” | TechCrunch (Dec 22, 2016)

    In a world in which it seems threats to privacy get steadily stronger over time, this is an unusual retrenchment. Facebook will now share less detailed information in its Nearby Friends feature, though arguably to make the feature more appealing rather than out of any sense of altruism. It’s an interesting example of dialing back user data sharing to win user trust.

    via Facebook kills off exact location sharing in Nearby Friends, adds “Wave” | TechCrunch

    Government requests for Facebook user data up 27 percent in first half of 2016 | TechCrunch (Dec 22, 2016)

    As more and more communication takes place on online platforms, law enforcement agencies will inevitably shift their data gathering to those platforms too, and we’re seeing this play out here. The more data these platforms have on us, of course, the more meaningful that is, and Facebook is a treasure trove.

    via Government requests for Facebook user data up 27 percent in first half of 2016 | TechCrunch