New reporting from Motherboard says that Meta — one of the world's biggest advertising platforms — has “no idea where all of its user data goes.”
A leaked internal document obtained by Motherboard suggests that Meta, whose entire business model pretty much relies on data acquisition, admits its “fundamental” problem is:
- It does not know how much data it collects
- It does not know where it goes, and
- It does not know what happens with it
The company apparently even has a name for this — “data lineage.”
Meta's privacy engineers on the Ad and Business Product team wrote the document last year. In the report, the team both sounds an alarm and calls for Facebook to change the way it handles users' data to avoid running into trouble with regulators in Europe, the U.S., India, and other countries pushing for stricter privacy constraints.
Quoting the document:
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…
SOURCE: Internal Meta document, obtained by Motherboard
In an emailed statement to Motherboard, a Facebook spokesperson denied that the document correctly represents how it handles user data because it has put in place “extensive processes and controls to comply with privacy regulations.”
Meanwhile, an ex-Facebook employee noted that “Facebook has a general idea of how many bits of data are stored in its data centers,” but that “The where [the data] goes part is, broadly speaking, a complete shitshow.”
One privacy expert states that the document allegedly shows that there is no data protection mechanism within Facebook, and that “everything it does to our data is illegal.”
Also mentioned in the leaked report is a new, unreleased product called “Basic Ads,” which is described as a “short-term” response to international regulations. Sources say that “Basic Ads” is an internal codename and that the product will show that Facebook can build advertising that is relevant to users while preserving their privacy.
