Facebook has announced new privacy measures following a backlash against the social media platform over how it protects its users’ data.
The movement against the social media platform started when a whistleblower claimed a company called Cambridge Analytica accessed the data of more than 50 million Facebook users and allegedly used it to profile and influence voters for the 2016 US presidential election, which Donald Trump won.
Cambridge Analytica and the Trump campaign denied using the data in this way. Facebook have acknowledged that if the data of its users still existed, for Cambridge Analytica to use it would ‘be a grave violation of Facebook’s policies’.
Mark Zuckerberg also apologised after a few days of the hashtag #deletefacebook doing the rounds, saying what had happened was ‘a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it’.
But now the company has now gone even further, saying it will make privacy tools and settings easier for users to find and change.
In a blog post, Facebook’s chief privacy officer Erin Egan said that many of these new features have ‘been in the works for some time’ but the events of the past week or so ‘underscore their importance’. Here’s what she’s said will change:
- The settings menu will be easier to find. The company have redesigned their settings menu on mobile devices.
- There will be a new privacy shortcuts menu which Facebook says means you can control your data in “just a few taps”. On this section you can make your account more secure (like two-factor authentication), you can control your personal information (by reviewing what you’ve shared and deleting things), you can control the ads you see (by managing the information Facebook use to decide what ads to show you) and you can manage who sees your posts and profile.
- They will introduce a section called ‘Access Your Information’ where you can access and manage posts, reactions, comments and things you’ve searched for and delete anything that you no longer want on Facebook.
- It will be easier to download the data you’ve shared with Facebook. You can now download a secure copy of your data (including photos, contacts and posts) and move it to another service.
- Their data policy will be updated which will apparently ‘better spell out what data we collect and how we use it’.
The company said they will have more updates coming over the next few weeks.
