{"id":301565,"date":"2017-03-14T05:00:52","date_gmt":"2017-03-14T05:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=301565"},"modified":"2017-03-14T05:00:52","modified_gmt":"2017-03-14T05:00:52","slug":"facebook-updates-policies-to-prohibit-surveillance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2017\/03\/facebook-updates-policies-to-prohibit-surveillance\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook updates policies to prohibit surveillance"},"content":{"rendered":"
Facebook now explicitly prohibits companies and organizations from using its services for surveillance.<\/p>\n
An update to its policies on both Facebook and Instagram prohibits developers from using “data obtained from us to provide tools that are used for surveillance.”<\/p>\n
Monday’s policy change come on the heels of investigations from the ACLU, which found social media monitoring companies sold their services to law enforcement, who targeted individuals through Twitter (TWTR, Tech30), Facebook (FB, Tech30), and Instagram. The spy tools often disproportionally targeted communities of color.<\/p>\n
Social media surveillance is a growing concern, especially among people who use Facebook and Twitter for activism. At the SXSW Interactive festival on Monday, Matt Cagle, attorney for the ACLU of Northern California, hosted a panel on how law enforcement uses social media tools — and how Facebook’s new policies could help stop invasive data collection.<\/p>\n
“The language does a good job of putting developers on notice that surveillance of user data through Facebook is totally off limits,” Cagle told CNNTech.<\/p>\n
Related: Communities call for more control over police surveillance<\/p>\n
Though Facebook doesn’t define surveillance in its policies, Cagle says that’s not a bad thing. By banning surveillance in general, it lets them broadly apply the policy and future-proofs it, he said.<\/p>\n
Facebook reviews services that use its APIs, and will check both their applications and marketing materials to see if they’re advertising services that could be considered surveillance.<\/p>\n