Leaked document indicates Facebook has little insight into how user data is handled
Privacy engineers on Facebook’s Ad and Business Product team wrote the report last year, intending it to be read by the company’s leadership. It detailed how Facebook could address a growing number of data usage regulations, including new privacy laws in India, South Africa and elsewhere.
Facebook’s main obstacle to tracking down user data appears to be the company’s lack of “closed-form” systems, the report states. In other words, the company’s data systems have “open borders” that mix together first-party user data, third-party user data and sensitive data.
“This bottle of ink is a mixture of all kinds of user data You pour that ink into a lake of water … and it flows … everywhere. 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?”said the question of where data goes inside the company is"broadly speaking, a complete shitshow."
The authors state that Facebook previously had"the 'luxury' of addressing [new privacy regulations] one at a time," like the EU’s GDPR and the