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Facebook Says It Needs to Collect All Your Data to Protect Against Terrorism and Child Abuse
[...] From Facebook's statement this morning (emphasis ours):
Facebook has always been about connecting you with people and information you're interested in. We tailor each person's Facebook experience so it's unique to you, and we use a variety of information to do this – including the information you include on your profile, news stories you like or share and what other services share with us about your use of their websites and apps. Using information across our services also helps us protect people's safety and security, including, for example, identifying abusive behavior and disabling accounts tied to terrorism, child exploitation and election interference across both Facebook and Instagram.
By the end of Facebook's statement the company leans heavily into the claim that everybody else is doing it, so why can't they—which may be the most terrifying point.
"Every day, people interact with companies that connect and use data in similar ways. And all of this should be–and is–a legitimate area of focus for regulators and policymakers around the world. Yet the Bundeskartellamt is trying to implement an unconventional standard for a single company," Facebook said.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday February 08 2019, @06:03PM
Well, to be fair, they had to come up with some new bogeyman after the old ones were no longer an issue. In olden times, privacy invasion and surveillance was often justified supposedly to maintain things like sexual morality (can't have people having sex outside of marriage, or definitely no "wrong" types of sex), or to maintain patriotism/correct thinking about government (damn Commies and Socialists!), etc.
Every age has its excuses. Drug dealers and money launderers don't come up as much these days as in the past (except over discussions about cryptocurrencies), though terrorists and pedophiles seem the standard excuses for the past couple decades to justify just about anything.