Facebook just can’t catch a break.
Facebook just can’t catch a break. After the social media platform confirmed it scans all the messages, photos and links that people share on its Messenger app while chatting, Facebook has now admitted it has been secretly deleting messages sent out on Messenger by founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. A new TechCrunch report, that cites three independent sources, suggests old Facebook messages sent by Zuckerberg have « simply vanished from their Facebook inboxes while their own replies to him conspicuously remain. » Affected messages no longer appear in Facebook’s download your information tool as well, the report adds.
This was done for corporate security, according to Facebook. « After Sony Pictures’ emails were hacked in 2014 we made a number of changes to protect our executives’ communications. These included limiting the retention period for Mark’s messages in Messenger. We did so in full compliance with our legal obligations to preserve messages. »
The revelations go on and prove, while users can’t remove or delete Facebook messages from the inboxes of people that they sent them to, Facebook can. It can of course do it, because it can but Facebook’s argument behind doing it, isn’t all that convincing. While security concerns are alright, Facebook never publicly disclosed the removal of these messages until now that is. Facebook went about doing it secretly, and the fact that its own terms of service don’t cover the company removing content from accounts unless it violates community standards, cooks up an entirely different theory. Did messages that Zuckerberg sent out — and then covertly deleted — were in violation of standards that he himself has set for the company? And if not, why was there a need, to delete them in the first place?
Clearly Zuckerberg has a lot to answer on his platter, and every day, the list seems to grow only longer. While he has admitted that curing all issues that Facebook has got itself into will take years, but what about all the other issues that keep creeping up each day? Clearly, there’s lot of work to be done, and it would really help if Facebook and particularly Mark Zuckerberg is more transparent, going forward. Zuckerberg has after all also admitted or rather claimed that he is the best man for leading Facebook, which means he’ll really need to pull his socks up. ASAP.
Facebook has been in the eye of the storm over privacy concerns after an upstart voter-profiling company, called Cambridge Analytica, was allegedly found to have harvested more than 50 million user profiles on Facebook with the help of academic researcher Aleksandr Kogan. Without any consent from users. It was a data breach like no other.
Cambridge Analytica has been suspended from Facebook, pending further information and Facebook is apparently working to better its security and privacy game by offering new set of tools that will supposedly make things easier for end-users and difficult for miscreants looking to exploit their data. That said Zuckerberg also said it’s going to take years for it to mend the damages that ensued in the aftermath of the breach. Facebook still isn’t calling it a breach though. Rather, a breach of trust, which is why it’s working round the clock — now — to ensure such a thing doesn’t happen again.
