Members of Congress on Tuesday requested a briefing with Facebook over allegations that the social network potentially misled users who discussed their medical conditions in “closed” groups that they believed to be private and anonymous. But Facebook says users who shared information in these groups should have understood that the social network “is not an anonymous platform.”
Members of Congress on Tuesday requested a briefing with Facebook over allegations that the social network potentially misled users who discussed their medical conditions in “closed” groups that they believed to be private and anonymous. But Facebook says users who shared information in these groups should have understood that the social network “is not an anonymous platform.”
In an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Representative Frank Pallone, Jr., chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Jr. and Representative Jan Schakowsky, chair of the Consumer Protection and Commerce Subcommittee, questioned the social network’s privacy practices regarding its handling of closed groups dedicated to medical issues.
The committee’s letter comes in response to a consumer complaint filed with the Federal Trade Commission in December and publicly released this week that claims the personal information of Facebook users in closed groups may have been made available to companies and individuals who shouldn’t have had access to it. The letter explains that, according to the complaint, users in these groups shared information “about substance use disorders, about the challenges of parenting transgender children, HIV status, and past history of sexual assault.
