Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was widely criticized yesterday for failing to answer many of the questions put to him by the European Parliament.
He promised written answers to these, and some have been provided, but more than half of the unanswered questions remain so …
The Q&As were published on the European Parliament website.
Of the questions that were answered, many were vague, often failing to provide a yes or no answer to yes or no questions. For example:
One answer did give a startling insight into the scale of the fake accounts problem, the company saying it blocks ‘millions’ every day.
The website describes the responses as ‘a first set of replies,’ suggesting we’ll see more answers later, but it seems a rather chaotic approach.
While Facebook has not extended new European-standard privacy standards to users in the US and elsewhere, the company is asking global users to review their privacy settings. You should receive an alert on Facebook within the next week or so.
You can make choices about three things:
- How ads are targeted to you
- What sensitive info you share (eg. religious and political views)
- Whether you permit face recognition to be applied to photos of you
Note that you can’t opt out of targeted ads altogether, only limit the data sources used. And the protections offered in the US fall short of those now offered within Europe.
