Facebook’s Anti-Surveillance Policy: Sincere Shift Or Publicity Stunt?

Facebook has been one of the biggest targets of criticisms pertaining to breach of user privacy by collecting personal information and then selling it for ad revenue. Now, the social media site is implementing a new policy that is effectively scolding third-party developers from doing exactly this. Although it may stop companies from violating the privacy of users, Facebook is still the biggest offender with regards to the kind of surveillance it claims it is against.

According to the post that Facebook’s Deputy Chief Privacy Officer Rob Sherman wrote about the changes, he explains that the new rules are meant to prevent developers from using the data they gathered in order to create programs that will then be used for surveillance. It would seem that Facebook has always been against the practice but never quite said it explicitly.

“Our goal is to make our policy explicit," the post reads. “Over the past several months we have taken enforcement action against developers who created and marketed tools meant for surveillance, in violation of our existing policies; we want to be sure everyone understands the underlying policy and how to comply."

While Facebook is busy trying to convince the world that it just did them a favor, Gizmodo is more than a little skeptical that this is the case. One of the biggest reasons for why surveillance tools on the social media platform are so problematic, to begin with, is how the data would often end up in the hands of police officers or other government bodies.

The only thing that the newly revamped policies will do, at least in the case of government surveillance, is prevent third-party companies from giving up user information. This is quite unnecessary since Facebook is perfectly happy to oblige police and other government agencies with the personal data that it has collected from users.