While Europe has just passed the Digital Services Act, Meta (Facebook) engineers warn of a very troubling moment: the company in 2022 simply cannot say where all user data comes from and where it is stored (physical data center). ), so it is difficult or even impossible to determine which jurisdiction this data depends on. The data infrastructure of social networks and meta-applications is designed under the auspices of the so-called “open borders” principle. Meta’s systems receive, store, and consolidate user data from a variety of sources, which may or may not be under the control of Meta (in the case of third parties). After the data is consolidated, it is currently impossible to determine if all of this data comes from Facebook, from another network. social, online stores and other advertising trackers. In the report, the firm’s engineers are concerned about this choice in a context that seems to completely contradict the current infrastructure axiom that Mark Zuckerberg’s firm has held to so far.
Facebook technically cannot protect your data as required by the European Union.
In particular, one can read: “we do not have an adequate level of control or ability to explain comment our systems use data, and as a result, we cannot make policy changes in a controlled manner or respond to external commitments such as “we will not use data X for purpose Y”. And yet, this is now exactly what regulators are asking of us, which increases the risk of errors and misstatements,” the report explains. Therefore, the engineering team is proposing a new system called the Purpose Policy Framework (PPF), which will allow important information to be added to user data to provide some traceability. But on please already note that this system only deals with data directly managed by Facebook, without worrying about data generated/collected/used by third parties. The whole question is whether this system will be effective enough to allow Facebook to comply with laws outside the US. And even to find out whether the technically considered system will be so easy to implement in a company that already has a gigantic base of several billion users around the world – and even more so data that will need to be properly labeled.
