Facebook isn’t known for being a particularly private space. You know how it goes, you sign on and your information from who your auntie is, to whose Facebook page you recently shared can be divvied out to developers, brands and even the police. But not anymore. Both Facebook, and their picture-sharing app Instagram have officially re-worked their policies for third-party developers, meaning using our personal data for surveillance is now banned.
The Facebook post on their Privacy page reads as follows: 'We are committed to building a community where people can feel safe making their voices heard. Our approach involves making careful decisions every day about how we use and protect data at Facebook…Today we are adding language to our Facebook and Instagram platform policies to more clearly explain that developers cannot “use data obtained from us to provide tools that are used for surveillance.” Our goal is to make our policy explicit.’
This change comes after months of investigation from the American Civil Liberties Union of California (ACLU) discovered that the developers Geofeedia used Twitter, Facebook and Instagram data to assist law enforcements in American monitor activity of citizens during protests. The social media sites we all use so regularly has ‘special access to our ‘private’ information and data, including API access and locations.
ACLU also suggested that the tool ‘disproportionately impact communities of colour.’ As the police could ‘easily target neighbourhoods where people of colour live, monitor hashtags used by activists and allies, or target activist groups as ‘overt threats.’ So while this might feel like a positive thing, it’s hard to move past the fact Facebook was openly facilitating movements such as the Black Lives Matter hashtag, while secretly repressing it and passing on such data to law enforcements.
The change has already come into effect, meaning our data is now supposedly ‘secret,’ to developers. Here’s to using Facebook in a more discrete, private way. We hope…
If you did want to make your profile more private - because there are some ways to prevent your data being obtained by third parties within the app itself - here’s how you can.
How to make your Facebook profile more private
1.Click on the padlock icon on the top right, and hit ‘see more settings’ from the privacy tool.
2.On the ‘Who Can See My Stuff’ page you can change your audience, so only your friends can view your posts – and you can limit who ca see your past posts.
3.You can also change who can search for you within the app. Go to ‘Who Can Look Me Up,’ and change the settings for your e-mail, address and phone number to ‘Friends’ – this means people can only search for you if they know your email, address or phone number.
4.And make sure you click ‘no’ for search engine so no one can find you through Google.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.