I think the last paragraph is the most important one:
>"Facebook clarified that it will still work with companies like Experian and Acxiom in order to measure ad performance and provide metrics, although it will also be conducting a review of those ongoing relationships."
These FB announcements the last couple of days seem little more than grooming for possible upcoming appearances in front of legislators. They can point to this and the surface-level app redesign and say they've "already" taken efforts to shore up concerns.
I think most people have no idea that FB and Experian - a consumer credit reporting agency have been sharing data at all. Where was that explained in the app redesign that was trotted out yesterday?
It's worth reading how Acxion who facing similar pressures recently handled their own superficial offering of "transparency":
> grooming for possible upcoming appearances in front of legislators
Facebook knows what pretty much everyone in the Valley knows; 90%+ of the politicians in this country (and likely most other countries) don't have the technical education to understand just how little Facebook is actually doing to fix the problem.
I would really like to know what data they are sharing with Experian.
If its just helping them target ads then they should explain why Experian is allowed to continue, but I am more concerned with Experian being "creative" with Facebook's tools and incorporating some of that into their credit scoring models.
I am guessing it is something even worse. Like, Experian uses Facebook data to adjust credit scores. And some time in the near future your credit score will suck if you don't have a social media footprint.
Sure, but people already go to extreme lengths to groom their credit histories, at least this method doesn't require spending money. Just as an example, I have a friend who has an account that's older than her that her parents made for the sole purpose of bumping her score.
Pulling data from more sources doesn't change the underlying problem of faceless businesses assigning people scores based on vague unknown requirements.
Sure but anyone judging your credit score isn't looking for that. "Paying off debt but not too quickly" or "Carrying enough debt to accrue interest without defaulting" are more likely what they would want to see.
>"I would really like to know what data they are sharing with Experian."
Sure, I think most people who use FB would. Zuckerberg has been talking a big game lately about regaining user's trust and how "we have a lot of work to do." If he were at all serious about those sentiments FB would begin providing meaningful disclosure about what data they were collecting and sharing with which third parties.
They would also update their privacy settings and give user's the ability grant or deny access to the sharing of that data with third parties. Similar to how users now have to grant apps permissions to access contacts, the camera etc.
FB's desire to continue operating in total secrecy and simultaneously court public trust seems to be the very height of cognitive dissonance.
> Zuckerberg has been talking a big game lately about regaining user's trust and how "we have a lot of work to do." If he were at all serious about those sentiments FB would begin...
> FB's desire to continue operating in total secrecy and simultaneously court public trust seems to be the very height of cognitive dissonance.
Is it cognitive dissonance if they're self-consciously lying?
My take is nothing's fundamentally changed for them, and "the work they have to do" is distracting people until the spotlight's off, making only marginal changes in the process.
Take this change, for instance, it may have nothing to do with user privacy and everything to do with pushing advertisers to FB's own targeting platform more heavily.
That's why I put the word creative in there. If you ran the segmentation one way and ran some ads and then uploaded some data into Facebook and ran the same ads, you could infer what effect your added data had when combined with Facebook's data, possibly to the individual level if the person interacted with the ads/converted to a paying customer.
I don't have a specific use case because its not my industry, but Facebook's approach seems to be to give people tools they know can be misused in creative ways but then frown sternly if they get misused, so it wouldn't be out of character.
What wait? Why would Experian send data to facebook? I thought facebook already knew enough. ALSO WTF Experian can sell my data about me to the highest bidder?
It is used for income targeting in ads. Sorry about the lousy/spammy reference, but it's the best explanation I could find.
From [1]:
"Partner categories are, importantly, only available in specific areas. Acxiom provides data from Australia, France, Germany, the US, the UK, and Japan. CCC Marketing provides data from Japan. Epsilon provides data from the US. Experian provides data from Australia, Brazil, the UK, and the US. Oracle provides data from the UK and the US, and Quantium provides data from Australia."
Ya, that's exactly what these data brokers do. Its anonymous(when in FB ecosystem) to the end advertisers but they sell your data to ad platforms or advertisers.
I still don't see anyone addressing the elephant in the room: corporate, extensive personal data harvesting must stop.
If this is Facebook's business model, Facebook must go.
No one would allow the kind of pervasive intrusion put in practice by Facebook (and others) by the part of governing bodies, the police or the military. So why are we still allowing marketing companies to do it? Why are willing to let credit, insurance and health companies access our data in order to know us better than ourselves? When is this the price of a "better user experience"? It is disingenuous to say that people simply "agreed to this". No one can expect the average user to fully comprehend the inner workings of the modern web, and to what extent their data is being used, or even to keep up with changing terms of use for every single service.
Some, like Tim Cook, are starting to address the issue but not as directly as one would expect.
The funny thing is FB would be wildly successful without all the nonsense, just make a bit less profit. But this insane obsession with money is what drives companies to act against their ultimate self interest, it is classical short term thinking over long term thinking.
Why are you saying "Facebook must go" rather than "people must stop using Facebook"? The difference between Facebook and the police, military or governing bodies is that those bodies are government bodies created by governmental acts whereas Facebook is a private company that people freely choose to interact with.
People who care about the extensive personal data harvesting are free to stop using Facebook. You say "No one can expect the average user to fully comprehend the inner workings of the modern web" but there is no shortage of people summarizing the salient details for them, and those who hear the summary and choose not to use Facebook are free to do so.
I don't like Facebook and use it rarely. I'm glad they exist so I can check up on my friends.
What you are proposing amounts to increased government control over what kinds of services can be offered in the marketplace. I think you should be more afraid of government control of private interactions. In the US and Europe it's already far too intrusive.
>Why are you saying "Facebook must go" rather than "people must stop using Facebook"?
I say that like I would say "shady credit pushers must go", although I also think people shouldn't resort to such services. Facebook provides a service free of charge but the contract isn't clear: there are consequences that must remain obscure in order to the whole thing work.
I believe it's pretty clear that Facebook depends on people inadvertently permitting systemic surveillance.
> Facebook is a private company that people freely choose to interact with.
Like many other companies that are, unlike Facebook, heavily regulated in their primary activity.
>People who care about the extensive personal data harvesting are free to stop using Facebook.
But Facebook has been collecting data of people outside of Facebook as well. In any case, people have elected representatives to protect them from harm in the meanders of technology concepts they cannot grasp.
> there is no shortage of people summarizing the salient details for them
That is hardly a substitute for regulation. Take the example of the agrobusiness: no one expects lay people to ponder the cost-benefit of many drugs and antibiotics present in food they "freely" choose to eat.
> I think you should be more afraid of government control of private interactions.
I'm not sure about that. Currently I am equally afraid of both.
>In the US and Europe it's already far too intrusive.
I agree. Unfortunately, Europe is becoming nothing more but a meta-corporation. Lobbying being legal in Brussels, common people have no way of matching corporate influence.
That is true, although the whole process has been quite fragmented. I suspect that in many cases (hopefully, not all) the motive behind those inquiries is taxation.
And at the same time, Europe is rolling out eCall, which will make it mandatory for all new vehicles starting next April to have a dedicated system for emergency calls that logs GPS data and that has access to speaker and mic.
Car owners can, in alternative to the basic factory install, choose proprietary systems that may or may not share data with 3rd parties.
Addressing public concerns about privacy, the EU told us not to be concerned, because in EU's opinion this is completely safe.
So imho the EU's position on this is schizophrenic at best.
Legislating the problem away won't work in the long run. The fix we need to the internet and web is technical. Too many people want the data. It's too valuable.
If a credit company doesn't know who you are they will not loan you even one dollar. If an insurance company doesn't know who you are they will charge you the maximum to account for the risk. If a health company doesn't know your data they can't accurately diagnose trends in your health. Still want to play this game?
If a credit card company or health company relies on a social media entity to decide whether to give you credit or to be able to accurately diagnose your health then they have other problems.
None of that needs Facebook.
Still want to play this game?
Credit card companies were extending people credit and doctors were making accurate diagnoses long before the internet came along, they are definitely not a necessity for the functioning of society in ways that really matter.
Yes, I can say that with certainty. Anything a credit card company will do when they have access to aggregate data is done to benefit the credit card company, not the customers. And anything healthcare providers can do when it comes to making diagnoses is either on an individual basis, in which case access to my social media data would not matter or it is part of a study in which case there should be proper controls.
If you wish to argue that there are direct benefits to consumers from either giving credit card companies or health care providers access to your social media data then the the onus is on you to prove this.
That's not how I read OP's comment. I interpreted it as people should not be aggregating data to make decisions about you without your informed consent. Credit companies should be using only the data I provide them in questionnaire form to make decisions; health insurers should only be using my health record to make decisions. They should not be using my social media profile, purchasing history, location data, conversations, pictures, associations etc which I agree with.
Your thesis is that without credit, insurance or health data collection those entities will not be able to function.
The world is a lot larger than just the United States and in other places banks, insurance companies and healthcare providers function just fine even if they do not have the data gathering capabilities that are considered 'normal' in the United States.
So there's what I think of 'that', data collection is not a pre-requisite for any of this.
Easy access to credit the way it runs in the US isn't universal, and most places it is are currently dealing with the same data collection issues.
Partitioning the data and more heavily regulating the credit industry may be part of a solution.
Where do healthcare providers function well with less data than those in the US? I'm not experienced enough with the healthcare industry and nationalization of healthcare data to know, so if you have examples I'd really appreciate it.
The US is about as bad as it gets when it comes to healthcare. Good examples for healthcare run in a way that it does not break the bank and provides a high level of care are Canada and France, other Western European countries to greater or lesser degree depending on how much privatization has been going on.
Seems to me like we're where we are now precisely becuase we've learned what can be done with all that data, and we don't like it.
Your whole argument is based on a misdirected premise anyway. In fact credit reporting and health care are very heavily regulated industries in terms of how that data is stored and what can be done with it. Facebook saw no such regulation, and look where we are.
This is just untrue. In the absence of more specific data, companies with risk-based pricing will price at a rough median within whatever ranges they can establish so that everyone pays the same while still being somewhat profitable for the insurer. They were doing this for hundreds of years before Facebook came along.
More data allows price discrimination so that some people pay more than others, which we tend to think of as good when its based on things like age in life insurance, but which we tend to think of as bad when its based on things like race in life insurance. These companies have repeatedly shown they are unable to self-limit themselves to only considering things we think of as good, and price discrimination is almost never beneficial for consumers in practice, so its worth having a conversation about whether they should be able to consider data like that at all.
> If a health company doesn't know your data they can't accurately diagnose trends in your health.
The only health companies that diagnose are providers. They have been explicitely REJECTING patient-generated data for the longest time because of concerns about poor data. Are your blood-pressure cuff, scale, thermometers, etc. calibrated and regularly tested? Did you take the measures properly? Etc. Now some of that caution is excessive and we're starting to see bridges where patient-generated data is being considered.
But by and large, providers don't want crappy data. Even claims data sent to insurance companies are known to be fudged/imprecise/incorrect and aren't relied on for clinical decision. Even for population health that data is bad (some PH vendors still tried to rely on it but that turned out to be a bad idea).
So Facebook data has zero value to most providers.
> The only health companies that diagnose are providers. They have been explicitely REJECTING patient-generated data for the longest time because of concerns about poor data.
Patient-generated data, both objective and subjective, is frequently relied on by providers for diagnosis (and always has been); where available, provider-collected data is preferred and more heavily weighted in the event of direct contradiction, but providers simply have no practical choice but to rely on patient-generated data.
> Even claims data sent to insurance companies are known to be fudged/imprecise/incorrect and aren't relied on for clinical decision.
Well, yeah, since the provider making the clinical decision provides that data after the fact, of course they aren't going to rely on it. Even if it was perfectly accurate, they would use their own source data from which data would later be extracted selectively to support claims.
Patient-generated data that's been obtained by a clinician interviewing a patient is one thing. I'm referring to patients generating their own data and uploading it into the EHR of their provider.
> Well, yeah, since the provider making the clinical decision provides that data after the fact, of course they aren't going to rely on it.
That hasn't stopped some population health vendors to try to sell products that use claims data to build PH assessment tools. And yes that works about as well as you'd expect. :)
Facebook data is not necessary real, or updated. Me as an example, I have a facebook account which have a fake birthday and never updated my profile data after high school. I still add new friends and communicate on facebook, but I don't interest to add new demographic information in my profile.
What it means is insurance company or credit company does not explicit state how do they use my data to evaluate my price on certain insurance or credit to mortgage. If I applied for mortgage. By some random parameters in the model, I may be deemed not credible to have a mortgage. And I don't even have real profile data except my name, photos, and posts.
On the other side, if some insider knows what parameter contribute success mortgage, they can game the model by adding fake information to the facebook profile, or even sell this information for profit.
Facebook by no mean represent real identity, although it usually does. I don't think it is fair to use facebook information without consent from customer.
I am interested that if facebook states that using facebook will affect your credit history, how many people will still willing to use it?
I might catch some flak for saying this, but as a marketer this is a pretty significant change and will make running campaigns more difficult.
Also, I don’t really see how this does much to protect anyone’s privacy, this mostly just makes running effective campaigns more complicated and expensive. The data is still being collected and sold, now you can’t just get it directly through Facebook anymore.
> I might catch some flak for saying this, but as a marketer this is a pretty significant change and will make running campaigns more difficult.
Excellent.
> Also, I don’t really see how this does much to protect anyone’s privacy, this mostly just makes running effective campaigns more complicated and expensive.
If you don't have access to data you shouldn't have access to that improves privacy. Exchanges leaking data which then gets cached is a huge privacy issue, allowing third parties to link up this data with data they already have is absolutely terrible. Data files in isolation are bad enough, allowing the joining of disjoint datasets is about as bad as it gets when it comes do de-anonymizing people.
> The data is still being collected and sold, now you can’t just get it directly through Facebook anymore.
Good. Not all data will still be available, and hopefully some more of these holes will be closed soon to make it even harder to make running highly targeted campaigns more difficult.
From where I'm sitting the sooner marketeers lose the capability to run targeted campaigns the better, and every little bit helps.
On the plus side: your budgets will go up to reach the same effect so why complain?
I've worked on every single vertical and 3rd party data / Partner Categories is rarely used by big or small advertisers a like.
The cost of the advertising increases i.e. higher CPMs for using this data. I've spent north of $40ml across all digital ads with a large chunk being on $FB and it isn't the main kind of targeting that is used and its the most expensive kind as well.
I am not hugely convinced this will dramatically affect $FB given there are so many other targeting options out there it isn't much of a concern in my eyes just a shame this is one avenue that will now be closed but its one of so many marketers can use.
I don't think it is intended to protect users' privacy, indeed it seems to me that it is against Facebook's interest to protect user privacy from advertisers - the platform is primarily valuable to marketers because of the user data that is available to them.
I think by shutting down the marketplace for 3rd party data, Facebook is allowing it to continue elsewhere but also washing their hands a bit, so next time they will have better optics when explaining themselves to regulators if data misuse hits the headlines again.
I think the pixel and first party data is where the real results come from...the third party data was probably on the chopping block long before this CA story...
It will make some marketers feel less in control...but i actually doubt that data actually warranted the additional costs facebook charged for using it.
> I hope you weren't expecting any sympathy. A camera in our bathroom would also make it easier for you to suggest us a "better" shampoo, but no thanks.
Are you suggesting that I shouldn't be allowed to give companies this data if I choose? Because that's what it sounds like when I read this but I'm not sure, and I'd like to be clear about what you are saying and not make any assumption.
You should be able to give it to them with informed consent. Companies should not allowed to trick you into giving it to them by hiding "consent" deep in some document that no one will ever read.
Its _almost_ like, and tell me if I'm crazy here, that Facebook may prefer making changes that benefit it while _appearing_ as if it were benefiting consumers.
Like surface-level changes that look good in a congressional hearing but actually just raise prices and increase ad-spending to maintain the same result.
I think in 1000 years Google search might be akin to the invention of the wheel in its impact on society. I’m not sure how Facebook will be viewed, but I don’t really see its benefit. I certainly don’t get anything out of the deal.
To a first approximation, every employee at google works in advertising. Google search is at its heart a publishing source for serving ads. If every one in advertising loses their job google search goes away.
> Contact targeting is a LinkedIn Marketing Solutions feature that allows advertisers to upload lists of contacts to include as part of their target audience for ad campaigns. If you have already interacted with a company and provided them with your contact information (e.g. to sign-up for a newsletter or webinar), they may include you in a target audience for a LinkedIn ad campaign using contact targeting.
Twitter's rough equivalent is called "Tailored Audiences," though as far as I know, it relies only on hashed email addresses and device IDs uploaded directly by the advertiser, not data appending companies: https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/ads/audiences/overview
TechCrunch doesn't say exactly what part of Facebook's product will be rolled back - uploading any hashed user lists? hashed user targeting only when done by third-party data appenders? only when based on offline events? - so it's hard to tell how far Facebook is going.
Facebook is still keeping this. If the advertiser provides your info to Facebook they can target you. They are getting rid of the ability to target you based on data Facebook purchases from third parties - e.g. you buy something in a Sephora store, Facebook buys transaction info from your bank/visa/"brokers" and then tags you as "bought beauty in last 30 days", then a brand targets that tag and you see an ad you wouldn't have seen otherwise.
And yes, there's a specific Facebook targeting category for "bought beauty last 30 days", or was before this change.
It is actually not that small. Facebook has a lot of info on what you like but relatively few info on what you buy offline. A lot of that data is kept by credit card/reward card companies, which then sell them to Acxiom and others (how nice of them!)
Which is why I don't have one of those but I make myself no illusions about the grocery company being able to track me anyway based on the bank card used to pay for the groceries.
Everybody has plenty of advertising channels to choose from. If FB suddenly gets more expensive to reach your target customers, the dollars will move elsewhere.
One possible conspiracy... Facebook stock has dropped a bunch, site usage is down 24% and advertisers are leaving left and right... anounce these audience segments will be gone in 6 months but advertisers can A, reach them now and B, build first party audiences off this data by advertising to specific segments just to cookie folks... and the next two earnings calls show a big increase in ad spend!
I wonder if this just means they know so much about people from first-party data they've collected (including their share buttons on other sites) that the additional performance gains from third-party data weren't worth much.
Honestly, I think this is a fallout of third party data being too expensive relative to the increase in performance more than anything else... middleware ad tech and data sellers are a failed experiment that has been a net negative for advertisers, users and publishers..all it did was just enrich some bloated ad tech startups to steal a piece of the pie...its a scam that floated on smoke and mirror attribution models...and advertisers who actually control their budgets have smartened up finally...its artificially propped up by agencies incentivized to spend more and make their clients look good in a powerpoint and colorful excel sheet...without true accountability to REALITY!
I think we will see many more hits to the third party data world and ad tech that promises richer targeting without really serving the users or advertisers by enabling them to deliver better value...versus just paying twice for customers they would have anyways short of the third party selling your customers to your competitors...its a shell game and its finally coming crashing down!!! GOOD RIDDANCE!
This is a fairly major change, and will have some fairly significant impacts on the AdTech industry. I'd go as far as saying this was the first really meaningful fallout from the CA scandal.
I'd hazard a guess that not many ordinary users are even aware that retailers can upload their email addresses into Facebook and create targeting segments from them.
As to what these changes do to the AdTech industry is anyone's guess. 'Onboarding' email addresses is basically LiveRamp's business model.
I highly doubt this had anything to do with CA, outside of some PR timing... third party data is stale and expensive and advertisers were already complaining of costs on FB... this will make it cheaper for mom and pop advertisers and scare away the affiliate marketers mostly.. facebooks owm data and first party audience data is still open season and where the ad dollar shift has been happening anyways...
This was a smart biz decision and CA was just a convenient opportunity to roll out without too much backlash IMHO.
that's not what is being removed. It's 3rd party data that FB is purchasing not, that advertisers are providing through Custom Audiences for Lookalikes.
Facebook is to me a clear case, where missing company values created a huge mess. What are the core values/core beliefs of Facebook? I firmly believe that other than anything else a set of core values determines the long term fate of companies. Of course, it’s not enough to merely have a set of beliefs that you’ve put up nicely on the wall, but, rather, top management must speak and act according to these principles.
I believe this is related to GDPR, which isn't clear in the article.
This is the information from Facebook (via Dennis Yu from Blitz Metrics):
// from Facebook:
Although I have spoken with many of you just today and yesterday, I wanted to make you immediately aware of an update we received to third-party targeting, late this afternoon.
We have a responsibility for the use of data on our platform - and we want to ensure that people have transparency and control over how their information is used. Over the past week, we announced important changes to reduce the amount of data that apps can request from users and ensure that people have more control over their information on Facebook. Now, to build on these efforts, we are going to be more restrictive in the way that we use data for advertising on our platform, particularly as it relates to information from third-party data providers.
Specifically, over the next six months, we will remove the ability to use Partner Categories, a targeting solution that enables third-party data providers to offer their targeting directly on Facebook. While leveraging third-party data is a common industry practice and we've put good protections in place, we believe this step will help improve people's privacy on Facebook.
We understand this may impact your advertising efforts on our platform, and we will work with you through this transition. In an attempt to minimize disruption, we will allow time for you to update your targeting. In light of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union, we have created a timeline to comply with the regulation:
· May 10: After this date, you will no longer be able to create or edit campaign using Partner Categories built on audiences from the UK, Germany, and France; however, they will be allowed to continue running until May 24.
· May 25: We will no longer deliver to Partner Categories built on audiences from the UK, Germany, and France, and these targeting options will no longer be available for use on our platform. You will notified to update any targeting containing impacted Partner Categories before this date.
· June 30: Last day for creating new or editing existing campaigns using non-EU Partner Categories; they will be allowed to run until September 30.
· October 1: All other Partner Categories will no longer be available as targeting options on our platform and we will stop delivering against these audiences. You will be notified to update your targeting by this date.
Protecting people’s information is the most important thing we do. You can expect to hear more from us in the coming weeks as we continue to work to make our platform safer.
Not sure what this really means, but it's impressive how many measures FB is publicly taking that seem to improve the privacy of users. Again, not sure if it really does, but it sure makes it seem like it does.
It's a step in the right direction, but still I don't trust Facebook making a decision like that. In the end they'll just replace it with something else which might turn out even worse than before. You cannot make money selling user data by cutting off data channels to your third party customer base. So, I'm waiting. Off Facebook.
I know it's been tried many times unsuccessfully, but with the benefit of hindsight now would you have preferred to pay a nominal annual fee for the handful of currently free services that you really like?
I realize we're likely too far gone now, but it's fundamentally an issue that we aren't paying for these ad-supported services, so the companies gravitate toward serving the interests of the entities that are paying them.
That's not a justification or reflection of my opinion about privacy and ethics around the use of data, just a thought around removing the problem from the equation all together.
I guess my real question is, if you remove the profit seeking component of the data discussion does the bad behavior completely go away? Definitely interested in other opinions.
Pfff, so? These companies have the data already, and if not, they have long 6 months to get them. This only tells me that Facebook is trying to act as we wish to yet acting as it always did.
I would assume the issue was that they had to give these companies data in order to match up a facebook user with an ID in the third party systems. See, for example, BlueKai's integration documentation: https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/saas/data-cloud/dsmkt/integ...
This won't stop the regulations coming their way. Facebook had the chance to prove they could be trusted but squandered it and may have ruined it for the tech industry. They know this and it's why they hired Washington lobbyists.
This fact is at the heart of what is wrong with non-FLO software and the whole trend of technology today.
I left Apple (previously only a Mac user) several years ago over this. It's not merely the issue of ads (which is not to be understated, ads are ruinous, at the heart of tons of problems). The way power structures work in these non-FLO walled-gardens amount to an effective sabotage of the entire potential for FLO software overall.
Before I went to read the article, I wondered if they would define first and second party here. And they do:
Quote from the article: "In order to leverage the deep pool of data Facebook collects on users, the company mixes information that it obtains from users themselves (Pages a user liked, for instance) with information from advertisers (membership status in a loyalty program, for example) and with data obtained from third party providers."
It is super interesting that they have no terminology at all for data collected via shadow profiles. I propose "zeroth party" data - they are shadow profiles after all. :-)
You know how Facebook keeps saying "we never sell your data"? It was bartering it with data brokers all this time.
The only reason they're even taking this step is because they know there are many other companies that could get just as much if not more data about its users as Cambridge Analytica did from the data brokers that partnered with Facebook.
This would be true especially now that the "cat is out of the bag" so potentially many other malicious groups/rival states could be trying to do the same thing as CA did.
Facebook simply saw the inevitable: Cambridge Analytica multiplied by 100 in its future.
But one question remains: has Facebook made sure that the data brokers deleted all of the FB data, and did they just ask them to "certify" this, as they did with CA in 2015, or did FB audit these companies? (as Zuckerberg committed to do recently with all the companies they suspect of abusing its policies?) Did FB audit Palantir, too, and its use of Cambridge Analytica's data?
>"Facebook clarified that it will still work with companies like Experian and Acxiom in order to measure ad performance and provide metrics, although it will also be conducting a review of those ongoing relationships."
These FB announcements the last couple of days seem little more than grooming for possible upcoming appearances in front of legislators. They can point to this and the surface-level app redesign and say they've "already" taken efforts to shore up concerns.
I think most people have no idea that FB and Experian - a consumer credit reporting agency have been sharing data at all. Where was that explained in the app redesign that was trotted out yesterday?
It's worth reading how Acxion who facing similar pressures recently handled their own superficial offering of "transparency":
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/05/technology/acxiom-lets-co...