Ireland's data protection chief has asked Facebook for an "urgent update" on its plans to integrate the social network's three messaging platforms (WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger).
In a statement published on its website late last week, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) says:
Previous Facebook inter-company data sharing proposals have raised significant data protection concerns and the Irish DPC will seek timely assurances that all of these concerns will be taken into account by Facebook in the further development of this proposal.
Last week, the New York Times reported that Facebook plans to unify the infrastructure of its three separate products. The idea came from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who has long controlled apps whose founders have stepped down.
Facebook a little history:
Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger left Facebook last year due to growing tensions stemming from reduced management and decision-making rights on the platform.
While WhatsApp's founders left Facebook earlier, with Brian Acton leaving in late 2017 and Jan Koum in spring 2018. The two founders and former executives of the platform clashed with Facebook over user privacy and how to monetize the end-to-end encrypted service.
Acton later said that Facebook had asked him to tell European regulators trying to assess whether to approve the 2014 acquisition that it was “really difficult” for the company to merge WhatsApp and Facebook user data.
In this case, Facebook began linking accounts on the two platforms two years after the acquisition was completed. It was later fined $122 million by the European Commission for providing “false or misleading” information during the merger of the companies. Facebook, however, claimed that it had made some unintentional “errors” in the acquisition study it filed in 2014.
Another two years passed and Facebook decided to fully integrate the company's messaging services.
Today:
“We want to create better messaging experiences. People want their messages to be fast, simple, reliable, and private,” a company spokesperson told Techcrunch.
We are working to make most of our messaging services encrypted and are looking at ways to make it easier to reach friends and family on networks.
“As you would expect, there is a lot of discussion as we begin the long process of figuring out all the details of how this will all work,” the spokesperson added, confirming the NYT report.
There will certainly be a lot of details to consider.
For example, a U-turn by WhatsApp in 2015, when it suddenly announced that it would share user data with parent company Facebook (despite saying it would never do so), prompted immediate regulatory intervention.
[su_note note_color=”#ebebeb” text_color=”#271e45″ radius=”2″]Of course the feasibility of the upcoming merging of user data from different platforms could be purely for commercial purposes, which is not mentioned anywhere.[/su_note]
After the 2015 turmoil, Facebook was forced to suspend data flows for marketing in Europe, although it continued to share data between WhatsApp and Facebook for “security and business intelligence” purposes. Thus, the French data monitoring agency, with an official announcement in late 2017, warned the largest social network that these actions lacked any legal basis.
On the other hand, a court in Hamburg, Germany officially banned Facebook from using WhatsApp user data for any purpose.
Early last year, following an investigation into data sharing, UK data watchdogs demanded a commitment from WhatsApp that it would not share personal data with Facebook until the two services decided to do so in a way that complies with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
After all this, what do you think? Facebook's statement that it is trying to evolve its messaging services to make it easier to reach friends on the networks?
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