In light of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Mark Zuckerberg had no choice but to admit what at least everyone knows or suspects.
And so we learned that Facebook controls all the private messages we send to Messenger, automatically scanning them for links and images, so that they are not violated, says Facebook's terms of use.
Zuckerberg confirmed the incident during an interview with Vox publisher Ezra Klein. He said that his staff called him to inform him that the Facebook algorithm caught some messages in Messenger with photos and material from the ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, when it hit red.
"In this case, our systems detected exactly what was going on," Zuckerberg said. "We stopped these messages and they did not circulate." A spokesman for Messenger told Bloomberg, however, that he was not using the message data for advertising purposes, but instead was directing the software to block offensive content.
However, due to the uproar and outcry, both Erin Egan (Vice President of Facebook Data Security) and Ashlie Beringer (Vice President of the General Board) announced that the network will take "additional measures" to adequately inform its users. for how their content is used.