While our cognitive prowess literally has no match, the way we have used it at times makes for a grim reality. You see, time and time again, humans have tried putting their interests over everyone else’s, so when you combine such a tendency with all the power we have at our disposal, the resulting scenarios will never paint a good picture. Hence, in a bid to better protect ourselves, the world introduced dedicated regulatory bodies within each and every area. This move dramatically altered the landscape, as all of a sudden, everything looked more organized than ever before. However, the unrest is going to kick in again, and it will return on the back of technology’s arrival. Alongside all the great things that it did, technology also gave these rule breakers a chance to hide their misdoings in the easiest manner possible, therefore causing some big challenges for the governing forces. In fact, this freefall will only get worse over time, but fortunately enough, we are now witnessing a much-awaited recovery. With the regulators getting more and more tech savvy, their attempts to gauge any inconsistencies have grown better by a significant margin, and that is piling up all the pressure on Big Tech companies. The same was evident in Meta’s latest decision.
Meta has officially decided to prohibit users from sharing “publically available” residential addresses. The decision does a lot to follow up on the Oversight Board’s recommendations for improving privacy standards; most notably company’s handling of private residential information. While Meta already had a policy against sharing of someone’s home address, there was barely any actionable element to it. Furthermore, the company also used to make an exception for publically available addresses, which were basically the ones that were shared by more than five news outlets. However, this exception would eventually pave the way for various privacy-related issues such as doxxing, thus prompting Meta to shake things up.
Beyond the said amendments, Meta announced a new approach for assessing pictures of private homes. According to certain reports, the social media giant won’t take any action, if the used picture actually has a connection to some news story. Notably enough, the stated response won’t be applicable when a picture is being shared for the purpose of organizing protests.
“As the board notes in this recommendation, removing the exception for ‘publicly available’ private residential information may limit the availability of this information on Facebook and Instagram when it is still publicly available elsewhere,” Meta wrote. “However, we recognize that implementing this recommendation can strengthen privacy protections on our platforms.”
At present, Meta is actively trying to simplify the process of reporting privacy violations. Apart from it, the company is also engaging with external organizations such as ‘National Network to End Domestic Violence’ to bolster overall user support.
