Meta news came my way, and right off the title confounded me: “Meta’s Oversight Board Urges Facebook and Instagram to Tighten Doxing Rules” …which, isn’t that basically like saying “Meta Urges Parts of Itself to be Less Naive, Asshole-ish”?
(I know: already a tangent!)
Earlier this month, TechCrunch reported in the previously mentioned article that Meta — which owns Facebook and Insta — had urged the two mega social platforms to bolster policies that protect users against doxing. TechCrunch offered a point of clarification (for me) by referring to the title’s aforementioned “oversight board” as an external advisory organization in the text, though. This apparently means that Meta — and thus Facebook and Insta — have had to seek regulatory guidance from an outside org… because lord knows Zuck’s shit show is incapable of doing even approximately the right thing on its own.
(Yep… another tangent!)
TechCrunch Reported on this Big (read: obvious) News!
TechCrunch wrote that, “Facebook requested advice on the [doxing] policy last year, acknowledging that it had difficulty balancing access to public information with privacy concerns. The company now known as Meta’s current policy on sharing private identifying details carves out an exception for cases when that information becomes ‘publicly available…'”
So in other words, if info is publicly available — which, “publicly available” does not also mean “widely known” FYI — then it’s fair game to be posting in a dox-like manner per current Meta standards.
In a move that clearly needed to come from a third party, the oversight board recommended that Meta remove the exception in its Privacy Violations Policy. Meaning, just because something is publicly available doesn’t mean it’s okay to share. Thanks for that insight, Captain Obvious!
TechCrunch continued, stating that: “The board’s recommendations would create a few common sense exceptions, like in the case of sharing an image of a residence that is the focus of a news story or when someone shares a picture of their own home.” (emphasis added)
Herein lies a major problem — that idea of common sense and “common sense exceptions.” It is this writer’s view that nothing should be left open to interpretation, especially not with the guidepost of “common sense.” What’s common and sensical is not universal… But clearly a group/entity that needs to seek external advice in this manner and about this matter isn’t exactly mindful of the nuance infused in such a concept.
I mean… okay? Thanks for the suggestions, Meta’s External Advisory Organization! I wish I was less snarky about this news, but the fact that Meta can’t figure this out on its own is kinda alarming. I guess… props to the external org for telling Meta to shape up?!
Read the article in full here: techcrunch.com/2022/02/08/metas-oversight-board-facebook-and-instagram-to-tighten-doxing-rules
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Erika is a sex positive people watcher (and writer). Email her at erika@ynotcam.com.
Image via Unsplash here.
