Facebook has updated its policies, now forbidding anyone from using its data for surveillance purposes, after ACLU report released in October found that Facebook, Twitter and Instagram provided feeds of user data to a social-media monitoring program.The data was used by police to track racially charged protests in California and Baltimore, all in the United States.
While Facebook provides developers access to public feeds that are used to monitor trends, the developers on the other hand, created monitoring tools marketed to law enforcement agencies to track activities on the social network.
The new policies update was as a result of works with advocacy organizations including the ACLU of California and the Center for Media Justice.
According to Facebook, the new policies is meant to limit how developers, advertisers, and others can use data on its platform.
And as a follow up, the coalition is pushing the social networks to establish robust systems to ensure that they comply to important rules protecting users against surveillance.
