Facebook has released a 500-page reply to questions that were written by two Senate committees after the CEO of the company, Mark Zuckerberg was brought before the lawmakers as regards the recent scandal it faced.
In the document, Facebook responds to the questions regarding the Cambridge Analytica scandal, ad targeting, moderation policies and so on giving an insight to the company’s operations. The responses in the document were directed to policies that are available publicly.
In the document, the company provided answers to some of the questions that were asked in a way that made things more obscure. For instance, in responding to a question concerning how ads could be used to bar people with certain traits, Facebook replied saying that it did not offer targeting on the basis of “race” rather on the basis of “multicultural affinity”.
Regarding “shadow profiles” – Facebook following non-users, the company stated that it does not create “profiles” for people who are not users but that it “may take the opportunity to show a general ad that is unrelated to the attributes of the person or an ad encouraging the non-user to sign up for Facebook.”
Although Facebook gave affirmative replies to some questions regarding the information tracked by the company, however, the company did not offer a precise response to certain questions of interest like whether it keeps track of “every IP address ever used when logging into Facebook.” Rather, it cited an indefinite “retention schedule” below:
Facebook automatically logs IP addresses where a user has logged into their Facebook account. Users can download a list of IP addresses where they’ve logged into their Facebook accounts, as well as other information associated with their Facebook accounts, through our Download Your Information tool, although this list won’t include all historical IP addresses as they are deleted according to a retention schedule.
It took Facebook 2 months to bring up this document and through that time, more questions focused on the company’s data sharing have come up.
