- Mishandling of sensitive information was one of the reasons Facebook became Meta.
- To date it has just over two billion registered users.
- The social network manages so much information about the people that it can know, from the type of music that each one likes to their political ideology.
Social media has seen an exponential rise over the last couple of decades. Now they are the favorite means of a large part of the population to keep abreast of what is happening in the world. At the same time, they also handle quite sensitive information for different uses. It is not always with good uses and precisely for that reason now Meta is in the middle of a scandal and it’s all because of women who want to abort.
In the first instance, this social network remains the most popular in the world. According to Statista, to date it has just over two billion active users. The figure implies that around a quarter of the global population has an account.
New name but security issues remain
For its part, since its foundation in 2004 it has been involved in various controversies. One of the most serious was regarding the handling of users’ confidential information. In fact, it was the reason why its founder. Mark Zuckerberg renamed Facebook Meta.
In this new facet, it was ensured that the same mistakes of the past would not be repeated, but it might not be entirely true. From the moment a person opens an account, it is ensured that all his personal information will be protected and cannot be handled by third parties.
The problem is that now It is directly accused that Meta collects sensitive information from women who want to abort. While this type of data is offered to anti-abortion organizations to use as a tool to attack and influence others.
Everything Meta knows about its users
Everything starts from the fact that each person shows their tastes when they “like” a page or join a group. With this, his hobbies are defined and it allows knowing from the type of music he likes to his political ideology.
On the other hand, in recent days it has been suggested that the United States Supreme Court could end the protection of abortion throughout the country. That is why there is now a fear that people’s data records could be used against them if some states criminalize abortion.
A joint investigation of Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting and The Markup discovered that the powerful platform collects data on women who follow profiles of pro-abortion health centers. With this, she points out that these are people who are in favor of this practice.
It is also mentioned that after investigations carried out by The Wall Street Journal In 2019, the social media giant created a machine learning system to help detect sensitive health data. It also blocked data containing any of 70,000 health-related terms.
For all of the above, Meta is now in trouble again because it does not respect the confidentiality of the personal information of women who want to abort. Despite the accusations, the company has not yet offered a statement in this regard, but it could be the beginning of a new controversy.