As we’ve seen last week with Spotify, the use of location tracking can be explained with business interest – they want users to stop abusing the Family Premium plan. What Facebook is doing after all the scandals it had with our data, is unexplainable.
In the recent Newsroom article titled “Understanding Updates to Your Device’s Location Settings”, the social network company explains how updates to Android and iOS will prevent them from abusing the constant location tracking.
Facebook is better with location. It powers features like check-ins and makes planning events easier. It helps improve ads and keep you and the Facebook community safe. Features like Find Wi-Fi and Nearby Friends use precise location even when you’re not using the app to make sure that alerts and tools are accurate and personalized for you.
Just read the fucking quote. Facebook tracking your location to keep you safe. How delirious are they? Article further explains, that now there will be the ability in OS to allow location sharing with the app only once and if the app is tracking your location in the background with the app closed, iOS will prompt you with notification, showing map of the location data and explanation why the app uses it (to keep you safe, of course).
This article shows how bad these changes are for Facebook. Right now location tracking is the best data they can get on users. Knowing where you’ve been can give a lot of insights. Which neighborhood do you live in, where do you work, which type of restaurants you go to, if you are sick, how often do you travel. All of this information can be gathered using the background location tracking, without users even noticing.
I’m glad both Google and Apple are making changes to the location tracking in theirs OS’s. I’m sure Facebook will find a way to track it anyway, they say so in the article:
We may still understand your location using things like check-ins, events and information about your internet connection.
This article shows how out of touch Facebook is, but the more scary thing is – people believe them. I hope those changes will educate people more on the type of data they are sending to those companies.