Decision comes in the middle of the #DeleteFacebook movement, which has already caused the closure of several accounts due to the misuse of data.
Mark Zuckerberg’s company has just announced that it will end a feature called “partner categories”, launched in 2013. The move comes amid the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the #DeleteFacebook movement boom.
It is one of the first official products that emerged from the association with “data specialists” for “better ad targeting”. The company mixes the information it obtains from the users themselves with information from the advertisers and data obtained from external suppliers.
Partner categories are based on information provided by Facebook’s marketing partners that provide data from the public. These categories allow you to further limit your targeting based on the information that these partners gather, such as demographic and behavior ( for example, relating to home ownership or purchasing history).
According to TechCrunch, Facebook confirmed that the elimination of this feature is permanent. The Marketing Director of Facebook, Graham Mudd, said in a statement.
We want advertisers to know that we will close the partner categories. This product allows third-party data providers to offer an orientation on Facebook. While this is a common practice in the industry, we believe that this step, which will end in the next six months, will help to improve the privacy of people on Facebook.
Facebook also clarified that it will continue to work with companies such as Experian and Acxiom, “in order to measure the performance of the ads and provide metrics,” although in a similar way they will review its operation.
The measure comes in the context of the Cambridge Analytica scandal , an entity that violated the privacy of more than 50 million accounts on Facebook to boost the Donald Trump campaign. Such has been the rejection, that the movement #DeleteFacebook has attracted international attention and has resulted in the closing of accounts of several celebrities.
Could it be that Facebook fears the popularity of its network will decrease? Time will say.