Social media platform Facebook struggles to control and manage the user data it collects, according to a new media report.
Vice Media is reporting that Facebook is struggling under a mountain of user data and its engineers have warned top executives at the social network and its parent company, Meta Platforms (META), that it could run afoul of regulators in the U.S. and Europe for its current practices.
The Vice Media report is based on an internal report written last year that has been leaked by a company insider.
“Imagine you hold a bottle of ink in your hand. This bottle of ink is a mixture of all kinds of user data … You pour that ink into a lake of water (our open data systems; our open culture) … and it flows … everywhere,” the report reads. “How do you put that ink back in the bottle? How do you organize it again, such that it only flows to the allowed places in the lake?”
The internal Facebook report goes on to say that it’s difficult to assure external groups that data being collected isn’t used for purposes beyond what regulations such as Europe’s “General Data Protection” legislation will allow.
In a written statement, Meta Platforms said that the leaked document doesn’t describe Facebook’s “extensive processes and controls” to comply with regulations, and that the data lake analogy lacks context. Meta Platforms’ stock is down 68% this year and trading at $109.86 U.S. per share.
