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There is ABSOLUTELY a story here, documenting Facebook's resistance to the "Download your History" feature (yet their use of this White Whale for PR purposes right now, even yesterday at Davos by Sandberg) 1/n
This is not a frivolous request. The reason to ask is that this feature would make a lot of v interesting research much easier and potent (+granular, personal feedback). E.g. this research on Twitter would transfer over completely
I have known this for a while. In fact, as I was working in 2016 w/ @HNSGR on his @CamAnalytica uncovering, I became convinced neither journalism or research alone would cut it. User-centric data, in the spirit of @mydataorg could bridge the two motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/…
So as soon as we published, I started leveraging European data protection laws and my experience building @PersonalDataIO to attack this. I made many requests to FB, and pursued two doggedly.
One request was for "Advertisers with your contact info". This eventually worked, leading to much increased awareness and visceral understanding of FB's biz model across the world. For instance this piece by @bxchen leads w/ those data points nytimes.com/2018/04/11/tec…
When readers read this, they get the journalist's individual perception of what FB's surveillance means to them. Motivated readers do the same export. Get to assess situation for themselves. Encourage people around them to do the same. Transparency becomes viral.
The story of how I fought FB and got them to implement the feature is here: medium.com/personaldata-i…
Now, my second request followed a different trajectory. I asked FB for the history of my browsing that they had collected *through their FB Pixel button*. The start of this story was told in @TheEconomist economist.com/europe/2018/04…
Of course I was denied this access, but v interestingly the request was denied on technical ground, NOT legal grounds. After complaint, the @DPCIreland has clearly been reluctant to investigate. The email exchanges w/ them are amazing of bad will.
Still, this "too big to comply" argument by FB was interesting enough that I was invited by the @CommonsCMS and @DamianCollins to testify about my efforts. Due to @chrisinsilico's appearance right after coming out as a whistleblower, that was quite an experience! 
My testimony is here: c-span.org/video/?c477634…
This seems to have attracted the attention of US Senators as well, since it was mentioned in follow up q to Zuckerberg by @SenBlumenthal, with some implications Z wasn't truthful 1st time around. judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/…
I also testified at the European Parliament knowing full well Lord Richard Allan would misdirect on those topics when coming after me on the panels. He did. medium.com/personaldata-i…
Under pressure, FB eventually announced they would implement a "Clear Your History" feature, and many in the press just uncritically accepted that. So not a "download", and in fact, it is a misnomer. The feature would disconnect your history from your account name, but
keep it connected to something. We don't know what. But of course it was announced in Dec 2018 (!) that the feature would be delayed until Spring 2019 (!!!) Allegedly that feature is too hard to build. Journalists should question why and do the math. recode.net/2018/12/17/181…
At the same time I find it scandalous that the @DPCIreland still hasn't started fining FB on that. A small amount each day. All the work has been done documenting the problem (and summarized in this thread).
If you as an individual user care about this, try the export tool yourself, and assess whether the contested data is in there (it's not). If not, complain about it to your local data protection authority. Do this if you are French!!!
I suspect all along FB is very very aware of the impact that tool would have on people's perception of the platform, and the virality component. That's why it is resisting so hard implementing it.
Meanwhile, fear not: approximately weekly for months now, either Z or Sandberg refer to "Clear your History" as such a positive step they are taking. All the PR bonus, without the transparency downsides. Case in point: Sandberg at Davos.
Thank you for your time and attention, and congratulations on reading this far in our crazy world of distractions!
