Thread by @MunsifV

Here’s a thread on the story @Reuters published today by @peard33 and me, on how Facebook contractors in India were working on a secretive project that could raise new privacy issues for the social media giant.
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LINK; reut.rs/2GWzSBG

The contractors, under the payroll of @Wipro, were asked to answer five questions while ploughing through millions of status updates, photos, videos and links shared by Facebook and Instagram users over the last 5 years.
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"Intimate family pictures land with us," one contractor for Facebook said, recalling scenes of a couple kissing and a child's first birthday party.
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Posts examined include not just public posts, but also those that were shared privately to a limited set of users' friends. Legal experts consulted by @Reuters expressed concerns over the manual content analysis, which is not explicitly mentioned in Facebook's data policy.
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Facebook deletes personal information such as user names, location data, time data from the posts before sending to Wipro workers. But there are other projects where personal data is shown to contract workers because it's important to the job those labelers are tasked with.
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In early 2019, we approached Facebook with our reporting. They confirmed the existence of the Wipro project, saying it was just one of 200 ‘labeling’ projects it has at any time, employing thousands of people globally. (6/9)

The company has outsourced labeling for years and expects the need to continue for a long time. It isn’t alone. Alphabet, Amazon and most Silicon Valley firms now use crowdsourced or professional labeling for one project or another.
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While Facebook says its legal and privacy teams have always been deeply involved in okaying labeling projects, it only recently introduced an auditing system to check whether the privacy/legal guidelines set for projects are being followed.
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Read the full story below and contact the reporters and editors involved on @MunsifV @peard33 @WeberWest @reutersPatrickG @Tech_Correspond @greg_mitchell

reut.rs/2GWzSBG