Facebook on Thursday, 6th September, officially launched its new dating service at an event in New York City and accross America.
ABC News’ Mary Kate Burke got to try the “Facebook Dating” and tells the podcast that the social network is “hyper aware” of privacy concerns that some users have.
For instance –
- there’s no Tinder-like swipe.
- Facebook Dating won’t suggest your friends as people you might want to date.
- Your dating profile also won’t show up on your news feed or be visible to friends; it’s only for others using the dating service
This service is basically a match-maker and the company already offers in Brazil, Canada and 17 other countries.
On usage, it can only be accessed through mobile, it is free to use and free of ads – that is on business sense, it can still help Facebook make money if it keeps people glued to its other services longer.
Lets not forget Facebook is launching this days after the company admitted to exposing more than 419 million user IDs and phone numbers online(a glitch in June 2018 made private posts of 14 million users public, and another breach in September 2018 compromised the data of 50 million users.) Also in 2018 this same company improperly harvested the data of millions of users through a partnership with the campaign firm Cambridge Analytica.
Well, let’s glue with fact that they won’t toy with users on this platform as promised.
Facebook says the dating service is secure, but how do we know it won’t realize a few years from now it was not as protected as it thought? It gives us pause when things they have changed years ago are still being shown to cause problems in terms of data privacy.
– Jason Kelley, a digital strategist at online privacy nonprofit the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
