Amaya Toman No one is perfect—and that's true of big tech companies, too. Late last week, for example, it was revealed that Google was providing some user data to the Hong Kong government, despite its previous promise. The company Facebook also made a mistake last week, which for a change did not provide the data it was supposed to provide. For the purpose of research on disinformation on social networks, the team of experts provided – allegedly by mistake – only half of the promised data.
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Pavel Jelic Google provided user data to the Hong Kong government
Google has been providing the data of some of its users to the Hong Kong government, according to recent reports. This was supposed to happen over the course of last year, despite the fact that Google promised that it would not deal with this type of data in any way at the request of governments and other similar organizations. The Hong Kong Free Press reported last week that Google responded to three out of a total of forty-three government requests by providing the data. Two of the mentioned requests were allegedly related to human trafficking and included the relevant permit, while the third request was an emergency request related to a threat to life. Google said last August that it would no longer respond to requests for data from the Hong Kong government unless those requests arose out of cooperation with the US Department of Justice. The move was in response to a new national security law, under which people can be sentenced to life in prison. Google has not yet commented on the issue of providing user data to the Hong Kong government.
Facebook was providing false data on misinformation
Facebook has apologized to experts in charge of disinformation research. For research purposes, it provided them with erroneous and incomplete data regarding how users interact with posts and links on the relevant social platform. The New York Times reported last week that, contrary to what Facebook initially told experts, it ended up providing data on only about half of its users in the United States, not all. Members of the Open Research and Transparency teams, which fall under Facebook, completed an interview with experts last Friday, during which they apologized to the experts for the mentioned mistakes.
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Some of the experts involved wondered whether the mistake was accidental, and whether it was deliberately made to sabotage the research. Errors in the provided data were first noticed by one of the experts working at the University of Urbino, Italy. He compared the report that Facebook published in August with the data that the company provided directly to the aforementioned experts, and subsequently found that the relevant data did not agree at all. According to the statement of the spokesperson of the Facebook company, the mentioned error was caused by a technical fault. Facebook reportedly alerted experts conducting relevant research on its own immediately after its discovery, and is currently working to correct the error as soon as possible.
