A Facebook spokesperson on Friday stated that the social networking giant would take down posts on US Presidentโs impeachment inquiry. After this, Zuckerbergโs team took this decision when critics raised questions on the companyโs privacy policies. After the name of the Ukrainian Whistleblower surfaced on Facebook and Twitter, news agencies slammed the former for incompetence in maintaining privacy on the matter.
โThe mentions of the whistleblowerโs name will be removed from all sources on Facebook. This must be done so that the person is not targeted in any form by intelligence agencies of the US,โ said the spokesperson.
There were millions of paid advertisements that mentioned the name of Whistleblower on FB. With the US Elections looming around the corner, cyber experts suspect this as a handiwork of cyber cells. They are rooting for Trumpโs second term as the President. The Presidentโs impeachment inquiry did not go down well with these people.
Damage Has Already Been Done: Sources
Facebook took down all the said advertisements, which will affect the reference sites as well but, the move came much later than expected, say critics. โThe damage has already been done in the few hours the ads popped up on Facebook News Feeds,โ said an FB official who wished to remain unnamed. โNow that they have been removed makes little difference as the name has already been popularised.โ
Interestingly, Whatsapp forwards and screenshots cannot be undone or removed which function on end-to-end encryptions. Therefore, the posts that found itโs way into Whatsapp and other encrypted messaging sites, are still being shared.
The Whistleblower alleged that the White House tried to hide the fact about the Trump-Ukraine talks. After these allegations were made, Trump openly asked the Whistleblower to be unmasked. This ultimately did happen after his son, Trump Jr., shared a link that had details about the Whistleblower. Now, Facebook has a daunting task ahead, keeping such links away from its servers.