Why Experts are Concerned About Meta’s new Link History Feature
Meta claims the new feature as a way to help users remember lost links, and ethics experts are concerned about the associated data collection.
“I’ve seen some comments arguing that there is nothing new here, aside from the disclosure of a common practice,” says Irina Raicu, director of the Internet Ethics Program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. “But even if that’s the case—and we have yet to see how the feature will be implemented broadly,” says Raicu, “disclosure is important.”
“Explaining the extent of the tracking is likely to lead to more push for new laws or the enforcement of existing ones,” says Raicu. “How many consumers were really asking for one more way to have their ‘browsing activity saved in one place’?”
Irina Raicu, director, internet ethics, quoted by Fast Company.