Increasingly, the best way to find out information about people is to turn to their Facebook page, and even world governments now agree.
The trade off for the ease of communication in this age of social media is that you surrender some of your privacy, handing over information to Facebook, and as it turns out, it doesn't just stop there.
Zuckerberg's company announced yesterday in a blogpost that they have seen a huge increase in the amount of information that governments are requesting from them about their users around the world, as well as a jump in the amount of content that is being restricted by lawmakers.
"Governments around the world made 34,946 requests for data — an increase of about 24% since the last half of 2013" said Chris Sonderby, Facebook Deputy General Counsel. "During the same time, the amount of content restricted because of local laws increased about 19%."
According to RTÉ News, they weren't the only ones to see a jump, as Google also saw a 15% increase in the number of requests from governments to reveal information in the first half of this year, making for a 150% increase in the last five years.
Overall, this has once again raised concerns about the privacy of users and their data, but Facebook say that they've been pushing back, at least in the US. They've gone to court over these demands and "argued that these overly broad warrants violate the privacy rights of the people on Facebook and ignore constitutional safeguards against unreasonable searches and seizures" and are looking to "force the government to return the data it has seized".
Like we always said man, we gotta get off the grid. We're flushing our phone down the toilet as we speak...
Via RTÉ News
