Facebook Is Sharing WhatsApp And Instagram Data To Find Terrorists

skeleton_hackerYou’d be hard-pressed to find a Facebook user who thinks the site should do less to find and remove terrorists. However, a recent blog post from the social media giant detailed how it’s accomplishing the task, and one of its methods could prove controversial.

Facebook laid out its counter-terrorism strategy in the first part of its “Hard Questions” blog series. In the post, the site said it’s working on systems to hunt terrorists across its platforms, including WhatsApp and Instagram. And to do that, the site will share users’ data across the network.

While this may be an effective way to remove terrorist content, it has also raised the eyebrows of some privacy experts.

“We need more transparency about how Facebook plans to share data across its platforms,” digital rights advocate Jim Killock told The Independent. “Given the previous controversy about data sharing between Facebook and WhatsApp, we hope the company is working with data protection authorities to ensure that this is limited to what is absolutely necessary.”

This is just the latest example of Facebook finding itself between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, the public wants Facebook to do everything it can to remove bad actors from its pages. But on the other, we want our info to be kept private. It’s a tricky situation — and it’s why Facebook introduced the “Hard Questions” series in the first place.