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6 revelations from Facebook’s 500-page response to the U.S. Senate

Author: Stephen Johnson / Source: Big Think

It’s been about two month since Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg answered (and sometimes evaded) questions about privacy, monopoly, and political discourse on the world’s largest social media platform. Now, in about 500 pages of documents, Facebook has answered more questions and elaborated on those not quite addressed at the hearings.

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“Answered” might be a little generous. Facebook’s responses were often little more than reiterations of its already-stated policy, crafted in an impersonal and opaque lawyer-speak that’s bound to frustrate some senators.

Still, Facebook and its lawyers weren’t totally redundant. Here are six things revealed this week by the new documents.

Facebook is looking into eye-tracking technology

The company has filed at least two patents for eye-tracking technology, though says it hasn’t implemented it.

“Like many companies, we apply for a wide variety of patents to protect our intellectual property. Right now we’re not building technology to identify people with eye-tracking cameras,” Facebook wrote in response to questions from the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. “If we implement this technology in the future, we will absolutely do so with people’s privacy in mind, just as we do with movement information (which we anonymize in our systems).”

(Photo: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

Facebook didn’t give a clear answer on how it logs users’ IP addresses

When asked whether the company permanently stores every IP address ever used by users, Facebook didn’t answer yes or no and instead pointed to its ‘retention schedule’ without providing a timeline detailing when it deletes this data:

“Facebook automatically logs IP addresses where a user has logged into their Facebook account.

Users can download a list of IP addresses where they’ve logged into their Facebook accounts, as well as other information associated with their Facebook accounts, through our Download Your Information tool, although this list won’t include all historical IP addresses as they are deleted according to a retention schedule.”