The Electronic Information Privacy Center (EPIC), a privacy advocacy group that has been performing great work for 20 years filed a complaint with the FTC alleging that Facebook's emotion study "deceived its users and violated the terms of a 2012 FTC consent decree." The complaint was filed right before the July 4th holiday weekend.
Facebook's refusal to issue an immediate apology regarding this issue demonstrates once again that the company is tone deaf when it comes to user privacy. I have documented Facebook's troubling position regarding digital privacy time and time and time, etc...again.
When I initially stated that Facebook's emotion study may have violated Facebook's FTC consent agreement early in the day on 6/30/14, I didn't see any other published articles mentioning this possibility. Soon after I posted my article, Forbes reported that Facebook changed its terms to allegedly allow user data to be utilized for "research" purposes 4 months after the study was completed.
There are many users, technologists, and members of the media who are drinking the Silicon Valley Cool-Aid and defending Facebook's (and other companies) troubling practices because privacy policies, along with terms of use, and data use policies are written so broadly in the hopes that the language allows for any type of data usage and/or manipulation. Just because one agrees to a troubling privacy policy/terms of use/data use policy clause in an agreement, that doesn't mean a court of law will automatically rule that the policy is legal and enforceable.
The common law blue pencil doctrine is utilized when contract clauses are ruled to be unreasonable and violate public policy. This doctrine enables courts to strike troubling clauses from executed agreements. Is it time for the courts to start "blue penciling" unreasonable privacy policies, terms of use, data use policies, etc...?
If some Silicon Valley companies don't start changing their data collection and usage practices it would not surprise me if the courts start flexing their blue pencil muscles to protect the personal privacy and safety of citizens in the Digital Age.
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