‘Sleazy’ bid to win our hearts

A PRIVACY advocate has branded Facebook “a sleazy, deadbeat boyfriend” after the company announced plans to launch an online dating service.

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg revealed the idea yesterday at the annual F8 developers’ conference, just weeks after the biggest data scandal in the company’s 14year history.

But it might not be a match made in heaven, after Mr Zuckerberg said the social network had not done enough to protect users’ privacy and would make mistakes again.

Australian Privacy Foundation chairman David Vaile said the social network, which shared private information from 87 million users, was an untrustworthy partner.

“Facebook is like a sleazy, deadbeat boyfriend who gets caught cheating on you over and over again, and each time he says ‘I didn’t mean it, let’s get back together’,” Mr Vaile said.

“(Facebook) assumes users will take any level of punishment and betrayal or evidence that your trust is misplaced and they’ll come back.”

Mr Vaile said Facebook’s entry into the dating market was not surprising, as it was “always looking for the next source of data” from its users.

“They’re basically saying ‘we got away with what we did with Cambridge Analytica, we got away with our exposure in front of US legislature’,” Mr Vaile said.

The data scandal saw an app developer sell the private details of millions of Facebook users, including 311,000 Australians, to a political firm, which allegedly used it to influence the 2016 US election.

Mr Zuckerberg told the conference he recognised it had not “been easy” to be a Facebook developer “these last couple of months”, and warned the company would likely fail again.

“There’s no guarantee that we get this right,” he said. “This is hard stuff. We will make mistakes and they will have consequences and we will need to fix them.”

Mr Zuckerberg said the new dating service wanted to build “long-term relationships” by targeting the 200 million Facebook users who described themselves as single.

He said the service would tap into location data to show users other singles attending nearby events.

Daters could only trade text-based messages and would be known by their first names.

Safety expert Parry Aftab, who served on Facebook’s safety advisory board, said daters should think carefully before handing over more intimate details to the company.

“Cyber-dating services require sexual preferences, intimate, and sensitive info and a trusted provider,” she said.