Facebook Should Roll Out ‘Clear History’ ASAP For Sake of Privacy

The privacy feature was first talked about at the Congressional hearing but it never made made it to users.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at F8 in San Jose.

(Photo: Facebook)

Facebook is caught in a muddle, bidding to improve privacy across all its co-owned platforms. Most would say that WhatsApp has been the so-called pioneer of end-to-end encryption but recent privacy mishaps, thanks to spyware installed into the platform, those credentials have quickly evaporated.

The clamours to break up Facebook have increased over the past few weeks and even its co-founder joined in the chorus. But what’s perplexing is Facebook’s actual intention of ever becoming a privacy-focused establishment, when it clearly knows how much data is invaluable to its ad business.

Mark Zuckerberg and Co, tried easing those concerns by announcing ‘clear history’ feature for its users at the F8 conference in May last year. But fast-forward to May 2019 and still there’s no sign of that option being made available to the users.

The testing of the tool was reportedly being planned to be done between March and May 2019 but this year’s F8 keynote by Zuckerberg didn’t even mention about the security feature and its release date.

Clear History was described as “a simple control to clear user’s browsing history on Facebook -- what they’ve clicked on, websites visited, and so on. 

The alarm bells over the feature were first raised by the company through David Wehner, Facebook's Chief Financial Officer (CFO). The feature would impact Facebook's ability to target ads to audiences based on the user's location and preference history, which was only possible because of the data in its grasp.

Experts found it bewildering that even after so many data mishaps, Facebook was still pondering the roll out of the feature and its direct impact on its business. 

After all the crises Facebook has been through over the past 24 months, the social networking giant should consider releasing the clear history right away, in order to ease concerns of users on its platform and even government’s across the world.

This shouldn’t be the end of it, but if Facebook and Zuckerberg at helm can show an iota of focus on trying to become safer, instead of filling up its coffers with ad money (from user’s data), it can help repair the damage inflicted by the social networking giant in recent years.