Signal, a messenger popular for its user privacy, challenged Facebook's privacy policies on Tuesday, 4 May. It said that it tried to display a series of ads on Instagram to show people how ad tech invades the privacy of users. However, the company claims that Facebook (Instagram’s parent entity) shut their account instead.
"Companies like Facebook aren’t building technology for you, they’re building technology for your data. They collect everything they can from FB, Instagram, and WhatsApp in order to sell visibility into people and their lives," company claimed in its blog titled "The Instagram ads Facebook won't show you".
It further explained its claim of how Facebook shut their account when they tried to use Instagram ads to display the user data Facebook allegedly collected and sold access to.
"We created a multi-variant targeted ad designed to show you the personal data that Facebook collects about you and sells access to. The ad would simply display some of the information collected about the viewer, which the advertising platform uses. Facebook was not into that idea," said Signal.
It further said that with these ads, they were simply being transparent about how ad tech uses people’s data, but apparently this reason was enough for Facebook to ban their account.
Signal Ads
(Photo: Signal Blog)
Signal, an end-to-end encrypted messaging app became widely popular around the globe since the beginning of this year. It witnessed a user surge after Facebook owned WhatsApp announced its new 'Terms of Services and its Privacy Policy'.
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