Dutch Privacy Watchdog Recommends Government Organizations Stop Using Facebook

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The Dutch privacy watchdog AP on Friday said it was recommending that government organizations should stop using Facebook as long as it is unclear what happens with personal data of users of the government's Facebook pages. "People that visit a government's page need to be able to trust that their personal and sensitive data is in safe hands," AP chairman Aleid Wolfsen said in a statement. Junior minister for digitalization Alexandra van Huffelen said Facebook parent company Meta had to make clear before the summer how it could take away the government's concerns on the safety of data. "Otherwise we will be forced to stop using Facebook, in line with this advice," she said.

official syndication

[at10u8]

I have always been dismayed that government agencies found it convenient to use the likes of Twitter and Facebook as a means of publishing official information, but the question remains unanswered about how governments can syndicate information to places where people will be able and likely to find it.

Re:

[jacks smirking reven]

Yeah in this case I get his point, and in principle you are correct (i've always had this idea that the government should have in fact operate it's own social media service) but in this case I definitely err on the side of getting the information out there to wherever people are. I can't imagine many, if nay are on Facebook solely for the government information, nor would many leave if they closed their pages.

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[martin-boundary]

I remember the world before Facebook. It was perfectly workable. Same with the world before everyone had phones in their pockets. You simply agreed to meet somewhere or chat at a particular time on a particular date. It was arguably better than now, because you couldn't just flake out on a meeting when you felt like it, or if you did that there were more serious consequences. So this encouraged everyone to be a bit more reliable and considerate. Same with government announcements. You could get them from th

Re:

[jacks smirking reven]

And you still can do everything like that, yourself. The issue today is finding other people who are doing it the same.

The times they are uh becoming quite different.

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[JaredOfEuropa]

Most governments operate their own web sites for official publications. I'm fine with them making announcements on commercial social media, after all that's where the eyeballs are. As long as it's not only Facebook, but all the other major platforms as well. By the same token, I'd have a real problem with the government ignoring a particular platform for the wrong reasons, for instance Twitter / X "because Elon Musk". Dropping Facebook over data privacy concerns is understandable, but on the other hand

Re:

[jacks smirking reven]

I mean that's all we are talking about here. If a local government is relying on social media for *all* their notices and outreach, that's a problem but as just a relay system or direct comms with constituents? Perfectly fine to me.

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[antdude]

I don't mind them posting on social networks, but they should still post on their own web sites too as their #1 sources. This includes non-government companies.

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[BeaverCleaver]

I don't mind them posting on social networks, but they should still post on their own web sites too as their #1 sources. This includes non-government companies.

This, a thousand times this. During covid, my local government used to post their press releases to facebook instead of their own website. The videos were publicly accessible without a facebook account, but still, it seemed stupid to use facebook instead of their own infrastructure

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[antdude]

Oh yes. Also, I hate having to use social networks to contact them! I don't want to do that!

I don't understand...

[VeryFluffyBunny]

...why any govt would use 3rd party websites that are famous for misinformation, scams, criminal activities, etc.. It's not as if govt agencies don't have their own websites where they can post the information anyway, right?

Re:

[jacks smirking reven]

People don't read those though. They should, we all should but we know most people don't or they're far more likely to see it on social media . It's just where peoples eyeballs are at.

My 2 cents is that since pretty much nobody is there just for the government stuff so it's morally neutral on the governments part to have a page up.

Re:I don't understand...

[stabiesoft]

Exactly this. What I would like to see is a very uniform use of .gov. I've seen some government sites use things like twc.tx.us instead. They never should have started using fb/tw. It should have always been .gov, period. Then you could count on it not being a scam. I just looked up who controls .gov and well, its the US gov. And it looks like they ask for way more info than controllers like godaddy, and it is even free for most.

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[VeryFluffyBunny]

I think a good example is when governments want to get across generic evidence-based health & healthcare advice. You know that if you consult https://www.nhs.uk/ [www.nhs.uk] you'll find up-to-date info that's been carefully reviewed by medical & communications experts to give the best info & advice they can. No Ivermectin or injecting yourself with bleach! For example, check out what they say about homeopathy: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/... [www.nhs.uk] However, they're still not quite "there" yet with chiropractic a

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[stabiesoft]

In the US, you'd look at the nih.gov site for info. And if the government here would have started using only nih.gov to get out medical info, perhaps more would look there instead of all the crap on fb. In the US, there are many .gov sites like irs, fdic, ssa.medicare etc. And all of them I think in the top banner say "An official website of the United States" What I find annoying even on those sites is NoScript tells me it is blocking youtube and a bunch of other goofle properties when I go there. Why is m

Re:

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Because Google provides "free" webdev tools to developers that automatically include Google tracking software & guess what, the devs that make .gov websites use the same tools. They're probably too busy bringing in projects as cheaply as possible to worry about Google's tracking malware.

They just discovered water is wet too

[sinkskinkshrieks]

Why can't they just post their shit to an insecure PHP Wordpress CMS and get hacked? (At least Facebook moved to Hack/HHVM.) Or Mastodon?

They aren't the only ones

[wakeboarder]

Everyone should stop using Facebook