Day 1 of Facebook’s F8 conference has brought to light plenty of innovations, but one new feature is particularly relevant in the wake of the massive Cambridge Analytica controversy. The company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced a Clear History tool which allows people to have more control over their data.
Clear History in Facebook works just like the clear history and cookies tool in browsers. Most websites utilize cookies, picking up information about an individual so they won’t have to enter login information or their preferences again. If a person wants the site to forget all this, they simply wipe out all the cookies saved in their browser.
Zuckerberg says Facebook’s version of Clear History will work just like this. There’ll be a new page where users will be able to see the websites and apps which send the social networking site information when they access those platforms. They can then choose to delete this data from their account and switch off Facebook’s ability to store the info.
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At the moment, apps and websites utilize features like the Like button or Facebook Analytics to make its content and ads better. Facebook plans to continue sending partners aggregated analytics like whether their apps are more popular with men or women in a certain age group.
Before anyone cries foul, Facebook says it can do this without storing information in a way which is associated with a person’s account. It’s also pledging not to tell advertisers who the user is. The brand says it’ll take a couple of months to build Clear History.