Online sources report that thousands of third-party Facebook employees working around the world view and label user posts on the social networks Facebook and Instagram. It is also reported that such work is carried out to train AI systems and inform users about new products. It is noted that since contractors view not only public but also private messages, their activities may be considered a violation of confidentiality.
The report also says that 260 third-party employees in Hyderabad, India, labeled millions of messages, starting their activities back in 2014. They look at the topic, the reason for writing the message, and also evaluate the author's intentions. Most likely, Facebook uses this data to develop new features and increase advertising revenue within social networks. There are up to 200 similar projects around the world that use tagged user messages to train AI systems.
It is noted that this approach is not uncommon, and many large companies hire third-party employees who are engaged in βdata annotation.β However, this is unlikely to help users of popular social networks feel calmer. Their Hyderabad employees are known to have access to user messages, status updates, photos and videos, including those sent privately.