BigDataFr recommends: Facebook will share anonymized location data with disaster relief organizations

[…] A new initiative from Facebook will provide aid organizations with location data for users in affected areas, such as where people are marking themselves safe and from where they are fleeing. It shows the immense potential of this kind of fine-grained tracking, but inescapably resurfaces questions of just what else the company could do with the data.

In a blog post and video, Facebook’s public policy research manager Molly Jackman describes the new “disaster maps” that will be provided to UNICEF, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent, and the World Food Program to start.

Essentially there will be three types of information provided — sourced, presumably, from GPS and other location indicators provided whenever a Facebook user does just about anything. […]

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By Devin Coldewey
Source: https://techcrunch.com