Protecting your privacy may be the least of Facebook's concerns. A report due out later this month reveals the social media giant not only offers you pictures of your friend or relative's new baby, family vacation or latest feast -- it's also helping put new recruits in touch with the Islamic State.
According to the Counter Extremism Project, “users with radical islamist sympathies were routinely introduced to one another through the popular ‘suggested friends’ feature.
Terror expert Dr. Jeffrey Addicott says ISIS and other extremists no longer have to run their own web pages to recruit new members; Facebook does the job for them.
“Facebook was actually linking them up where they had certain key phrases of likes, and they were able to identify and communicate with each other,” he says.
He says freedom of speech makes it nearly impossible for the FBI or CIA to track it all.
“It's very difficult because people use code language and 'dog whistles' and other sorts of things,” says Addicott. “Obviously the overt things you can clamp down on, but people have the right to have freedom of speech.”
Addicott credits President Donald Trump's administration for cutting in half Islamic-related incidents and arrests in the U.S. under his watch.