Facebook clarifies prompt asking for Aadhar information; says it was part of a “small test”

Many users were surprised when they received a prompt from social media platform, Facebook, to share details of their Aadhaar. Facebook, however, has said that they are not liking users’ accounts to to their Aadhaar number.

As per the California-based company, their recently tested ‘name on your Aadhaar card’ prompt was misinterpreted. They have clarified that while several details are linked to a person’s Aadhar, Facebook details will not be included. The company states that using the name on Aadhar card supposedly makes it easier for friends to ‘recognise you’.

Facebook cleared the air on a blogpost, saying, “We are not collecting Aadhaar data and do not require people to enter their Aadhaar name when they sign up to Facebook.”

The move was entirely optional and aimed encouraging users to use their real names and curb the spread of fake accounts on the world’s largest social media platform. There is no integration or authentication with Aadhar, Facebook said.

The prompt was tested to a small number of users and has now finished. Facebook has about 241 million users in India, making it the company’s second biggest market – second only to its home country of the US.

Facebook had also recently rolled out means to demote posts using clickbait or engagement bait to lure users. The objective was to control spam posts on the platform. In order to differentiate between posts, Facebook fed a hundreds of thousands of engagement bait posts along with alternatives and has a machine learning model that indentifies the difference between spam and genuine posts.