© Reuters / Dado Ruvic
Calibra, the new Facebook subsidiary which will operate Libra, has made no secret of its ambitions to branch out from funds transfer into credit, bill payments and other more sophisticated products. Such consolidation of power in the hands of a company that already has a monopoly on online social interaction for its 2-billion-plus users - and a terrible record of protecting users' privacy - has understandably worried the skeptics.
"Any further concentration of personal data poses additional risks to the rights and freedoms of individuals," European Data Protection Supervisor Giovanni Buttarelli told Business Insider. "It would be deeply concerning, for example, for a company with access to massive volumes of personal information, gathered through its social media platforms and communications services, to be able to combine this information with the tracking of online digital purchases."
Comment: As the above article points out, the idea that a company with as little trust-worthiness as Facebook should be trusted with financial transactions is questionable, at best. While its likely many users will jump on board (a large percentage of them probably being those without access to more established financial institutions), one has to wonder it this is really a good idea.
Libra explained:
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