Big tech companies Facebook (NASDAQ: FB), Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), and Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) have been in regular contact with the White House to discuss efforts to help stop the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Recently, a story spread based on a report by The Washington Postthat Facebook was considering, as part of these discussions, sharing user location data with the government to help combat the spread of COVID-19.
However, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg denied these claims, stating that if users don't have the chance to opt in to allow this type of information to be shared with the government, that Facebook wouldn't participate--or at least, that doing so wouldn't "make sense."
"I don't think it would make sense to share people's data in a way where they didn't have the opportunity to opt in to do that," stated Zuckerberg. "We're not aware of any active conversations or asks with the U.S. or other governments at this point asking for access to that data specifically."
Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone echoed these sentiments. Stone clarified that anonymous aggregated data could be useful from a collective research standpoint, however specific user data hasn't been requested by any government authorities.
"There is no agreement to share people's location data with governments," said Stone. "This data is available to researchers, not the government. In the U.S. we briefed the CDC on the work we do with aggregate, de-identified data maps with researchers - which has been previously reported - and they were supportive of our doing more of it. We have not received requests for location data from the U.S. government."
Google has been looking into how aggregated location data could be of assistance as well, such as confirming the effects of social distancing.
"We're exploring ways that aggregated anonymized location information could help in the fight against COVID-19," said Google. "One example could be helping health authorities determine the impact of social distancing, similar to the way we show popular restaurant times and traffic patterns in Google Maps."
Facebook and Google, in addition to Twitter, have also been stepping in to help decrease the spread of misinformation about the coronavirus through their platforms and services.