Meta and the Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment on the suit or for more information on how the students’ data was used.

The Pixel Hunt

Meta offers the pixel free to businesses and organizations to embed on their websites and track visitors. By using the tool, companies can gather data about users’ interest and later advertise to them on Facebook.

My guess is it was a “free” way to get data on who was applying and how successful they were at promoting the application. Just slap a line of HTML to call the facebook evilbots and later we can log in and see our results.

Oh, facebook’s horrible though. Yeah, that’s a downside. Also, being as we’re in the twenty-first century could we pay for some more expertise in the government? The person who actually did the work was probably paid very little and reported to someone who “isn’t computer-savvy”.