Facebook’s CFO David Wehner has confirmed that the company would launch its clear history feature later this year. It was first announced in early 2018 and it allows users to see information about apps and web sites they’ve interacted with and delete this information from their Facebook accounts.
Wehner further said the feature will make it harder for Facebook to use data collected by third parties to target ads to users.”Broadly, [clear history is] going to give us some headwinds in terms of being able to target as effectively as before,” said Wehner. CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the announcement said the feature would “be a simple control to clear your browsing history on Facebook — what you’ve clicked on, websites you’ve visited, and so on. You’ll even be able to turn off having this information stored with your account.”
The Clear History feature was proposed by Zuckerberg to his team in a reaction to the company’s Cambridge Analytica scandal last March, according to reports. The company made an announcement when it was still in the idea stage.