Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Discussed Using People's Data As a Bargaining Chip, Emails and Court Filings Suggest (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Washington Post: Facebook executives in recent years appeared to discuss giving access to their valuable user data to some companies that bought advertising when it was struggling to launch its mobile-ad business, according to internal emails quoted in newly unredacted court filings. In an ongoing federal court case against Facebook, the plaintiffs claim that the social media giant doled out people's data secretly and selectively in exchange for advertising purchases or other concessions, even as others were cut off, ruining their businesses. The case was brought by one such company, Six4Three, which claims its business was destroyed in 2015 by Facebook's actions.
In one of the exchanges from the filings, Facebook employees discussed shutting down access "in one-go to all apps that don't spend at least $250k a year to maintain access to the data," according to the trove. The documents reference email exchanges regarding Facebook's relations with several large commercial partners, including Lyft, Tinder, Amazon.com, Airbnb and the Royal Bank of Canada. Facebook denies that it exchanged access to people's data for commercial benefit. Thousands of pages of court filings, which Facebook is fighting to keep sealed -- including in an emergency hearing scheduled for Friday afternoon -- illustrate the shrewd strategies the social network employed as it built its advertising empire. The disclosure sheds light on allegations of anti-competitive behavior that could play into efforts by U.S. and European lawmakers to curb the power of technology giants. "The documents Six4Three gathered for this baseless case are only part of the story and are presented in a way that is very misleading without additional context," Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, Facebook's director of developer platforms and programs, said in a statement. "We stand by the platform changes we made in 2015 to stop a person from sharing their friends' data with developers. Any short-term extensions granted during this platform transition were to prevent the changes from breaking user experience."
In one of the exchanges from the filings, Facebook employees discussed shutting down access "in one-go to all apps that don't spend at least $250k a year to maintain access to the data," according to the trove. The documents reference email exchanges regarding Facebook's relations with several large commercial partners, including Lyft, Tinder, Amazon.com, Airbnb and the Royal Bank of Canada. Facebook denies that it exchanged access to people's data for commercial benefit. Thousands of pages of court filings, which Facebook is fighting to keep sealed -- including in an emergency hearing scheduled for Friday afternoon -- illustrate the shrewd strategies the social network employed as it built its advertising empire. The disclosure sheds light on allegations of anti-competitive behavior that could play into efforts by U.S. and European lawmakers to curb the power of technology giants. "The documents Six4Three gathered for this baseless case are only part of the story and are presented in a way that is very misleading without additional context," Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, Facebook's director of developer platforms and programs, said in a statement. "We stand by the platform changes we made in 2015 to stop a person from sharing their friends' data with developers. Any short-term extensions granted during this platform transition were to prevent the changes from breaking user experience."
To their own email/data retention policy? I thought the corporate norm was to allow everything to be deleted every 90 days now.
I have some stocks to sell. After that, I don't care!
If you're still using Facebook... you deserve whatever abuse you get.
It's an existential thread to the internet and democracy. If you use it, you are complicit in what happens.
Captcha: "enslave".
FB lies more than Trump.
Pay no attention to the fact that a company with more power, money, and influence than 98% of the world's governments has the unchecked ability to bankrupt private businesses at a whim for failing to conform to their ideas of how the internet should look (or just for not paying them enough), the REAL outrage is that horrible thing Drumpf said on twitter this morning! (Like omg can you believe it? What a nazi!)
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!
I'm sure this was *completely* unintentional.
Well played, sir. Well played.
Facebook denies that it exchanged access to people's data for commercial benefit.
"Actually," they said, "we exchanged access to people's data for the lulz."
Gee, that sure sounds like a Russian name, don't you think? Coincidence? ..or not?
Need I say more?
Ask yourself: Why are you still using Facebook?
I've always assumed that the smart business model for data aggregators like Facebook, Amazon and Google is to NEVER give their data to anyone. If an advertiser wants to reach a certain demographic they just describe the demographic to the data aggregator and their message will be delivered. The advertiser never sees the list of advertisees.
The advantage is that the aggregator has something better than patent or copyright; it has exclusive data available nowhere else. No way they're ever going to leak that data. If that happens, they have nothing left to sell.
If this is true, your personal data is probably quite safe in their hands. But I'm only guessing.
...omphaloskepsis often...
This sounds alot like what Microsoft and Intel did with PC makers when everyone hated them.
Zuckerberg sounds much like what Gates was in those days