Mark Zuckerberg Leveraged Facebook User Data To Fight Rivals and Help Friends, Leaked Documents Show (nbcnews.com)

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg once considered making deals with third-party developers just to help him find out how much users' data is worth, NBC News reported on Tuesday. The report, which cites 4,000 leaked pages of internal documents, shines a light on the way senior company executives viewed attaching a dollar sign to sensitive user data, despite Facebook's public commitment to protect such information. From the report: In the same week, Zuckerberg floated the idea of pursuing 100 deals with developers "as a path to figuring out the real market value" of Facebook user data and then "setting a public rate" for developers. "The goal here wouldn't be the deals themselves, but that through the process of negotiating with them we'd learn what developers would actually pay (which might be different from what they'd say if we just asked them about the value), and then we'd be better informed on our path to set a public rate," Zuckerberg wrote in a chat. Facebook told NBC News that it was exploring ways to build a sustainable business, but ultimately decided not to go forward with these plans.

Zuckerberg was unfazed by the potential privacy risks associated with Facebook's data-sharing arrangements. "I'm generally skeptical that there is as much data leak strategic risk as you think," he wrote in the email to Lessin. "I think we leak info to developers but I just can't think of any instances where that data has leaked from developer to developer and caused a real issue for us." The report also outlines how PR people at Facebook tries to spin things. An excerpt: In a March 2014 email discussing Zuckerberg's keynote speech at the event, where he was due to announce the removal of developers' access to friends' data, Jonny Thaw, a director of communications, wrote that it "may be a tough message for some developers as it may inhibit their growth." "So one idea that came up today was potentially talking in the keynote about some of the trust changes we're making on Facebook itself. So the message would be: 'trust is really important to us -- on Facebook, we're doing A, B and C to help people control and understand what they're sharing -- and with platform apps we're doing D, E and F.'" If that doesn't work, he added, "we could announce some of Facebook's trust initiatives in the run up to F8" to make the changes for developers "seem more natural."

Comments

Non-story

[Anonymous Coward]

So what? These are product developmental things.

Facebook effectively created new territory on data management. Yes, they've done some unethical things, and they're careless in others. But that's not what this is about; this is about discussions and leaked emails.

"Zuckerberg was unfazed by the potential privacy risks associated with Facebook's data-sharing arrangements."

Hindsight is always 20/20, but when you're looking forward it can be difficult to determine where things go. This is his opinion prior to many of the recent Facebook scandals; he was wrong, but at that point in time it was anyone's guess what would happen.

"The goal here wouldn't be the deals themselves, but that through the process of negotiating with them we'd learn what developers would actually pay (which might be different from what they'd say if we just asked them about the value), and then we'd be better informed on our path to set a public rate,"

So what? This is called pre-launch. When you're developing a product, the usual process is to conduct a Voice of Customer process; asking them what they would value things as. However, good product developers know that this process only creates a hypothesis, because people share opinions freely. If you're good, you then go to a new batch of ideal customers and ask them to pay for what your hypothesis of the product features and price should be; that's called pre-launch. What you find is that people often are willing to say one thing, but completely change their behavior when you ask them to actually write a check. Pre-launch tests the product feature and pricing set hypothesis. Somehow when building a business you have to actually gauge if people will pay for what you're offering; this is the only way to do so.

Leaked emails simply do not tell a story; this is just click-bait hype to fan the flames of anger over Facebook.

Zuck

[fluffernutter]

Zuckerberg comes from a world where all is fair as long as you have 200% more things than you will ever need. I'm not surprised.

Well... duh

[fortythirteen]

They've been openly selling that access to businesses for at least 10 years. Anyone who's been on a Facebook sales call as an employee of a major corporation knows this.

All this leak highlights is how unwitting the general populace is about what's done with the PII they put online.

Two things are probably true

[DarkOx]

1) There is a movement against Zuckerberg within facebook, probably led by some of its board and influenced by outside activist shareholders. Mark is unusual in the sense that facebook is still a very much found led company he has a lot of control. The investor class hates that. They don't want ones mans vision, politicking, vanity, etc screwing up their cash cow. They want nice safe committee driven decisions.. So they are probably digging up any dirt they can find and blowing up every little off the cuff bit spitballing Mark ever did they think won't play well with the media and running with it.

2) Zuckerberg does operate with the same moral compass you and i likely do. He clearly isn't burdened with sense of fair play and he does not care about the integrity of his own word. Mark will quite ruthlessly do what seems good for Mark at the time. The thing that people like Mark don't get is that behavior in itself is exploitable. It leaves you without a lot of friends ultimately and no matter how quick and clever you are when enough people have it out for you can't defend yourself without help; because nobody is at the top of their game 24x7x365