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Did you agree?Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Spotify, and other major tech companies and consumer brands entered agreements with Facebook to harvest the personal data of millions of its users. The New York Times conducted an investigation that brought to light the contentious data sharing deals; however, Facebook asserts that it has not committed any wrongdoing and defends its decision.
The social networking giant has had a turbulent year thus far, highlighted by the extremely damaging data sharing scandal involving Cambridge Analytica, which necessitated CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s multiple appearances before lawmakers in the United States and Europe. Deals with data The New York Times investigation reveals that Facebook made deals with a variety of partners to give them access to user data. These partners included Amazon, Apple, Spotify, Microsoft, and Netflix.
These businesses had access to all participants in a message thread as well as the ability to read, write, and delete private messages sent by Facebook users. It also made it possible for businesses to view the email addresses and phone numbers of users.For instance: According to the New York Times, “Facebook gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages” and “Facebook allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent,”
According to the article, “the social network allowed Yahoo to view streams of friends’ posts as recently as this summer, despite public statements that it had stopped that type of sharing years earlier.” Additionally, “the social network permitted Amazon to obtain users’ names and contact information through their friends.”
The New York Times also wondered if Facebook had broken a consent agreement it had with the Federal Trade Commission in 2011 that said the social network could not share user data unless the user explicitly gave permission.
Facebook’s defense Facebook has responded strongly to the article in a blog post, claiming that it never gave other businesses access to personal data without people’s permission. Additionally, it stated that there was no evidence of data misuse. Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, director of developer platforms and programs, wrote, “We’re facing questions about whether Facebook gave large tech companies access to people’s information and, if so, why we did this.”To clarify:Our 2012 settlement with the FTC was not broken by any of these partnerships or features, which also did not give companies access to information without people’s permission.
