...confidential emails, released Wednesday by the British Parliament, reveal the hardheaded business calculations that lurked beneath the feel-good image projected by Zuckerberg and Facebook.
“That may be good for the world, but it’s not good for us,” Zuckerberg wrote in a 2012 email about the possibility that developers would build applications that used data about Facebook users and their friends, but not provide any data back to Facebook.
Zuckerberg’s assessment – that “sharing” was only valuable if people were sharing data with his company – was endorsed by Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, who responded, “I think the observation that we are trying to maximize sharing on facebook [sic], not just sharing in the world, is a critical one.” Facebook discussed cashing in on user data, emails suggest.
The emails provide an uncommon window into the thinking of Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives as they sought revenue streams amid an industry-shaking shift from desktop to mobile computing.
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| Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO and Chairman |
Facebook denies the allegations. TechSpot:
“Facebook have clearly entered into whitelisting agreements with certain companies, which meant that after the platform changes in 2014/15 they maintained full access to friends’ data [sic],” stated Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee Chairman Damian Collins[.]
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Collins also points out emails that spelled out the collection of user call and text logs on Android devices. He claims Facebook went to great lengths to keep users from realizing such data was being collected from them.
“Facebook knew that the changes to its policies on the Android mobile phone system, which enabled the Facebook app to collect a record of calls and texts sent by the user would be controversial. To mitigate any bad PR, Facebook planned to make it as hard of possible for users to know that this was one of the underlying features of the upgrade of their app.”
The accusations. The Guardian:
In 2015, the company began “continuously uploading” call and text logs from Android phones, giving it a valuable window into the communications habits of its users.
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Since 2013, the company has used a VPN app it acquired, named Onavo, to harvest information about app usage on iPhones. By funnelling all internet usage on those phones through Facebook’s servers, it could be forewarned about popular apps, and take pre-emptive action against possible competition.
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Even though it clamped down on apps accessing user data in 2015, Facebook offered continued access to that data to a small number of large companies, including Netflix, Lyft and Airbnb.
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