SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 7, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Leaked documents from a civil suit
against Facebook show how the social network aimed to employ user data as a
tool for bargaining and to manipulate competitors, NBC News reported on
Wednesday.
Some 7,000 pages of documents reveal how Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg
and his team harnessed users’ personal information to reward partners by
giving them preferential data, while depriving rivals of the same sort of
information, it reported.
NBC said the emails, notes and other documents dated as far back as 2011
and were supposed to be kept out of the public eye pending the civil case in
California.
They show, for example, how Amazon received special data access after
purchasing advertising on Facebook, while an app called MessageMe was denied
data after growing so large it became a competitor, NBC reported.
While acting out of self-motivation, Facebook planned to portray the moves
as protective of user privacy, the documents showed.
The lawsuit was filed by a now defunct startup called Six4Three, which
created a failed app called Pikinis.
Through the app users could find Facebook pictures of people in bathing
suits, but in order to work, the app’s software had to be able to access the
data of Facebook users and their friends.
The suit accuses Facebook of abusing its power over user data, although
most of the documents filed in the case have been sealed by a judge at
Facebook’s request.
Facebook has been adamant that “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.”
The social network contends that the suit by Six4Three is aimed at
compelling it to provide the kind of data access that was taken advantage of
in the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal.
Up to 87 million users potentially had their data hijacked by political
consulting group Cambridge Analytica, which was working for Donald Trump’s
2016 presidential campaign.
Facebook has modified its data sharing app policies since then.
Meanwhile a British parliamentary committee investigating whether Facebook
was being used to manipulate election results published 250 pages of internal
Facebook documents from the Six4Three civil suit late last year.
The committee said emails showed the social media giant offered Netflix
and other popular apps preferential access to people’s data even after it had
tightened its privacy rules.