Facebook Defends Itself Against New York Times Privacy Report

Technology

Published: December 19, 2018 5:35 am

Last Updated: January 11, 2020 1:31 pm

Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) defended itself against an accusation printed by The New York Times, claiming the social network released private data to other large tech companies without the knowledge of the users. Facebook responded to the report.

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The Facebook defense is titled “Let’s Clear Up a Few Things About Facebook’s Partners” and is authored by Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, Director of Developer Platforms and Programs. It says in part:

Today, we’re facing questions about whether Facebook gave large tech companies access to people’s information and, if so, why we did this.

To put it simply, this work was about helping people do two things. First, people could access their Facebook accounts or specific Facebook features on devices and platforms built by other companies like Apple, Amazon, Blackberry and Yahoo. These are known as integration partners. Second, people could have more social experiences – like seeing recommendations from their Facebook friends – on other popular apps and websites, like Netflix, The New York Times, Pandora and Spotify.

To be clear: none of these partnerships or features gave companies access to information without people’s permission, nor did they violate our 2012 settlement with the FTC.

How did people use these features?

People used these features in many different ways, including through:

Apps that allowed people to access their Facebook account on their Windows Phone device

Notifications about their activity on Facebook that they could turn on while they were using Safari or other browsers
“Social hubs” that consolidated their feeds across Facebook, Twitter, and other services

Messaging integrations that allowed people to recommend things like songs from Spotify to friends

Search results in Bing and elsewhere based on public information their friends shared

Tools that helped them find friends on Facebook by uploading their contacts from email providers like Yahoo

Oddly, the post was not from Facebook’s two leaders, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg or longtime chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, which begs the question why they did not defend the company themselves.