Your data is too profitable to waste time protecting you.
Facebook promised to protect user data. Instead, it used it like a weapon. When a company worked with Facebook, for example, including Facebook on a phone at launch, they’d be rewarded with additional access to user data. However, if a company looked to become a competitor to Facebook, Facebook claimed they were protecting user privacy and restricted or removed data access, squashing the competition before it could emerge.
These aren’t just monopolistic tactics that call for breaking up Facebook, as Elizabeth Warren believes (and has already been vindicated), but immoral uses of customer data. Instead of protecting your privacy, your Facebook data is just another weapon in Facebook’s arsenal.
In This Article:
The Sexist Way We Got This Information
Prepare to groan. We have access to the 4,000+ pages of documents thanks to a lawsuit from startup Six4Three. Six4Three had a Facebook app that let users find photos of their female friends in bikinis, an app they called “Pikinis”.
If you think that’s bad, Apple users, guess what? Apple makes it possible too. Try searching your phones images for “underwear,” “boxers,” “swim trunks,” “briefs,” or any other male-specific article of clothing. Then do the same for “brassiere” or “swimsuit.” Even if you have photos of men in swim suits, you’ll only find photos of women. Yeah, Apple has a sexist feature too, and they refuse to do anything about it.
Back to the story at hand, Facebook pulled Six4Three’s access to these photos. Thank goodness they did, but they didn’t do so for the right reasons.
According to internal documents, Facebook didn’t pull access to protect user privacy. They did it instead of exert power over third party companies. They wanted to show third parties that they need to play ball or lose their data.
Facebook didn’t care that Six4Three was offering a vile, sexist, and creepy app. They just wanted control.
“Personal Friends,” Allies, and Enemies
Just another meeting of the Facebook mafia. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty
How does Facebook decide what to do with your data? They want to profit from it, but currently only use it for ad targeting. Facebook considered a system in which app developers could pay to have access for user data. They considered direct payments, money exchanged for data, as well as offhanded deals that involved advertising spending in exchange for the data. If that sounds like the data version of smuggling, that’s because it basically is just that. Buy the ads and we’ll throw in the user data for free!
However, ultimately, Facebook went with a more nuanced approach prior to 2015 and the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Facebook executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, decide where the data goes. The answer to whether or not you can get data really depends on whether or not you’re friends with Mark Zuckerberg, your company has done something nice for Facebook, or if you’re a potential competitor for the company.
Personal Friends and Allies
Are you friends with Mark Zuckerberg? Throw back drinks with him or go to his barbecues? Then you’re in luck! You could have gained access to private user information with relative ease. Has your company, like Amazon, forged a partnership with Facebook for advertising, data sharing, and app preloading? Here’s your data!
If Facebook thought a company could be useful to them, they gave them additional access to data. In a classic monopolistic move, the pendulum swings the other way if Facebook sees your company as a threat.
Threats, Enemies, and Competitors
If Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t like you, or sees your company as a threat to Facebook’s social media monopoly, you’ll find Facebook’s data is more difficult to get your hands on. Even as a developer who should have access to some pieces of Facebook data, Facebook will cut your company off, claiming it’s in the interest of consumer privacy.
Facebook’s leaked documents show that they generally only spoke of privacy when describing their public-facing reasoning for limiting developer access to Facebook’s data. Your data. Facebook didn’t cut off SixForThree for using Facebook’s data for an incredibly creepy and sexist purpose. They claimed it was in the interest of privacy, but it was a power move to get other developers to fall in line.
In another case, Facebook discussed blocking a messaging app from accessing user data because it was becoming too popular. It’s worth noting that Facebook bought WhatsApp specifically because it had become a major competitor to Facebook Messenger.
Facebook believes they don’t get as much from third party developers as they give to them. That’s why access to Facebook’s data came at a cost. Your company can’t compete with Facebook and has to benefit the company in some other way. Although, on more than one occasion, Facebook considered selling data.
“It’s Sort of Unethical.”
Facebook employees looked at the way they handled sharing data with third parties, noting that the disparity between different companies was directly rooted in whether or not the third party was a competitor with Facebook. It was official policy, and they weren’t happy about it.
Bryan Klimt: “So we are literally going to group apps into buckets based on how scared we are of them and give them different APIs? … So the message is, ‘if you’re going to compete with us at all, make sure you don’t integrate with us at all’? I’m just dumbfounded.”
Kevin Lacker: “Yeah this is complicated.”
David Poll: “More than complicated, it’s sort of unethical.”
Selling Your Information
Facebook Portal+ and Facebook Portal. Note the user’s photo feed on display. Photo: Sam Rutherford/Gizmodo
Repeatedly, Mark Zuckerberg has claimed that Facebook does not sell user data and has no plans to. But that statement comes with a stipulation. Going back as far as 2012, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, and CPO Chris Cox have all been in favor of selling user data. Facebook almost did sell user data to developers.
As long as developers give Facebook what they want, that is, greater access to user data on the apps, Facebook is getting something by giving access to use data for free. Zuckerberg even stated that, while the fact that developers didn’t currently have to share user data generated in their apps with Facebook was “good for the world,” he also said it’s not “good for us.” Prior to 2015, as long as developers gave Facebook information about their users so Facebook could build a more robust advertising platform, developers could have access to use data.
In 2015, Zuckerberg suggested that developers should share social content with Facebook and buy ads through Facebook in exchange for Facebook data. Facebook has been trying to find ways to leverage and sell your data since you began giving it to them. Currently, they only do this through ads. Ad buyers can target a market without knowing how Facebook generates that market. This was the ultimate decision Facebook landed on in 2015. However, that could one day change. Facebook began discussing selling user data in 2012, after stock prices plummeted and user interaction with Facebook was on the decline. Another financial hardship for the company could result in them selling data.
How much are the personal details of your life worth?