A quick explainer on all the major revelations from the leak including Facebook's data policies, treatment of rivals, spy app and more
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Image: Reuters
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UK parliamentary body reprimanded Facebook for not doing anything despite knowing for a fact about the Russian involvement from 2014. British parliamentarian Damian Collins had said that he would go through the secret email cache which the UK had obtained before publishing it.
The released cache gives us an insight into the kind of internal discussions that took place in Facebook when it came to the policies concerning user data, privacy, the company's handling of its rivals, permissions feature and much more.
These documents, obtained from the app maker Six4Three, are under seal in US courts and Facebook had tried hard to dismiss these documents as a one-sided biased representation of facts.
Facebook maintained in its blog post that the set of documents only told one side of the story and that Facebook stood by the platform changes that were made in 2014/15 which prevented people from sharing friends' data with developers. Facebook reiterated that it has never sold user data.
White listing agreements
Facebook had disabled full access to data of your friends back in 2014/15, but it was observed that some companies were whitelisted and still had access to friends data. There is no clarity on which companies Facebook had drawn these white listing agreements with or if any user consent was sought before sharing their data.
To highlight the point, an email interaction between a dating app Badoo and Facebook’s director of developer platforms and programs. The gist of the interaction which took place between September 2014 and January 2015 was thus: Badoo wrote to Facebook on how removing friends permissions would be detrimental to the success of its app and why friends data was important. Facebook responded that Badoo would get access to a 'Hashed Anon All Friends API' which would give Badoo complete access to friends data. By February 2015, Badoo was white listed.
Similarly, cab-hailing app Lyft, hospitality app Airbnb, video-streaming app Netflix, were also whitelisted for 'All Mutual Friends' access.
This meant that users using Facebook logins for these apps were in effect handing over not just their data, but that of their Facebook friends as well to these companies.
Facebook Response: According to Facebook, friends' list was different from friends' data. Facebook said that in 2014/15 it changed its platform to prevent app developers from accessing your friends' data. In some cases, apps could not even request your friend list unless your friend was also using that same app.
"In some situations, when necessary, we allowed developers to access a list of the users’ friends. This was not friends’ private information but a list of your friends (name and profile pic). Whitelists are also common practice when testing new features and functionality with a limited set of partners before rolling out the feature more broadly," said Facebook.
Facebook against competitor apps
Facebook wasn't very courteous to any app that was regarded as a rival and took an aggressive stance against them, in some cases denying them any access to user data which led to the failure of that app's business.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally have a green signal of going ahead with shutting down friends API access to Vine, which was owned by rival Twitter. We all know that Vine was eventually shut down by Twitter.
Facebook Response: Facebook said that it had decided early on that it would restrict apps that were built on top of Facebook and that replicated its core functionality. Facebook went on to say that this feature is an industry practice seen with YouTube, Twitter, Snap and Apple. But it looks like Facebook wants to change this policy.
"As part of our ongoing review, we have decided that we will remove this out-of-date policy so that our platform remains as open as possible. We think this is the right thing to do as platforms and technology develop and grow," said Facebook.
Facebook used Onavo VPN app for spying on mobile apps
Facebook-owned Onavo which was advertised as a VPN app was in fact used to spy on and conduct global surveys of mobile app usage by customers and that too without their knowledge. According to Collins, this data was used by Facebook to see who had downloaded how many apps and how often were they used. This knowledge was used to acquire apps which would be a threat to Facebook.
WhatsApp related data captured by Onavo. Image: UK Parliament
Facebook Response: Facebook maintained that users were sufficiently informed before-hand on the kind of information the app collects and how it is used by Facebook. People have the option to opt-out from the Settings menu, after which their data wouldn't be used for anything other than to improve and develop Onavo products and services.
"Websites and apps have used tools like Onavo for market research services for years. We use Onavo, App Annie, comScore, and publicly available tools to help us understand the market and improve all our services," said Facebook.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's response to email leaks
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg also put out his response to the UK parliamentary committee's release of the email stash. "I understand there is a lot of scrutiny on how we run our systems. That's healthy given the vast number of people who use our services around the world, and it is right that we are constantly asked to explain what we do. But it's also important that the coverage of what we do — including the explanation of these internal documents — doesn't misrepresent our actions or motives. This was an important change to protect our community, and it achieved its goal," said Zuckerberg.
This week a British Parliament committee published some internal Facebook emails, which mostly include internal discussions leading up to changes we made to our developer platform to shut down abusive apps in 2014-2015. Since these emails were only part of our discussions, I want to share some more context around the decisions we made.
We launched the Facebook Platform in 2007 with the idea that more apps should be social. For example, your calendar should show your friends' ...
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Collins said the emails raise important issues, particularly around the use of the data of Facebook users. "The idea of linking access to friends' data to the financial value of the developers' relationship with Facebook is a recurring feature of the documents,"
Facebook's arguments and Zuckerberg's response seems quite weak, even with their claims of the email cache being one-sided.
When you have Facebook executives and Zuckerberg himself giving a go-ahead on shutting down access to rival apps, discussions within the Facebook team about charging app developers in exchange for access to user data, Facebook cheekily trying to evade Android app update permissions, and much more, things don't really add up. And it does not help matters when Facebook gives reactions like "we will remove this out-of-date policy so that our platform remains as open as possible," after being called out.
