It’s Facebook-official: The social-media giant just can’t seem to guard users’ privacy, as it has repeatedly promised to do.
Documents acquired by The New York Times show that Facebook allowed more than 150 companies to see the names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends and other personal data without consent — generally in exchange for Facebook getting access to its “partners’ ” own collections of data.
Buried deep in the Times’ story is the news that the paper itself got this privileged access. Of greater concern: So did Huawei and Yandex — companies with ties to the espionage-obsessed governments of China and Russia.
Some firms — Netflix and Spotify — even gained the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages.
As the Times also reports, the data exchange “was intended to benefit everyone”: Facebook got more users and ad revenue; its partners improved their products; and Facebook users supposedly gained a superior social-media experience.
Problem is, Facebook was breaking its privacy promises — lying to users for what it decided was their own good.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Congress in April that the company was “committed to getting [privacy] right.”
Committed? Zuckerberg was deeply involved in the decisions to grant “special access” — and at least some of those privileges were still active even as he testified.
It’s hard to see how Facebook is going to regain anyone’s trust when it can’t get past treating the public as suckers.