Scandal – Facebook Raises the Privacy Wall, Carving an Opening for Tech Giants
Facebook gave some of the world’s largest technology companies such as Microsoft, Netflix and Amazon, more intrusive access to users’ personal data than it has been disclosed.
The special arrangements are detailed in hundreds of pages of Facebook documents obtained by The New York Times. Facebook allowed the aforementioned companies’ search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent, the records show, making them targets to propaganda campaigns at a large scale, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
Microsoft Bing search engine for instance, has been granted access to Facebook users’ friends on the same network, while Netflix and Spotify gained access to read Facebook users’ private messages.
The social network has also permitted Amazon to obtain users’ names and contact information through their friends, and it allowed Yahoo to view streams of friends’ posts as recently.
Some of these practices, however, occurred last summer, when several privacy scandals were revealed by the network.
Facebook has been reeling from a series of privacy scandals set off by early revelations, as the image and reputation of the company have been undermined; however, the allegations stipulate that Facebook has been using its platform to spread false rumors and news in electoral processes, in order to influence the results.
In the case of the US presidential election in 2016, Facebook estimated that about 10 million people were targeted for more than 3,000 ads which have been paid for through fake accounts, on the basis that these accounts are allegedly associated with Russia, the source added.
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