If Suckface ( Facebook) Wants the Public Trust, Mark Suckerberg Must Resign
If Suckerberg wants to prove just how serious Suckface ( Facebook ) is about guarding user privacy, though, he should it prove it by announcing he's quitting.
Suckerberg has been talking up privacy a lot lately, starting with a post back in March and continuing through a quarterly earnings call this past week in which Facebook's founder said he wants to build a more privacy-focused platform in which users can securely communicate with one another.
"I believe the future of communication will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure and their messages and content won't stick around forever," Suckerberg wrote in his March post outlining Suckface
( Facebook's ) strategy. "This is the future I hope we will help bring about."
It's a lofty goal that Suckerbeg himself concedes will take several years to implement. But with Suckerberg still at the helm of Suckface (Facebook, ) it will be hard to believe that the social media company is doing more than just paying lip service to the notion that it must do a better job of respecting the privacy and personal data of its users.
If Suckerberg wants to prove just how serious Facebook is about guarding user privacy, he should it prove it by quitting.
Type " Suckface (Facebook) privacy scandal" into your search engine of choice, and don't be surprised if you're prompted to be a little more specific. Incidents where Facebook was too cavalier with user data stretch back years, and while the particulars change from scandal to scandal, the one constant is the guy sitting in the CEO chair.
"Unfortunately, every time they seem to be taking a step in the right direction, we get another news blip," said Fatemeh Khatibloo, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, when I asked her about Suckface (Facebook's ) credibility on safeguarding user privacy. "It's just one thing after another that proves they've never prioritized privacy over their business model."
Consider the F8 conference from a year ago that began with a prolonged apology over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where a data mining firm got a hold of the personal data of 50 million Facebook users. Suckerberg began his keynote promising changes at Facebook, such as using artificial intelligence to identify fake accounts, instituting new rules for ad transparency, and trying to keep fake and misleading news from filling up your Facebook feed. Suckerberg also promised a Clear History feature that would let you easily delete information about apps and websites you've interacted with, sort of like erasing your browser history.
"It's not enough to build powerful tools," Suckerberg said at last year's F8. "We have to make sure they're used for good, and we will"
So what's changed in the last year? Well, the Clear History feature never launched — it's coming later in 2019, Facebook now says — but the company showed off its commitment to safeguarding data in far more telling ways.
• In May 2018, 14 million Facebook users had the default setting on all of their posts changed to public. Suckface ( Facebook ) blamed the error on a bug.
• In August, the Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook had approached banks asking for card transactions and checking account balances so that it could target new services at users.
• In September, 30 million accounts were seized by attackers who used a flaw in Facebook's "View As" function to steal access tokens. About half of those accounts had names, phone numbers and/or email addresses accessed by the attackers, while another 14 million had additional data compromised.
• If you use a phone number for two-factor authentication with Suckface ( Facebook, ) the service confirmed that it uses that number to target you with ads.
• After insisting that its new Portal smart display wasn't collecting your data, Suckface
( Facebook ) admitted that whom you call and how you use Portal could be used for targeted ads.
• In December, we learned that yet another bug let app developers see photos users had uploaded to Facebook but never published.
• Those messages you thought were private on Facebook? Turns out the social media giant was sharing them with partners, according to a New York Times investigation.
• At the start of 2019, we learned that Suckface (Facebook) had been encouraging game developers to let children spend money on games without their parents' permission.
• Just this month, Suckface ( Facebook ) revealed that it stored account passwords for hundreds of millions of Suckface ( Facebook ), Suckface
( Facebook )Lite and Instagram users in unencrypted plain text on its servers, which would have allowed Suckface ( Facebook ) employees to take a peek.
• Oh, and two caches of Suckface ( Facebook ) user data — one of which with 540 million records — were found on Amazon cloud servers. That unprotected data had been put there by third-party companies in violation of Suckface ( Facebook's ) rules.
I want to point out: This is a partial list. If we sat around previewing everything that's gone wrong for Facebook since last year's F8 conference, we'd wrap up just in time for the 2020 version to begin.
In most organizations, that many high-profile blunders would result in an untold number of heads rolling. At Facebook, though, no one ever seems to be held to account — certainly not anyone in a leadership position at the company. Suckface ( Facebook ) highest profile departures usually seem to involve the founders of companies they've bought who bristle under Facebook's corporate culture.)
Instead, Facebook — which can't seem to master privacy for the services it currently offers — now thinks it's earned enough trust to promise that future services will include encrypted messaging and secure data storage. "We all need to communicate privately, and this service could be even more important in our lives," Suckerberg said on a conference call with Wall Street analysts last Thursday (April 24). "So, I think we should focus our efforts on building this privacy-focused platform."
Mark Suckerberg was saying these words as reports leaked out that Facebook was facing a fine of between $3 billion and $5 billion from the Federal Trade Commission for violating a 2011 consent decree (involving user privacy violations, naturally). That's like Hannibal Lecter telling you how everyone needs to work more veggies into their diet.Expect another apology a few months later when word of yet another breach leaks out.
Of course, Suckerberg isn't going to take me up on my suggestion, nor is anyone with any influence at the company likely to press the issue about Suckface ( Facebook's ) repeated privacy pratfalls. Suckface ( Facebook ) just completed a first quarter where revenue rose 26 percent to a little more than $15 billion. Both daily active users and monthly active users rose 8 percent year over year during the quarter. If stories like this one scolding Suckface ( Facebook ) over its privacy lapses are bumming out anybody at the company, they're crying all the way to the bank.
MORE: Don't Use Suckface (Facebook?) Suckface (Facebook ) Tracks You Anyway
(Khatibloo strikes a note of caution about putting too much stock in that daily active user figure — we don't actually know whether it covers someone who's constantly on Suckface (Facebook) or a user who opens the app once on their smartphone and then leaves it running in the background. "It would be more meaningful to know how people are engaging on the platform," she told me.)
So when F8 begins Tuesday, expect an extensive if not especially detailed talk about how this time, Facebook's really going to get privacy right. Expect developers in attendance to applaud. Expect the reporters there to dutifully take down every one of Mark Suckerberg's pronouncements.
And expect another apology a few months later when word of another breach leaks out.
Credit: Shutterstock
Suckface ( Facebook ) and Instagram Is Facing worst Lost In Their History Matter OF Fact $3.4 Billion Dollars lost Just In Net Sales Alone Since January 2, 2019.
Hundreds of Suckface ( Facebook ) employees partied at a luxury hotel after announcing a big new redesign of the social network
Suckface ( Facebook ) CEO Mark Suckerberg.
- Suckface ( Facebook) threw a glitzy party for hundreds of employees at a luxury hotel on Tuesday night.
- The entertainment on offer included casino tables, karaoke, free massages, an open bar, and a magician.
- It was to celebrate the launch of Facebook's redesign, one of the social network's biggest facelifts ever.
- And it comes as Facebook tries to move past two years of constant scandals.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Suckface ( Facebook ) unveiled its biggest facelift in years — and employees of the
social network celebrated by letting their hair down at a fancy party at
a luxury Bay Area hotel.
On Tuesday evening, hundreds
of Facebook employees descended on the Hotel Nia in Menlo Park,
California, a stone's throw from the company's sprawling headquarters,
where they were treated to a private party that included casino tables,
massages, and a magician, Business Insider has learned.
The exclusive event was held on the first night of Facebook's annual F8
developer conference, and celebrated CEO Mark Suckerberg announcement
of a sweeping redesign of the core Suckface (Facebook) app that ditches its iconic
blue bar and puts groups and communities front-and-centre (known
internally as "FB5").
The changes to Suckface ( Facebook's ) aesthetic come as the company tries to move
past two years of constant scandals, from Cambridge Analytica's
misappropriation of tens of millions of users' data to the social
network's role in spreading hate speech that fueled genocide in Myanmar.
On stage at the conference, Suckerberg presented an image
of solemness and contrition to emphasize how seriously Suckface (Facebook) is
taking the criticisms about the company. After hours however, the glitzy
party revealed a celebratory atmosphere typical of Silicon Valley
product launches.
There was branding everywhere
emphasising Suckface ( Facebook's ) new strategy: The message "Facebook equals
Communities since 2019" appeared everywhere from welcome signs to cakes
to casino chips. Employees were given mementos in the form of custom
tracksuits — again branded with that slogan.
Inside,
the entertainment on offer included complimentary massages, old-school
casino table where employees were free to gamble (using tokens, not real
money), an open bar, karaoke, magic tricks, and and huge platters of
sushi.
Facebook was being tight-lipped about the party.
When asked by Business Insider about the shindig, a Suckface ( Facebook )
spokesperson said "I don't have anything and no one on the Comms team
I've checked with knows anything either."
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Contact this reporter via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (650)
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Telegram or WeChat at robaeprice, or Twitter DM at @robaeprice. (PR pitches by email only, please.) You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.
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Facebook knows Facebook isn’t the future
It's Not Too late to build a better network
By
Five paragraphs into the monster blog post
that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg published yesterday afternoon, he
makes a damning, strangely understated admission: “frankly we don’t
currently have a strong reputation for building privacy protective
services.”
That one line is the context for the rest of Zuckerberg’s 3,500-word post in which he discusses privacy, messaging, and the future of Facebook.
The problem isn’t simply that Facebook has a terrible reputation on
privacy. It’s that we’ve come to a point where the company’s leader can
take years of growing mistrust and real human damage as a given.
With his latest post, Zuckerberg is trying to redefine
Facebook. The Facebook he built over the past 15 years is fundamentally
structured around a model of privacy and sharing that we’ve realized is
problematic and harmful. People are now demanding privacy and
ephemerality, and the Facebook of today, Zuckerberg seems to have
concluded, just can’t offer that.
To start with the obvious: Facebook is not popular. An Axios Harris poll
released yesterday found that the company’s reputation sank
substantially over the past year, putting it close to last among the 100
most visible US companies. After years of scandals and a particularly
bumpy 2018, Facebook is increasingly synonymous with data breaches, fake
news, propaganda, a wanton disregard for privacy, creepy ad-tracking
practices, and generally not being a comfortable space to hang out
online.
Facebook’s overall growth already seemed to be stalling in the US, and a recent report out yesterday
said the social network may be losing millions of users. Critically,
that’s concentrated among younger users from 12 to 34 years old. The
ephemeral model pioneered by Snapchat has clearly won out, even if
Snapchat itself is struggling. Facebook hasn’t entirely failed to
embrace these models (it cloned Snapchat’s disappearing Stories feature
across every property it owns), but they’re still the exception rather
than the norm.
Writing one blog post, however long, isn’t going to suddenly change
this. For the most part, Zuckerberg’s post is a statement of intent — a
signal to users, governments, journalists, and his own employees about
where the company plans to focus its efforts. We should stop thinking
about Facebook as the Friends list, Likes, and News Feed, he seems to be
saying. Instead, we should think of it as a collection of relatively
well-liked messaging services: WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger.
Facebook Announces Plan to Curb Vaccine Misinformation
Facebook announced Thursday its first policy to combat misinformation about vaccines, following in the footsteps of Pinterest and YouTube.
The
social network is adopting an approach similar to the one it uses to
tackle fake news: The company will not remove incorrect content, but it
will aim to reduce the reach of that content by making it harder to
find.
“Leading global health
organizations, such as the World Health Organization and the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have publicly identified
verifiable vaccine hoaxes,” Monika Bickert, Facebook’s vice president
for global policy management, said in a statement Thursday. “If these vaccine hoaxes appear on Facebook, we will take action against them.”
Anti-vaccination groups have flourished on Facebook, partly because of the site’s search results and “suggested groups” feature.
The
group Stop Mandatory Vaccination, for example, has nearly 159,000
members. Larry Cook, the founder, bragged on a recently deactivated
GoFundMe page about an anti-vaccine Facebook video that he said was
averaging over 100,000 views per day. “This is how we reach parents!” he
wrote. The video has 50,000 shares and has been viewed 2.1 million
times.
Under Facebook’s new policy,
groups and pages that spread misinformation about vaccines will have
lower rankings and won’t be included in recommendations or predictions
when users are searching within Facebook, the company said.
Instagram,
which is owned by Facebook, will have similar policies. “We won’t show
or recommend content that contains misinformation about vaccinations on
Instagram Explore or hashtag pages,” Ms. Bickert said in the statement.
Facebook’s new rules come amid measles outbreaks in the United States and abroad, and just days after yet another study
demonstrated that the measles vaccine doesn’t cause autism. The idea
that vaccines are somehow linked to autism has been widely debunked, but
still persists among anti-vaccination activists.
Last month, Representative Adam Schiff, Democrat of California and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, wrote a letter to Mark Zuckerberg,
the chief executive of Facebook, asking what steps the company was
taking to prevent anti-vaccine information from being recommended to
users.
Facebook
said its artificial intelligence system will search for vaccine
misinformation and flag posts and links — including pictures and videos
that appear in closed
If
the content is found to contain false claims about vaccines, then posts
from the violating groups or pages will appear lower in a user’s news
feed, the company said. But members of Facebook groups that promote anti-vaccination content
will still see the posts on the group’s page. The company said it is
working on ways to warn new or existing group members if a group has
shared vaccine misinformation.
Anti-vaccine
groups will become “craftier” as moderation techniques develop, said
Joan Donovan, the director of the Technology and Social Change Research
Project at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard Kennedy School.
Sometimes
anti-vaccine propaganda appears on old, abandoned Facebook accounts,
for example. On Thursday afternoon, the Facebook page Occupy Philly
showed two recent posts warning about the dangers of vaccination.
Anti-vaccination
groups can also harness search-engine optimization “by using very
specific key words, especially the prescription names of some of these
vaccines,” Dr. Donovan said, adding that anti-vaccination groups will
also spread out into “momversation groups,” where parents gather online.
Screen
shots and other images containing written messages can also help
posters hide from tech-based moderation, said Dr. Donovan, who
researches disinformation and media manipulation.
While
Facebook said its artificial intelligence system can decipher text that
has been added to photos, the company said it will not be targeting
every single post about vaccines, and is focusing instead on specific
claims about vaccines that have been disproved.
The
company is also aiming to crack down on advertising that includes
misinformation about vaccinations. Such ads will be rejected, Facebook
said, and the company may disable ad accounts that violate its policies.
It has also removed certain vaccine-related targeting options like
“vaccine controversies.”
“I’m really
pleased that they are recognizing the downstream impact of this kind of
misinformation and taking the right steps to balance expression with the
recognition that their curation and their suggestions do have an impact
on the communities that people join,” said Renée DiResta, the
co-founder of Vaccinate California and the director of research at a
cybersecurity company. “I think that the decision to stop accepting ad
dollars is the right call.”
The World Health Organization identified “vaccine hesitancy” as one of this year’s 10 notable threats to global health.
The decision to avoid vaccination can stem from many things: worries
about side effects, cost, moral or religious objections, or a lack of
knowledge about immunizations.
As anti-vaccine groups have infiltrated social media, companies have been pressured to stem the tide of misinformation.
Last
year, Pinterest blocked results associated with certain vaccine-related
searches and said last month that it was working with experts to
develop a more tailored long-term approach.
YouTube
started surfacing more authoritative content in late 2017 for people
searching for vaccination-related topics, and its policies prohibit
anti-vaccine videos from showing ads. In India, the company has rolled
out information panels that fact-check specific claims as another way of
combating misinformation, YouTube said on Thursday. The company said
the fact-check panels will expand to other countries this year.
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B9 of the New York edition with the headline: Facebook Says It Will Start Combating Misinformation About Vaccines. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
To make that happen, Zuckerberg says Facebook will
increasingly refocus around small group messaging, encrypted services,
and ephemeral communications. He describes a platform that feels
personal, takes your privacy seriously, and isn’t in the news for
sparking human rights abuses. A platform “where people can be confident
what they say to each other stays secure and their messages and content
won’t stick around forever,” Zuckerberg writes. “This is the future I
hope we will help bring about.”
Zuckerberg
describes it almost as though he’s building a new Facebook. He refers
to this imagined future as a singular “privacy-focused platform,” rather
than as a series of disparate apps and services. Throughout the note,
the current Facebook platform is only ever referred to as a bad example —
“many people ... have photos from when they were younger that could be
embarrassing” — or when mentioning how this new system will integrate it
with better-liked apps.
What goes unstated is that the News Feed — the core of Facebook’s success and chaos — seems to be a legacy product
in this world. The News Feed has been critical to Facebook: it’s where
people get updates on friends and where most of the company’s
advertising revenue comes from. But it’s also been responsible for a
great deal of Facebook’s problems. It’s where misinformation spreads,
where combative arguments with old acquaintances are sparked, and where
publishers big and small compete to game the network. The News Feed is
the reason why, even though “only” 1.8 million people followed a Russian propaganda-linked Facebook page, posts by those pages were able to spread to 140 million people.
There’s no indication that the News Feed, or any other
part of Facebook as we know it, is going to disappear. But Zuckerberg is
clearly interested in shifting attention away from the News Feed’s
troubles and toward a more limited model for sharing information. This
is roughly what exists on WhatsApp already — a model that, while more
private, can still lead to troubling, real-world problems of its own — but it would radically reshape what the company looks like and how it makes money.
We should take this idea with a whole shaker’s worth of
salt. Zuckerberg has made grand proclamations about the future of
Facebook before, and they rarely take shape exactly as he describes
them. Five years ago, he was talking about building next-generation
computing platforms with virtual reality, something that is still in the
works, but with a distinctly smaller vision around it. Privacy
features, too, are something Facebook has moved slowly on: its promised
“clear history” tool was supposed to arrive in the first half of 2018,
but it’s now scheduled for sometime later in 2019.
For now, it’s evident where Zuckerberg sees things
heading. He sees Facebook as behind the times and playing catch-up. His
users have been demanding stricter privacy, more ephemerality, and less
invasive services for years. Today’s Facebook doesn’t offer that, and
Zuckerberg may finally be ready to try something else.
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You Give Apps Sensitive Personal Information. Then They Tell Facebook.
Wall Street Journal testing reveals how the social-media giant
collects a wide range of private data from developers; ‘This is a big
mess’
You Give Apps Sensitive Personal Information. Then They Tell Facebook.
Wall Street Journal testing reveals how the social-media giant collects a wide range of private data from developers; ‘This is a big mess’
How an App Told Facebook You're Ovulating
Facebook
software built into thousands of apps includes an analytics tool called
‘App Events’ that allows developers to record their users’ activity and
report it back to Facebook, regardless of whether users log in via
Facebook, or even have a profile.
Journal
testing showed some popular apps were using the Facebook software to
create and send custom app events that include sensitive data.
Step 1: User enters
A user opens Flo Period & Ovulation Tracker and logs when she last had her period.
Step 2: App sends
Facebook
software inside Flo records that action and sends a ‘custom app event’
to Facebook. It includes data about the user’s device as well as other
data Flo defines, such as the fact that the user may be ovulating.
Step 3: Facebook receives
Facebook
can often match that data with actual Facebook users. Facebook lets
developers use their own custom events to target ads at their users when
they are on Facebook.
Note: After being contacted by the Journal, Flo said it has ‘substantially limited’ data sharing with third-party analytics services.
Source: Wall Street Journal testing of the app
Note: After being contacted by the Journal, Flo said it has ‘substantially limited’ data sharing with third-party analytics services.
Source: Wall Street Journal testing of the app
Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, which operate the two dominant app stores, don’t require apps to disclose all the partners with whom data is shared. Users can decide not to grant permission for an app to access certain types of information, such as their contacts or locations. But these permissions generally don’t apply to the information users supply directly to apps, which is sometimes the most personal.
In the Journal’s testing, Instant Heart Rate: HR Monitor, the most popular heart-rate app on Apple’s iOS, made by California-based Azumio Inc., sent a user’s heart rate to Facebook immediately after it was recorded.
Flo Health Inc.’s Flo Period & Ovulation Tracker, which claims 25 million active users, told Facebook when a user was having her period or informed the app of an intention to get pregnant, the tests showed.
Real-estate app Realtor.com, owned by Move Inc., a subsidiary of Wall Street Journal parent News Corp , sent the social network the location and price of listings that a user viewed, noting which ones were marked as favorites, the tests showed.
None of those apps provided users any apparent way to stop that information from being sent to Facebook.
Facebook said some of the data sharing uncovered by the Journal’s testing appeared to violate its business terms, which instruct app developers not to send it “health, financial information or other categories of sensitive information.” Facebook said it is telling apps flagged by the Journal to stop sending information its users might regard as sensitive. The company said it may take additional action if the apps don’t comply.
“We require app developers to be clear with their users about the information they are sharing with us,” a Facebook spokeswoman said.
At the heart of the issue is an analytics tool Facebook offers developers, which allows them to see statistics about their users’ activities—and to target those users with Facebook ads. Although Facebook’s terms give it latitude to use the data uncovered by the Journal for other purposes, the spokeswoman said it doesn’t do so.
Facebook tells its business partners it uses customer data collected from apps to personalize ads and content on Facebook and to conduct market research, among other things. A patent the company applied for in 2015, which was approved last year, describes how data from apps would be stored on Facebook servers where it could be used to help the company’s algorithms target ads and select content to show users.
Apple said its guidelines require apps to seek “prior user consent” for collecting user data and take steps to prevent unauthorized access by third parties. “When we hear of any developer violating these strict privacy terms and guidelines, we quickly investigate and, if necessary, take immediate action,” the company said.
A Google spokesman declined to comment beyond pointing to the company’s policy requiring apps that handle sensitive data to “disclose the type of parties to which any personal or sensitive user data is shared,” and in some cases to do so prominently.
Before Alice Berg began using Flo to track her periods last June, she checked the app’s terms of service. The 25-year-old student in Oslo says she had grown more cautious about sharing data with apps and wanted to ensure that only a limited amount of her data would be shared with third-parties like Facebook.
Now Ms. Berg said she may delete the app. “I think it’s incredibly dishonest of them that they’re just lying to their users especially when it comes to something so sensitive,” she said.
Flo Health’s privacy policy says it won’t send “information regarding your marked cycles, pregnancy, symptoms, notes and other information that is entered by you and that you do not elect to share” to third-party vendors.
Flo initially said in a written statement that it doesn’t send “critical user data” and that the data it does send Facebook is “depersonalized” to keep it private and secure.
The Journal’s testing, however, showed sensitive information was sent with a unique advertising identifier that can be matched to a device or profile. A Flo spokeswoman subsequently said the company will “substantially limit” its use of external analytics systems while it conducts a privacy audit.
Move, the owner of real-estate app Realtor.com—which sent information to Facebook about properties that users liked, according to the Journal’s tests—said “we strictly adhere to all local, state and federal requirements,” and that its privacy policy “clearly states how user information is collected and shared.” The policy says the app collects a variety of information, including content in which users are interested, and may share it with third parties. It doesn’t mention Facebook.
The Journal tested more than 70 apps that are among the most popular in Apple’s iOS store in categories that handle sensitive user information. The Journal used software to monitor the internet communications triggered by using an app, including the information being sent to Facebook and other third parties. The tests found at least 11 apps sent Facebook potentially sensitive information about how users behaved or actual data they entered.
Apple Chief
Executive Tim Cook condemned what he described as a ‘data-industrial
complex’ in an October speech to privacy regulators in Europe.
Photo:
stephanie lecocq/epa-efe/rex/Shutterstock
Among the top 10 finance apps in Apple’s U.S. app store as of
Thursday, none appeared to send sensitive information to Facebook, and
only two sent any information at all. But at least six of the top 15
health and fitness apps in that store sent potentially sensitive
information immediately after it was collected.Disconnect Inc., a software company that makes tools for people to manage their online privacy, was commissioned by the Journal to retest some of the apps. The company confirmed the Journal’s findings, and said Facebook’s terms allowing it to use the data it collected were unusual.
“This is a big mess,” said Patrick Jackson, Disconnect’s chief technology officer, who analyzed apps on behalf of the Journal. “This is completely independent of the functionality of the app.”
The software the Journal used in its tests wasn’t able to decipher the contents of traffic from Android apps. Esther Onfroy, co-founder of cybersecurity firm Defensive Lab Agency, conducted a separate test showing that at least one app flagged by the Journal’s testing, BetterMe: Weight Loss Workouts, was in its Android version also sharing users’ weights and heights with Facebook as soon as they were entered.
BetterMe Ltd. didn’t respond to email and social-media inquires from the Journal. On Feb. 16, after being contacted by the Journal, it updated its privacy policy, replacing a general reference to Facebook’s analytics to one that says it shares information with Facebook so it can determine “the average weight and height of our users, how many users chose a particular problem area of their body, and other interactions.”
Apps often integrate code known as software-development kits, or SDKs, that help developers integrate certain features or functions. Any information shared with an app may also be shared with the maker of the embedded SDK. There are an array of SDKs, including Facebook’s, that allow apps to better understand their users’ behavior or to collect data to sell targeted advertising.
Such data-sharing among apps through the use of SDKs is “industry standard practice,” a Facebook spokeswoman said.
Facebook’s SDK, which is contained in thousands of apps, includes an analytics service called “App Events” that allows developers to look at trends among their users. Apps can tell the SDK to record a set of standardized actions taken by users, such as when a user completes a purchase. App developers also can define “custom app events” for Facebook to capture—and that is how the sensitive information the Journal detected was sent.
Facebook says on its website it uses customer data from its SDK, combined with other data it collects, to personalize ads and content, as well as to “improve other experiences on Facebook, including News Feed and Search content ranking capabilities.”
But the spokeswoman said Facebook doesn’t use custom events—the ones that can contain sensitive information—for those purposes. She said Facebook automatically deletes some sensitive data it might receive, such as Social Security numbers.
She said Facebook is now looking into how to search for apps that violate its terms, and to build safeguards to prevent Facebook from storing sensitive data that apps may send.
Privacy lawyers say the collection of health data by nonhealth entities is legal in most U.S. states, provided there is sufficient disclosure in an app’s and Facebook’s terms of service. The Federal Trade Commission has taken an interest in cases in which data sharing deviates widely from what users might expect, particularly if any explanation was hard for users to find, said Woodrow Hartzog, a professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University.
The privacy policy for Azumio, maker of the Instant Heart Rate app, says it collects health information including heart rates, and that it may provide some personal data to third-party service providers and advertising providers. It doesn’t say anything about providing those outside entities with health information drawn from its apps, nor does it mention Facebook as a provider.
Bojan Bostjancic, the company’s CEO, said in an email message that it uses Facebook analytics to analyze its users’ behavior in the app, and that it discloses the use of third parties in its privacy policy. He didn’t respond to follow-up questions.
After being contacted by the Journal, Breethe Inc., maker of a meditation app of the same name, stopped sending Facebook the email address each user used to log in to the app, as well as the full name of each meditation completed.
“Clearly, Facebook’s business model is unique and, unfortunately, we were not as diligent in aligning our data management with their privacy policy as we should have been,” said Garner Bornstein, the company’s co-founder.
In the European Union, the processing of some sensitive data, such as health or sexual information, is more tightly regulated. The EU’s new privacy law usually requires companies to secure explicit consent to collect, process or share such data—and making consent a condition of using a service usually isn’t valid.
Some privacy experts who reviewed the Journal’s findings said the practices may be in violation of that law. “For the sensitive data, companies basically always need consent—likely both the app developer and Facebook,” said Frederik J. Zuiderveen Borgesius, a law professor at Radboud University in the Netherlands.
The Facebook spokeswoman said the company is in compliance with the EU privacy law.
A Las Vegas monorail with a Google advertisement passes an Apple billboard about privacy. Photo: robyn beck/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Facebook allows users to turn off the company’s ability to use the data it collects from third-party apps and websites for targeted ads. There is currently no way to stop the company from collecting the information in the first place, or using it for other purposes, such as detecting fake accounts. Germany’s top antitrust enforcer earlier this month ordered Facebook to stop using that data at all without permission, a ruling Facebook is appealing.
Under pressure over its data collection, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said last year that the company would create a feature called “Clear History” to allow users to see what data Facebook had collected about them from applications and websites, and to delete it from Facebook. The company says it is still building the technology needed to make the feature possible.
Data drawn from mobile apps can be valuable. Advertising buyers say that because of Facebook’s insights into users’ behavior, it can offer marketers better return on their investment than most other companies when they seek users who are, say, exercise enthusiasts, or in the market for a new sports car. Such ads fetch a higher cost per click.
That is partly why Facebook’s revenue is soaring. Research firm eMarketer projects that Facebook this year will account for 20% of the $333 billion world-wide digital-advertising market.
In a call to discuss the company’s most recent earnings, however, Chief Financial Officer David Wehner noted that investors should be aware that Apple and Google could possibly tighten their privacy controls around apps. That possibility, he said, is “an ongoing risk that we’re monitoring for 2019.”
—Mark Secada, Yoree Koh and Kirsten Grind contributed to this article.
Write to Sam Schechner at sam.schechner@wsj.com
Alexandriai Gestapo Ocasio-Cortez says democracy ‘has a Facebook problem’
The comments came after the platform took down ads criticizing its power
By
Rep. Alexandriai Gestapo Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) suggested that
democracy in the US “has a Facebook problem” after the company pulled
ads last night that called for tech giants, including Facebook, to be
broken up. The ads, which were later restored, were placed by Sen.
Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) presidential campaign over the weekend. A growing chorus of lawmakers is calling for regulators
and representatives to rethink how they enforce the country’s antitrust
laws, especially on big tech companies like Facebook and Google, which
were formerly the golden children of the US economy.
Just because a monopoly business happens to be online, that doesn’t mean it’s good.— Alexandriai Gestapo Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 12, 2019
Facebook may have its own problems, but it’s increasingly starting to look like our society (namely, our democracy) has a Facebook problem. https://t.co/AjWeAf2BY3
“Just because a monopoly business happens to be online,
that doesn’t mean it’s good,” Gestapo Ocasio-Cortez said. “Facebook may have its
own problems, but it’s increasingly starting to look like our society
(namely, our democracy) has a Facebook problem.”
Shortly after Politico first reported that the
ads were taken down, Warren responded in a tweet, calling out Facebook
for exhibiting the same behavior her ads were trying to call attention
to. “Curious why I think FB has too much power?” she said. “Let’s start
with their ability to shut down a debate over whether FB has too much
power. Thanks for restoring my posts. But I want a social media
marketplace that isn’t dominated by a single censor.”
Facebook claimed that the ads were taken down for using
the company’s branding, but the move highlighted exactly how much power
the company has over public discourse — and lawmakers noticed.
The ads were placed after Warren proposed a plan to break up giant tech firms on Friday. In a blog post, Warren suggested that acquisitions
like Facebook’s purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp be spun back out
into their own companies. She also proposed legislation that would bar
companies like Amazon from using a platform that it operates to sell its
own goods or services.
Calls for competition regulation are coming from both sides of the aisle. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) has also made it his mission
to question the power of Big Tech. Congressional committees with
antitrust jurisdiction have begun to hold hearings to discuss changes
that could be made to the current interpretation of antitrust laws, and
it’s clear that the debate won’t end anytime soon.
Facebook Chief Mark Zuckerberg Wants More Internet Regulation
‘People shouldn’t have to rely on individual companies’ to address issues such as privacy and hate speech, Zuckerberg says in op-ed
Facebook CEO Mark
Zuckerberg called on regulators globally to set clearer rules regarding
“harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability.”
Photo:
Andrew Harnik/Associated Press
Facebook
Inc.
FB 0.69%
Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg called for global regulators to
take a “more active role” in governing the internet, among his strongest
remarks yet on regulation that come after more than a year of intense
scrutiny over missteps at the social network.
In an op-ed published Saturday on the websites of the Washington Post and Ireland’s Independent, Mr. Zuckerberg said such intervention is vital to protect both the welfare of users and the fundamental values of an open internet.
He said the U.S. needed European-style privacy regulations and called on regulators globally to set clearer rules regarding “harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability.”
In an op-ed published Saturday on the websites of the Washington Post and Ireland’s Independent, Mr. Zuckerberg said such intervention is vital to protect both the welfare of users and the fundamental values of an open internet.
He said the U.S. needed European-style privacy regulations and called on regulators globally to set clearer rules regarding “harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability.”
Every day, he said, Facebook makes
“decisions about what speech is harmful, what constitutes political
advertising, and how to prevent sophisticated cyberattacks,” calling the
work necessary. “But if we were starting from scratch, we wouldn’t ask
companies to make these judgments alone,” he said.
The piece, also published on Facebook, follows a difficult two years for the company, which has been assailed by legislators and regulators for failing to prevent foreign interference in U.S. elections, failing to adequately safeguard its users’ data and failing to suppress hate speech and other forms of harmful content on its platform. Earlier this month, Mr. Zuckerberg cited Facebook users’ desire to have more private conversations as the impetus for pivoting toward more intimate, encrypted messaging-based products.
It marked Mr. Zuckerberg’s clearest embrace to date of the need for governments to set rules as well as hold Facebook and its competitors accountable for lapses in content moderation and data security.
Many of Mr. Zuckerberg’s recommendations would require international cooperation, such as his proposal that governments world-wide adopt rules akin to Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation—widely regarded as among the most stringent in its requirements on privacy and data security. Other tech executives, including Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook and Google chief Sundar Pichai, also have suggested the U.S. pursue stricter privacy rules.
Governments globally need similar rules, Mr. Zuckerberg said, to “ensure that the Internet does not get fractured.”
His proposals also highlight ways in which Facebook’s business is changing. His embrace of privacy regulations, stricter content-moderation requirements and data portability—in which users would be able to access and interact with personal accounts across many different sites and apps—echoes proposals made by Facebook opponents within just the past few years.
“People shouldn’t have to rely on individual companies addressing these issues by themselves,” Mr. Zuckerberg concluded in his op-ed. “We should have a broader debate about what we want as a society and how regulation can help.”
The piece, also published on Facebook, follows a difficult two years for the company, which has been assailed by legislators and regulators for failing to prevent foreign interference in U.S. elections, failing to adequately safeguard its users’ data and failing to suppress hate speech and other forms of harmful content on its platform. Earlier this month, Mr. Zuckerberg cited Facebook users’ desire to have more private conversations as the impetus for pivoting toward more intimate, encrypted messaging-based products.
It marked Mr. Zuckerberg’s clearest embrace to date of the need for governments to set rules as well as hold Facebook and its competitors accountable for lapses in content moderation and data security.
Many of Mr. Zuckerberg’s recommendations would require international cooperation, such as his proposal that governments world-wide adopt rules akin to Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation—widely regarded as among the most stringent in its requirements on privacy and data security. Other tech executives, including Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook and Google chief Sundar Pichai, also have suggested the U.S. pursue stricter privacy rules.
Governments globally need similar rules, Mr. Zuckerberg said, to “ensure that the Internet does not get fractured.”
His proposals also highlight ways in which Facebook’s business is changing. His embrace of privacy regulations, stricter content-moderation requirements and data portability—in which users would be able to access and interact with personal accounts across many different sites and apps—echoes proposals made by Facebook opponents within just the past few years.
“People shouldn’t have to rely on individual companies addressing these issues by themselves,” Mr. Zuckerberg concluded in his op-ed. “We should have a broader debate about what we want as a society and how regulation can help.”
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