Facebook data dustup worsens
Internal e-mails show Facebook considered charging companies for continued access to user data several years ago, a step that would have marked a dramatic shift away from the social-media giant’s policy of not selling that information, according to an unredacted court document viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The e-mails in the document also indicate that Facebook employees discussed pushing some advertisers to spend more in return for increased access to user information.
Taken together, the e-mails show the company discussing how to monetize its user data in ways that are employed by some other tech companies but that Facebook has said it doesn’t do.
Last April, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg (right) told a congressional hearing: “I can’t be clearer on this topic: We don’t sell data.”
The e-mails — most from about 2012 to 2014 — are far from conclusive, lacking context and in some cases truncated.
But they provide a window into mostly sealed court filings, which a British lawmaker has pledged to make public next week, from a lawsuit against Facebook led by a company called Six4Three LLC.
The e-mails also illustrate how Facebook has long grappled with how to maximize the value of the vast amounts of data it collects without abusing the privacy of users.
Six4Three, the developer of a now-defunct app, sued Facebook in 2015, alleging its data policies were anticompetitive and favored certain companies. The majority of the documents have been placed under seal at Facebook’s urging and on orders from a California judge.
The Wall Street Journal viewed three pages of unre- dacted material from one 18-page document that showed portions of some internal e-mails.
In other court filings, Facebook said these excerpts were subsequently redacted because they contained “sensitive discussion of Facebook’s internal strategic analysis of third-party applications, the release of which could damage Facebook’s relationships” with those apps.
On Tuesday, the British lawmaker, Damian Collins, chairman of the House of Commons Digital, Media, Culture and Sport Committee, said he planned to release documents he had obtained from the Six4Three lawsuit in roughly a week, once he had redacted all personal information. rmation.
A Facebook spokeswoman confirmed thehe discussions about charging for data and said the company ultimately decided against it.
Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, Facebook director of developer platforms and programs, said, “The documents Six4Three gathered for this baseless case are only part of the story and are presented in a way that is very misleading without additional context.”