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The failure to adequately draft a public court document dating from February 2017 shows that as early as 2012, Facebook had considered charging companies at least $ 250,000 for access to one of its main sources of user data, Graph API.
In April 2014, Facebook changed the operating mode of the previously permissive Graph API. The social media giant has restricted some data access and removed all access to the previous version in June 2015.
The failure of the editorial staff was reported for the first time on Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal. Ars was able to access hidden pages of text simply by copying and pasting them into a text editor. However, some parts of the messages, which run from 2012 to 2014, are incomplete.
These revealed text blocks (built on previous reports) showed that Facebook was providing extended access to the Graph API v1.0 to many companies, including Nissan and the Royal Bank of Canada, but also to Chrysler / Fiat, Lyft , Airbnb, and Netflix, among others.
It's unclear how long it has been taken into account, but this has not been implemented yet – Facebook continues to give free access to its Graph API.
These previously hidden excerpts reveal part of the argumentation that is at the heart of an ongoing lawsuit brought by Six4Three, an ephemeral app that sought to identify images of people wearing bikinis on Facebook.
Since 2015, Six4Three has filed a lawsuit against Facebook for fraudulent contract breach, namely that Six4Three had been ruled out when Facebook had changed access to the Graph API. The case, which was first filed in the San Mateo County Superior Court, was referred to federal court in San Francisco. He has since been referred to the county court and is expected to be tried in April 2019.
"Exclude"
On Monday, a Six4Three executive admitted to handing over documents to a British MP while he was in London on business. These documents were the subject of a protection order made by Judge San Mateo in this case. Facebook has asked that Six4Three's lawyers be disciplined and found guilty of contempt of court. The judge will hear the case at a hearing held on Friday.
"As we have said many times, the documents gathered by Six4Three for this baseless case are only part of the story and are presented in a very misleading way without additional context," said Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, director of platforms and Facebook development programs, said in a statement sent to Ars.
He continued:
The evidence has been sealed by a California court, so we can not refute all the false accusations. That said, we are maintaining the changes made to the platform in 2015 to prevent someone from sharing their friends' data with the developers. Any short-term extension granted during this platform transition should prevent changes from disrupting the user experience. To be clear, Facebook has never sold data to anyone. Our APIs have always been free and we have never asked developers to pay for them, either directly or by buying advertising.
David Godkin, Six4Three's lawyer, did not respond to Ars's request. However, he filed an 18-page document on February 9, 2017, which blasted the markets with these companies.
"In each of these cases, Facebook seems to base its decision to grant or deny these companies an unfair competitive advantage because of its ability to obtain a payment or other valuable consideration," he wrote in the redacted parts of the 2017 document.
In a footnote, he concludes:
"Buyers who did not meet the arbitrary minimum requirements set by Facebook were excluded from the market, as was the case for the plaintiff, as it could not afford to spend $ 250,000 a year on unrelated advertising expenses. with Facebook. The applicant's annual advertising budget was well below this arbitrary minimum. "
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