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Following a flopped IPO in 2012, Facebook desperately trying to find new ways to make money. An employee of unknown rank has sent an internal email suggesting that Facebook charge developers $ 250,000 per year for access to its platform APIs to create applications that can ask users to access to their data. Employees also discussed the offer of extended access to Tinder on data of their friends who were removed from the platform in exchange for "Moments" trademark, which Facebook wanted to use for a photo sharing application launched later. Facebook has decided not to sell access to the API and has no agreements with Tinder or other companies, including Amazon and Royal Bank of Canada, mentioned in the letters. employees.
The talks were reported by The Wall Street Journal as part of a sealed court document that his reporters had reviewed following a lawsuit from the developer of bikini photo apps, Six4Three, against Facebook, alleging anti-competitive practices in the way it changed the platform in 2014 to restrict access to websites. friend data via the platform.
The biggest question is who ranks the employees who discussed these ideas. If senior executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, seriously considered these ideas, the revelation could be contrary to the company's longstanding philosophy of not selling data access. Zuckerberg told the April congress that "I can not be clearer on this subject: we do not sell data". If the discussion had taken place between low-level employees, it might have been more than a spontaneous suggestion, like Facebook throwing ideas against the wall, and may have been rejected or ignored by the highest-placed . But anyway, now that the discussion has sank, it could validate the biggest fears of the public about Facebook and whether it is a worthy guardian of our personal data.
An employee sent an e-mail to other people about the possibility of removing access to the platform APIs "in one pass for all applications that do not spend … at least $ 250,000 per year to maintain access to the data, "the document says. Facebook told TechCrunch that these discussions were about API access and not about selling data directly to companies. The fact that the discussions specifically focused on API access, which Facebook continues to give free to developers, has not been reported before.
Facebook has provided this complete statement to TechCrunch:
"As we have said time and time again, the documents gathered by Six4Tree on this baseless case are only part of the story and are misleadingly presented without additional context. The evidence has been sealed by a California court and 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. "
Half a decade later, with the global will against Facebook, discussions on the sale of data access could not be worse for society. Even if quickly dropped, the idea could now fuel concerns that Facebook has too much power and too much of our personal information. Although the company has finally found more money generators and has become very profitable, the discussions show how Facebook could exploit people's data more aggressively if it thought it necessary.
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