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Facebook suspended another company that collected information from the social network and declared that it was investigating the possibility of violations of its regulations in the contracts Crimson Hexagon had with the US government and an organization on purpose Russian nonprofit with links to the Kremlin.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Crimson Hexagon has entered into a number of contracts in recent years that have allowed it to analyze Facebook's public information and transmit reports on this data to consumers. your customers. The Boston-based firm claims to have the largest repository of public posts on social networks – not only Facebook but also Twitter and Instagram, confirm other publications such as The Guardian or the BBC
. Crimson Hexagon (CH) is collecting information, Facebook fails to keep a grip on the data collected. For example, CH's government contracts were not previously agreed with Mark Zuckerberg's company. The social network itself has confirmed this lack of WSJ supervision.
The news of this suspension was given by Facebook itself last Friday, at the same time as they announced that they would launch an extensive internal investigation to verify the form Crimson Hexagon collects, shares and stores. data. "[Facebook] has the responsibility to help protect people's information and it is in this spirit that we have decided to end the siege of any anomaly," he said. .
Ime Archibong, vice president of Facebook, in a statement quoted by US media. He also stated that, while the social network allows other companies to make "anonymous reports for commercial purposes" with the data they collect, it does not accept that the company is not going to be able to do so. they can be used as "surveillance".
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Chris Bingham, Chief Technology Officer of Crimson Hexagon, said in a statement that his company scrupulously adhered to the "regulations of its social media partners " and that society does not do it "collects private data". He added that the firm was working closely with Facebook to "work together to quickly solve this problem."
Despite this stance, sources close to the company told the WSJ that once "By mistake", Crimson Hexagon will have received private data from Instagram Supposedly, this information appeared in a packet of hundreds of public messages and CH technicians calculated that it was an error of Facebook.
A Facebook spokesperson said that more evidence was required. CH, but "based on ongoing research, they did not not received information from Facebook or Instagram inappropriately. "
Crimson Hexagon specializes in processing large volumes of public information generated daily by various social network users. public s "may be comments made on brand pages, celebrities or other more specific events. This type of information, when used massively, can tell companies how certain groups of people feel at a particular time, for example. A more specific case of this use may be the one used at the time of the election, when various political parties are struggling to attract supporters.
Gary King, social scientist and teacher at Harvard, founded Crimson Hexagon in 2007 and is currently its CEO. In total, the company is valued at $ 1 billion.
Crimson Hexagon provided analytical services to foreign countries such as Russia and Turkey. In 2014, he worked with the Foundation for the Development of Civil Society, a Russian non-profit organization with links to the Putin government, according to sources in the US newspaper. This same foundation used the CH platform to study the opinions of the Russian people on President Vladimir Putin. The Turkish state also turned to this company in 2014 to analyze the popular reactions to the decision to close Twitter in 2014.
Since 2014, the US government has paid agencies like Crimson Hexagon more 800 thousand dollars for 22 separate contracts. In June, the company entered into a $ 240,000 agreement with the US State Department, which has already been informed by a spokesperson that they have used these services to " identify and analyze trends in the public sector ". social. "
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