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Just hours after meeting French President Emmanuel Macron to discuss ways in which the company can become more responsible for the content posted on its platform, and just days after Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes criticized the company and its General Manager, the company quietly announced Friday that another Cambridge Analytica might have been unearthed.
Today, Facebook has filed a lawsuit in a state court in California against Rankwave, a South Korean data analytics company that grabs apps on the Facebook platform. Facebook was investigating Rankwave's data practices with respect to its advertising and marketing services. Rankwave has not cooperated with our efforts to verify their compliance with our policies, that we ask all developers using our platform.
Facebook has already suspended applications and associated Rankwave accounts, and today's complaint asks the court to apply the basic cooperation terms agreed to by Rankwave in exchange for the possibility of operating applications on the platform.
By filing a lawsuit, we send a message to developers that Facebook is serious about enforcing our rules, including requiring developers to cooperate with us during an investigation.
Rankwave offers to help companies create a Facebook authorization stage in their applications to allow them to transmit all user data. Once Rankwave receives this user data, the company analyzes the biographical and behavioral characteristics to provide businesses with contact information and ad targeting. Rankwave also seems to have misused data by its own mainstream application to check your social network score. This app could extract data on your Facebook activity, such as location records, determine if you have been registered in a football stadium, and then Rankwave could help its customers target you with advertisements for football tickets.
A copy of the lawsuit states that Rankwave abusively used Facebook's data outside the applications where it was collected in addition to having deliberately delayed the response to a notice of default. Facebook also said that Rankware has refused to undergo a mandatory audit of its data practices.
It must be said that Facebook platform data is not meant to be reused for other business purposes, but only to allow the developer to improve the user experience of their application. More specifically, Facebook indicates that its platform rules prohibit developers from using Facebook's data outside of the application environment, other than to improve the users' experience of the application on the app.
Rankwave's business model is based on Cambridge Analytica, which used personality questionnaires to create complex algorithms targeting users and their circles of friends with highly targeted advertising. These advertisements would have been designed to shape voting behavior, among other things.
Facebook accuses Rankwave of using more than 30 apps to track and analyze comments and like them. They also have an application to track the popularity of a user's messages, calculating a social influence score. This app is still available on the Google Play Store at the time of writing.
Facebook's complaint claims that Rankwave's B2B applications have been installed and used by companies to track and analyze activity on their Facebook pages. . . Rankwave operated a consumer application called Rankwave App. This consumer application was designed to measure the popularity of its application on Facebook by analyzing the level of interaction of other users with its Facebook publications. Rankwave said on its website that this app calculates a user's "social influence score" by "valuing your social activities" and receiving "answers from your friends".
Founded in 2012 by Sungwha Shim, Rankwave entered Facebook's lineup in June 2018 after selling a Korean entertainment company in May 2017. Facebook estimates the value of its data at the time of the redemption was 9.8. millions of dollars.
Facebook did not contact Rankwave until January 2019 to obtain information proving its compliance with social network policies. Having received no response, Facebook put a notice in February that Rankwave responded by saying that he needed more time as his technology director had resigned. Later in the month, Rankwave neither violated Facebook's policy but refused to provide evidence. Facebook gave more time to provide evidence, but Rankwave did not respond. Facebook has decided to close the access to Rankwave applications.
Now, Facebook is looking for money to cover $ 9.8 million worth of data, additional legal damages and interest, as well as an injunctive relief action that will prevent Rankwave from accessing the Facebook platform, complying with Facebook's lawsuit and delete all his data.
Rankwave
Source: Facebook, complaint (in PDF format)
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