Facebook has considered charging companies for access to user data

Several years ago, Facebook had planned to charge users access to business data, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing internal Facebook emails in an undisclosed court document.

Facebook employees also talked about encouraging advertisers to spend more for the service in exchange for increased access to user information, as evidenced by the emails contained in the document. The monetization of its users' data would mark a dramatic reversal of the social media giant's long-standing policy of not selling this information.

During the Congressional testimony in April on the company's data handling practices following the Scandal Cambridge AnalyticaMark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, said, "I can not be clearer on this topic.We do not sell data, it's not how advertising works."

Facebook said that the conversations included in emails went back years ago and that the company had finally decided not to charge users access to data. The company also stated that the documents were misleading and without context.

"The evidence has been sealed by a California court so we can not refute all the false accusations," Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, director of Facebook's development platforms and programs, said in a statement. "We stick with the platform changes we made in 2015 to prevent someone from sharing their friends' data with developers." All short-term extensions granted during this platform transition were aimed at to prevent changes from disrupting the user experience. "

"To be clear, Facebook has never sold anyone's data," Konstantinos said. "Our APIs have always been free and we have never asked developers to pay to use them, either directly or by buying advertising."

The emails would be included in a cache of internal documents of Facebook seized recently by a representative of the British Parliament. The seized documents were obtained during the discovery process as part of a lawsuit filed by the obsolete Six4Three app maker claiming that Facebook had created loopholes in privacy allowing Cambridge Analytica to obtain data from Facebook users.

These documents are believed to include private internal communications between Facebook executives, including Zuckerberg, regarding Facebook's business model. They also contain an email from a Facebook engineer alerting top officials of the company of possible Russian interference on the platform as early as 2014, said a Member of Parliament on Tuesday.

Damian Collins, who heads Parliament's commission on digital, culture, media and sports, said at a hearing on Tuesday The British government could publish documents "in the next week."

First published November 28 at 4:27 pm PT.
Update, 5:40 pm: Add a Facebook comment.

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