Facebook and Twitter are attacking at the childcare assessment service by IA

Facebook and Twitter are taking action against an automated system of babysitter assessment reported by the Washington Post last week, claiming that the service violates social networking rules regarding user monitoring and data privacy.

Predictim, a California-based start-up, analyzes the online stories of babysitters, including Facebook and Twitter, and offers assessments of whether they are at risk of using drugs, being victims of drug abuse. bullying or having a "bad attitude". Facebook said that it had significantly limited Predictim's access to user information on Instagram and Facebook a few weeks ago for violation of the ban on developers using personal data to evaluate a person based on their hiring or eligibility decisions.

Facebook spokeswoman Katy Dormer said the company had also launched an investigation earlier this week on the extraction, or "scratching," of Predictim's personal data. This investigation is ongoing and may include other penalties.

Twitter spokesman Nick Pacilio said the site had conducted its own investigation earlier this week and revoked Predictim's access to important site tools, known as 39, application programming interfaces, or APIs, that would allow the start-up to review and analyze tweets from large-scale babysitters. .

"We strictly prohibit the use of Twitter data and APIs for monitoring purposes, including to perform background checks," Pacilio said.

The crackdown, which was first reported by BBC News, could limit Predictim's ability to analyze babysitters with so-called "advanced artificial intelligence" and sell the results to parents. The service has been heavily criticized for its unproven and potentially inaccurate results that could affect the life of a babysitter.

But Predictim executives on Tuesday said they are not being discouraged and intend to continue extracting publicly available data from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Sal Parsa, Managing Director and Founding President of Predictim, also said that the reaction of the social media giants was at least partly rooted in a competitive rivalry on the use of personal data.

"Twitter and Facebook are already exploiting our data, they are just there, generated by users, and now another start-up is trying to leverage this data to help parents choose a better babysitter. to earn a little money, "he said. "I do not know why they ganged up on us, maybe it's because there's no benefit to them."

Dormer, the Facebook spokesperson, said that Facebook's continued use of Facebook data by Predictim would constitute a direct violation of network rules. "It's not about anything other than making sure our platform applications protect people's data," she said.

Parsa and Joel Simonoff, chief technology officer at Predictim, said they have talked to Facebook politicians in recent weeks and received a letter from Twitter on Monday. The changes would not affect the accuracy of their algorithms, said Parsa, because the company had "decided to obtain data from other means".

The company, which announces that it has trained its algorithms on "more than 6 billion data points" to evaluate the "important personality traits of a babysitter," is working to expand its analytics in order to Include data from blogs and Reddit's activity for babysitters, Parsa said.

"If you do not hide anything, if you're not violent, if you're not a bully, I do not see why you'd be afraid to let a parent see who you are," Parsa said.

It is unclear how the change could affect Predictim's expansion. Sandra Dainora, product manager at Sittercity, a baby-sitter market that announced plans to use Predictim's testing as part of a pilot screening program early next year, said Tuesday that "the security and privacy of our users are paramount". "We will certainly consider this news when we look at the service."

Brad Shear, a Maryland lawyer specializing in social media and privacy law, says Predictim's problems could be much deeper than that. The site, he said, appears to violate the ban on employers requiring job seekers to check or give access to their personal social media accounts. Such claims could violate the law in 26 states, according to data from the National Conference of State Legislatures. Parsa said the service is "perfectly legal".

"What they do is purely against public policy: there are problems of First Amendment, Fourth Amendment.If you talk to a legislator, he will say that it is absolutely disgusting what Predictim is trying to sell, "said Shear.

"The fact that they think it's okay shows clearly that they have ethical problems," he added. "They sell snake oil that they believe can predict people's personality and mislead parents along the way."

© The Washington Post 2018

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