Facebook suspends analysis on concerns about sharing public user data

Crimson Hexagon operates with little monitoring from Facebook when it extracts public data from the social media platform, according to more than a dozen people familiar with the company . Facebook, in response to the Wall Street Journal's questions this week about its monitoring of Crimson Hexagon's government contracts and storing user data, said Friday it was unaware of some contracts. On Friday, he declared that he was suspending Crimson Hexagon's Facebook apps and his Instagram unit, and was launching an extensive investigation into how Crimson Hexagon collects, shares and stores user data.

"Facebook has a responsibility to help protect people's information, which is one of the reasons we've huddled together," said a Facebook spokesman in an interview with the Crimson Hexagon team. In a statement, Ime Archibong, vice president of Facebook for product partnerships, said in a statement that Facebook allowed third parties to produce "anonymous information for business purposes." Facebook prohibits the use of its data for surveillance purposes.

Chris Bingham, chief technology officer of Crimson Hexagon, said in a statement earlier this week that he abides by the policies of his social media partners and does not collect private data. . On Friday, Mr Bingham said he was fully cooperating with Facebook and "working together to solve the problem as quickly as possible".

Crimson Hexagon only pulls publicly available data from Facebook and Twitter. However, it seems at least once to have mistakenly received private data from Instagram, according to people close to the case.

In this incident, in 2016, Crimson Hexagon received private Instagram posts in a batch of hundreds of public posts, because of what Crimson Hexagon employees alleged was a software glitch on the Facebook side, according to people familiar with the subject. Crimson Hexagon employees were not sure who to call when the incident occurred because they had no direct contact on Instagram or Facebook at that time, so said these people.

Such rumors are considered serious because of Facebook's strict rules prohibiting third parties from accessing private data.

A Facebook spokesman said the company had requested additional evidence from Crimson Hexagon. not getting Facebook or Instagram information inappropriately. "

In recent months, Facebook and the CEO

Mark Zuckerberg

have made repeated promises to become trusted guardians of users' information. These efforts largely followed the revelation in March that Cambridge Analytica, a research company linked to the president

Donald Trump

election campaign, had inaccurately accessed data on millions of Facebook users.

Crimson Hexagon manages large volumes of public user data that social media platforms generate daily, including much of the content on Twitter and Instagram and all the elements on Facebook that users do not have. have not designated as private. Facebook users can choose the amount of their profiles to keep public; Names and profile images are considered public for all users. Public messages include user comments on public pages of brands, celebrities or specific events.

Public data, used in bulk, can tell companies how certain groups of people feel at a particular time and place, such as government agencies in the United States and abroad, as well as political parties that act to influence voters. Privacy experts say most Americans do not know that public data is analyzed and deployed for multiple purposes.

Although Facebook does not sell its data, social media analytics companies like Crimson Hexagon have to register as a developer. its terms of service before pulling a large number of messages through a special software portal. Facebook's terms of service include: "Do not confuse, deceive, defraud, deceive, spam or surprise anyone."

With Twitter, Crimson Hexagon and other companies pay for access to large amounts of public data. "Due to restrictions on Facebook's data, Crimson Hexagon has been able to access more Twitter data than Facebook, according to some people aware."

A Twitter spokesman said: " We have invested a lot in the compliance of our data. program in recent years and we rigorously apply our rules against the violation of developers-up to and including the permanent suspension of access to Twitter data in any form. "

Crimson Hexagon is one of the leading players in a marketing analytics industry has grown to more than $ 1 billion in recent years, according to the research company

Gartner
Inc.

Gary King,

a social scientist and professor at Harvard, co-founded Crimson Hexagon in 2007 and serves as president. He said in a statement that he had never been involved in the daily operations of the firm.

Earlier this month, Mr. King, as an academic, announced the launch of a new research project. have promoted as a reflection of the renewed commitment of the company to transparency. Called Social Science One, it will allow a team of outside researchers to access Facebook's data in order to better understand how the platform influences elections and democracy. The project is not affiliated with Crimson Hexagon.

Crimson Hexagon sold its proprietary analytical platform in foreign countries, including Russia and Turkey. In 2014, he worked with the Civil Society Development Foundation, a Russian non-profit organization with links to the government there, according to people familiar with the subject.

The non-profit organization used the Crimson Hexagon platform to study the opinion of the Russian people on the Russian President's regime

Vladimir Poutine,

according to a 2015 group report. The non-profit organization did not respond to requests for comments.

The Turkish government used Crimson Hexagon's service in its decision in 2014 to briefly shut down Twitter in the midst of public dissent, people close to the case said. A Turkish government official declined to comment

Since 2014, US government agencies have paid Crimson Hexagon more than $ 800,000 for 22 separate contracts, according to data from federal government procurement. In June, the company won a contract worth more than $ 240,000 with the US State Department.

A State Department spokeswoman said that one of its divisions uses Crimson Hexagon "to identify and analyze trends in publicly available social and digital data." The Ministry of Defense did not return a request for comment.

Over the past three years, Crimson Hexagon was in talks with the Department of Defense to help follow the Islamic State, according to a person familiar with the case. Nothing came out of the discussion, the person said.

Crimson Hexagon did not widely publish its government work, and some employees were initially reluctant to pursue these contracts, people close to the case said. Sometimes employees did not know how government agencies would use the service, people said.

Twitter seems to have applied more surveillance than Facebook on Crimson Hexagon's US government contracts.

In one case towards the end of 2016, Crimson Hexagon was in talks with the US Customs and Customs Enforcement, but dropped a potential deal because of Twitter's resistance, said people close to the file. Twitter finally told Crimson Hexagon that he could not sell to agencies under the Department of Homeland Security because it was too difficult to track how the data was used, according to people.

Public records show that Crimson Hexagon has worked with the Department of Homeland Security, including a contract with the Federal Emergency Management Agency that will last until September 1st.

A FEMA spokesperson said the agency uses Crimson Hexagon to understand the volume of discussions and the most important topics. An ICE spokesperson declined to comment.

Crimson Hexagon also contracted with the Secret Service, also part of Homeland Security, between 2014 and 2016. A Secret Service spokesman said that the Government Office and Public Affairs have used Crimson's tools Hexagon to track social media publications and guide media relations.

-Rob Barry, Jim Oberman, David Gauthier -Lars Vil and James Marson contributed to this article.

Writing to Kirsten Grind at [email protected]