Internal documents reveal that Facebook was considering selling its users' data

According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook considered several years ago that companies had to have access to user data to access their users' data, citing corporate emails as part of a process. in the United Kingdom. Social network executives explained in emails how to encourage advertisers to spend more money on the service in exchange for better access to information of the user.

In testimony to the US Congress in April about the company's data management practices following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, "I can not be clearer about this problem. . We do not sell dataThis is not how advertising works. "

However, these e-mails show that the company was considering monetizing user data in the same way as other technology companies, because it transcends the unwritten judicial document to which the newspaper had access.

The "emails" are included in a cache of Facebook internal documents recently obtained by a representative of the British Parliament, following a lawsuit filed by the software company Six4Tree, according to which Facebook has created privacy breaches This allowed Cambridge Analytica to obtain user data.

Damian Collins, chairman of the UK Parliament's Culture, Media and Sports Committee, said on Tuesday that the UK government could issue papers "over the next week". Collins is a strong believer in data privacy and is highly critical of Facebook.

"We have never sold anyone's data"

The tech giant, for one, has ensured that the conversations included in the emails date back years ago and that the company has finally decided not to charge user data access. Facebook also pointed out that the demand for Six4Tree was unfounded and that the documents only presented part of the story without additional context and in a misleading way.

"The evidence was sealed by a California court, so we can not refute all false accusationsKonstantinos Papamiltiadis, director of platforms and development programs for Facebook, said in a statement: "We support the platform changes we made in 2015 to prevent someone from sharing their friends' data with the developers. "

Papamiltiadis pointed out that "Facebook has never sold anybody's data" and that its APIs "have always been free". "We have never asked developers to pay to use them, either directly or to buy advertising," he said.