Facebook has allowed electronics manufacturers including Apple, Amazon, and Samsung wide access to personal users’ data for years, the scope of which may be in violation of an FTC consent rule, according to a Sunday New York Times report.
The deals have reportedly given over 60 device makers access to users’ friends’ data without obtaining consent.
Per the New York Times, Facebook promised to cut down on these invasive collaborations after the backlash when the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke in March, but did not mention that they had exempted the electronics companies. These companies can reportedly obtain information about Facebook users’ friends, even when those friends have declined to allow Facebook to share data with third parties.
The 2011 FTC degree that Facebook may have broken prevents the social media giant from overriding users’ privacy settings without their consent.
How about a class action suit on behalf of millions of Americans to put them out of business?
I suppose people could just not use Facebook. But then they wouldn’t know what their friends were having for lunch. Which of course is incomprehensible to contemplate.
In the vacuum, something else would take its place. Right now any alternative dies in the crib.
and the cute cat videos
What about the cat videos!
Oh the humanity!
Get off social media.
Blow up your TV.
Subscribe to a couple of newspapers.
Eat a lot of peaches.
Register people to vote.
If Myface and other social media-types gave your data away it is because YOU let them.