NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook is suspending about 200 apps that it believes may have misused data.
The social media giant said in a blog post Monday that the suspensions resulted from its investigation into all apps that had access to large amounts of information before Facebook changed its platform policies in 2014. Those changes, according to Facebook, significantly reduced the amount of data that apps could access.
Ime Archibong, vice president of product partnerships, says that if any evidence is found that the suspended apps or other apps have misused data, they will be banned. Users that may have been exposed will be notified, as was the case when the Cambridge Analytica case broke.
The company says that it’s canvased thousands of apps so far.
It will be interesting to see how Facebook actually defines “misuse” of data, given that they set up their platform specifically with APIs that empowered app-makers to collect profile data, contact lists, Friend and Like data, et cetera and to take photos, send all this data to their servers, and sell it to marketers and aggregators, even when obviously not needed for the stated functionality, such as flashlight apps.
Cambridge Analytica and the professor whose ThisIsYourDigitalLife quiz served as CA’s source certainly were not the only ones who did this and bypassed FB’s few “don’t do what we empower you to do” policy bits.
This could turn out to be a shakedown, like the ad-blockers that allow tracking ads only from companies that pay the blocker-makers for a spot on their whitelist.
Well, to be fair, you really oughtn’t put the cart before the horse after it’s escaped the barn.