We don’t want to say the bombshell revelations buried in the documents are totally unscrupulous, but judging from what has been shared, scruples do seem in short supply. Here are the top five biggest news items from the cache of documents.
1: Zuck Signed Off on Choking Vine
Twitter’s much beloved video-based social network Vine was shuttered in October 2016. Twitter mismanaged it plenty, but Facebook may have taken out a virtual hit on it behind the scenes as well. In 2013, Vine needed to grow, and was pulling users’ Facebook friend user data in order to connect Vine users will people they knew. Granted, the news that Facebook wasn’t letting Twitter pull Facebook friend data for Vine isn’t news. It was public information in 2013, and if you were in the know, you could easily have guessed the mercenary logic behind the move. But seeing it in print crystalizes the cut-throat mentality behind growing the world’s biggest social media network. CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s reply: “Yup, go for it.” I’ll just quote The Social Network tagline here: You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies. (It’s two billion friends now, but the point still works).
2: They Knew User Data Collection Was a “High-Risk” Move
Maybe Zuckerberg and Osofsky’s interchange was aimed at protecting their users’ data, which was and is the driving force behind Facebook’s revenue. But another internal document doesn’t appear to corroborate that theory.
3: Zuckerberg Gives Us a Lesson In Leverage
That’s not to say they gave their user data away for free. Instead, they used it to get even more data from others. Again, this isn’t anything that business barons haven’t espoused in the past. It’s just a reminder that capitalism is about the bottom line and nothing else, straight from the one of world’s most powerful CEOs.
4: They Considered Lowering Data Transparency Even More
The level at which users’ data has become a commodity has always been high, and the general public is increasingly aware of this fact. In 2018, it’s pretty well known that the massive startups, social media companies and search engines of Silicon Valley all operate under terms and conditions agreements reminiscent of Faustian pacts. Just yesterday, the New York Times published an article on the granular knowledge of your very geographic location known to multiple apps on most people’s phones. According to one internal email, Facebook considered reducing their data transparency even farther by introducing an upgrade that wouldn’t come with a permissions dialog notification. Facebook has since clarified to the Guardian that this conversation “was not a discussion about avoiding asking people for permission.”
5: Facebook Giveth Data, Facebook Taketh Away
The confidential documents mention two occasions when Facebook discussed which companies they would allow to access more data (Lyft, Airbnb and Netflix made the cut) and which competitors they would issue restrictions to, once Zuckerberg signed off on it. Facebook spokespeople have responded to the cache of documents, holding that the legal case in question is “baseless” and that the internal documents “are presented in a way that is very misleading without additional context.” However, there’s no word on what their latest internal documents said about the matter.
