Facebook stands accused of gathering substantially more information on users than it admits, according to claims laid out in court documents filed at the superior court in San Mateo, California, on behalf of a former startup, The Guardian first reported Thursday.
The former startup, Six4Three, alleges that Facebook once used its associated apps to gather information on users by accessing text messages and photos, listening through device microphones and remotely turning on Bluetooth to pinpoint location ― sometimes without explicit consent.
Six4Three detailed the accusations in the fifth version of its official complaint, initially filed in 2015.
Although the case argues for the return of a Facebook policy that has been roundly criticized for failing to protect personal data, accusations of surveillance are enough to raise eyebrows in the wake of the privacy scandal wrought by the research firm Cambridge Analytica.
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Stephen Lam / Reuters
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at the company’s annual developers’ conference on May 1.
The news can often be hard to follow, but this week in particular has been a doozy.
There’s the seemingly endless staff changes in the Trump administration, the reported privacy breach and misuse of millions of Facebook users’ data, the death of the bombing suspect in Austin and the police shooting in Sacramento. It’s been a lot.
Here’s a rundown of some of the biggest news that happened in the last seven days.
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Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Protesters march in Sacramento, California, on March 22, 2018, after two police officers shot and killed Stephon Clark, an unarmed black man.
A new era of internet regulation is about to begin.
Years after Facebook and Google went public, regulators in the United States and abroad are finally taking a closer look at the internet behemoths. And they’re not only looking at the way these companies have come to dominate markets, but also examining the heart of the two firms’ business models. What they decide will have powerful implications for the way we do business on the internet.
Most people associate Facebook with cute family photos and think of Google like a semi-reliable encyclopedia. But these services have only a tangential relationship to the way either company actually makes money. The twin Silicon Valley titans rely on two closely intertwined technologies, customer surveillance and advertising, to maximize shareholder profits. The pair control 63 percent of the U.S. digital advertising market, and in 2016, they secured 99 percent of all digital advertising growth. That profit-making combo is exactly what regulators are focused on in 2018.
Many of the companies’ difficulties stem from the European Union’s tough new stance on privacy. The biggest threat to their business model comes from the General Data Protection Regulation, new data privacy rules set to go in effect in the EU in May. For the most part, Facebook and Google prevent you from using their products if you decline to agree to their entire terms of service. You cannot pick and choose what to agree to and still use their free services.
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Joshua Roberts / Reuters
Congress grilled representatives from Facebook, Twitter and Google over their advertising and privacy practices in November 2017. (Pictured from left to right: Colin Stretch, Facebook general counsel, Sean Edgett, Twitter acting general counsel, and Richard Salgado, Google director of law enforcement and information security.)
Mark Zuckerberg’s original motto for Facebook was “Move fast and break things.” It now appears that the CEO is going to have to answer for moving too fast and breaking too many things.
After years of trying to avoid oversight from Washington, the 2-billion-person social network platform is set for a reckoning. This past week, Facebook faced its first major congressional oversight hearings since it revealed that a Russian “troll factory,” called the Internet Research Agency, had purchased ads on the site in order to influence the 2016 election.
In three committee hearings, representatives from Facebook, Google and Twitter were grilled about their sites’ roles in facilitating the foreign influence operation. Lawmakers from both parties poked at the companies’ failure to reckon with questions about the lack of transparency in online advertising and the vast power they hold over our lives.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) took particular umbrage with Facebook: “Your power sometimes scares me.”
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JAMES LAWLER DUGGAN/Reuters
Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, and Elliot Schrage, its vice president of global communications and public policy, meet with lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Oct. 12.
A class-action lawsuit is accusing Facebook of breaking housing and job ad discrimination laws.
A Pro Publica investigation last week revealed that the social network lets marketers exclude users by “ethnic affinity.” The lawsuit, first reported by Business Insider, alleges that such targeting tools are a breach of federal housing and civil right laws.
The law states that advertisements can’t show obvious preference to specific groups of home or job-seekers.
‘Pink’
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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James' World 2 