Some 4,000 pages of internal Facebook documents from 2011 to 2015 leaked to reporters at NBC News illuminate the company's shady approach to sharing and selling your personal user data, and how Facebook gives greater access to companies it considers friendly and aligned with its profit interests.
Read the entire report:
'Mark Zuckerberg leveraged Facebook user data to fight rivals and help friends, leaked documents show: Facebook’s leaders seriously discussed selling access to user data — and privacy was an afterthought.'
Here are tweeted observations from Olivia Solon and Cyrus Farivar, the report's co-authors, as well as other journalists who've been covering this same beat, commenting on the NBC News blockbuster just published today.
“NBC has obtained thousands of pages of leaked internal documents show that Facebook wasn’t just spitballing about selling access to user data - the plans had buy-in among Zuck, Sandberg and were pitched to the board of directors,” tweeted report co-author Olivia Solon.
Since I began at @NBCNews about 2 mo ago, a substantial portion of my time has been taken up working on this story, with @oliviasolon.
The result: "Mark Zuckerberg leveraged Facebook user data to fight rivals and help friends, leaked documents show"https://t.co/cvubNfL7Db
— Cyrus Farivar (@cfarivar) April 16, 2019
“It’s sort of unethical”: The complete #Six4Three docs obtained by @dcampbell_iptv were analyzed by @oliviasolon and @cfarivar expanding our view of Facebook as a ruthless monopolist that leveraged personal data to pick winners and losers in the market. https://t.co/hSYQa9J8i4
— David Carroll
(@profcarroll) April 16, 2019
About 10% of these docs have already been made public by @DCMS, but the latest leaks provide a far fuller picture of how advanced plans were & the way that the selective trading of user data was used to control competition and consolidate Facebook’s power https://t.co/NUb6kKt46e
— Olivia Solon (@oliviasolon) April 16, 2019
Since Cambridge Analytica, Facebook has tried to position the platform changes made in 2015 as being driven by privacy concerns, but we find very little discussion of privacy in these documents - except as a PR strategy https://t.co/NUb6kKt46e
— Olivia Solon (@oliviasolon) April 16, 2019
Not all employees were happy about it. Some employees described Facebook's behavior with third-parties as “unethical” while others described the company as being like "Casterly Rock" (the home of the most evil #GOT family) https://t.co/NUb6kKt46e
— Olivia Solon (@oliviasolon) April 16, 2019
Here's that Game of Thrones reference pic.twitter.com/5HKubhH0Cl
— Olivia Solon (@oliviasolon) April 16, 2019
Another employee refers to Zuck as a "master of leverage"
— Olivia Solon (@oliviasolon) April 16, 2019
I had reported some on Six4Three, Pikinis, and Ted Kramer before, back at @arstechnica.https://t.co/tBNn4m22aWhttps://t.co/xywCT3Fjrphttps://t.co/8pMaANLkID
And my mini-scoop, about the only other lawsuit like Six4Three v. Facebook:https://t.co/bF8GvlgK4e
— Cyrus Farivar (@cfarivar) April 16, 2019
That left me with a basic question: why doesn’t Ted Kramer have any allies?
After @oliviasolon and I began digging around, we eventually were connected to the legendary @dcampbell_iptv, who shared with us thousands of never-before-seen pages from that lawsuit.
— Cyrus Farivar (@cfarivar) April 16, 2019
Some of these documents were given by Kramer to MP @DamianCollins, who published hundreds of pages here:https://t.co/G8ORIhYi3l
The new, fuller cache of docs is very much like this, but more so.
It includes the phrase “master of leverage,” which we could not have invented.
— Cyrus Farivar (@cfarivar) April 16, 2019
TIPS WELCOME. @oliviasolon and I are happy to meet in person, anywhere in Bay Area. Coffee/beer on us. https://t.co/JxcmJrHUhT
— Cyrus Farivar (@cfarivar) April 16, 2019
These latest leaks build on some of the great reporting already done by @ObserverUK @ComputerWeekly @WSJ and @nytimes on some of the documents that have already come to light
— Olivia Solon (@oliviasolon) April 16, 2019
This story would never have been possible without @carolecadwalla's work before us https://t.co/ZFmU6xFglw
— Olivia Solon (@oliviasolon) April 16, 2019
