Britain's
Parliament has just given the world an unprecedented look at the ruthless
tactics of Facebook's executive team.
On
Wednesday, the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee published leakedemails from the Silicon Valley tech giant's leadership team that had been
obtained by Six4Three, an app developer that's locked in a legal battle with
Facebook after it blocked its bikini photo app.
There are
hundreds of pages of documents and emails, mostly dating from between 2012 and
2015, that detail the way Facebook allowed third-party apps to access friend
data through its platform.
They provide
a unique window into how Facebook's senior leaders privately discussed strategy
and competition at a period of intense growth for the company, which has since
been bogged down by numerous scandals and flatlining user numbers in key
markets.
From
Facebook's attempts to kneecap "strategic competitors" to CEO Mark
Zuckerberg writing that his company's interests don't always match up with
what's best for the world, here are some of the key takeaways from the
documents.
1. Facebook
had a list of "strategic competitors" that it restricted access to.
Zuckerberg
personally oversaw a list of "strategic" competitors to the social
network, and decided whether to restrict them from accessing valuable user
data.
One undated
memo stated that companies considered to be "strategic competitors"
to Facebook were even more restricted in what they could access.
It added
that Mark Zuckerberg personally reviewed the list of competitors, and either he
or another senior executive had to personally sign off any further access to
data these companies might want.
On the eve
of the publication of the documents, Facebook announced it was relaxing
restrictions on competitors' apps in an apparent attempt to get ahead of the
news.
In an
unattributed statement published on its website, Facebook said:
"We built our developer platform years ago to pave the way for innovation in social apps and services. At that time we made the decision to restrict apps built on top of our platform that replicated our core functionality.
"These
kind of restrictions are common across the tech industry with different
platforms having their own variant including YouTube, Twitter, Snap and
Apple."
2.
Zuckerberg personally approved Facebook's decision to cut off social network
Vine's data.
One of the
Facebook competitors Mark Zuckerberg played a personal role in stamping on was
video social network Vine.
In an email
dated January 24, 2013 (the day Vine launched on iOS) VP Justin Osofsky
proposed shutting down the new app's access:
"Twitter launched Vine today which lets you shoot multiple short video segments to make one single, 6-second video. As part of their NUX, you can find friends via FB.
"Unless
anyone raises objections, we will shut down their friends API access today.
We've prepared reactive PR, and I will let Jana know our decision."
Zuckerberg
responded: "Yup, go for it."
3. Facebook
tried to figure out how to grab users' call data without asking permission.
Ever-hungry
for user data, Facebook in 2015 explored trying to access Android users' call
logs and SMS history to use to feed into features like "People You May
Know," while acknowledging the risk of user anger.
"This
is a pretty high-risk thing to do from a PR perspective nut it appears that the
growth eam will charge ahead and do it," Michael LeBeau wrote.
Yul Kwon
also said Facebook was looking into ways to grab call log data without even
asking users for permission:
"Based
on [the Growth team's] initial testing, it seems this would allow us to upgrade
users without subjecting them to an Android permissions dialog at all,"
they wrote.
Facebook's
statement said:
"This
specific feature allows people to opt in to giving Facebook access to their
call and text messaging logs in Facebook Lite and Messenger on Android devices.
We use this information to do things like make better suggestions for people to
call in Messenger and rank contact lists in Messenger and Facebook Lite."
4. Certain
key apps were white-listed and given greater access to user data even after a
broader clampdown.
In 2015,
Facebook made major changes to its app developer platform - but a chosen few
partners were "whitelisted", meaning they got more access to data
than regular developers using Facebook's platform.
These
included Airbnb, Netflix, and Lyft.
5. Zuckerberg
privately admitted that what's good for the world isn't necessarily what's good
for Facebook.
In one of
the emails, Zuckerberg candidly admits that Facebook's interests aren't always
aligned with those of its users and the broader world.
Discussing third-party
apps' access to Facebook's platform, the CEO talked about how to try to ensure
users shared content on Facebook, rather than external platforms - even if it
isn't in the users' best interests.
"However,
that may be good for the world but it's not good for us unless people also
share back to Facebook and that content increases the value of our network. So
ultimately, I think the purpose of platform - even the read side is to increase
sharing back into Facebook," he wrote.
6.
Zuckerberg suggested users' data was worth 10 cents a year.
Facebook has
insisted that it has never sold user data - but one of the revelations from the
documents is that the company discussed the possibility of charging for access
to it.
In one
October 2012 email, Zuckerberg discussed a monetisation model that would let
developers use Facebook's login tools or publish to Facebook for free, but
would charge for "reading" data.
How much did
he value his users at? Around 10 cents each, per year.
"A basic model could be: Login with Facebook is always free … Pushing content to Facebook is always free … Reading anything, including friends, costs a lot of money. Perhaps on the order of $US0.10/user each year," he wrote.
In its
response, Facebook said:
"We
explored multiple ways to build a sustainable business with developers who were
building apps that were useful to people.
"But
instead of requiring developers to buy advertising - the option discussed in
these cherrypicked emails - we ultimately settled on a model where developers
did not need to purchase advertising to access APIs and we continued to provide
the developer platform for free."
7. Execs
discussed the single biggest threat to Facebook.
What does
Facebook consider its single biggest threat?
According to
an email written by exec Sam Lessin in 2012 addressed to Zuckerberg, it's not
one rival site or app - it's lots of them.
"The
number one threat to Facebook is not another scale social network, it is the
fracturing of information / death by a thousand small vertical apps which are
loosely integrated together," he wrote.
"This will either happen because there is fundamentally no 'return' on the centralization of information / the [social] graph OR it will happen because we sell off the graph piecemeal for less than it is worth and in the process destroy efficiency and value."
This article
was originally published by Business Insider.
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