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Significant portions of NYT's reporting have been highly misleading, to the extent that it's difficult to conclude it wasn't intentional. "Facebook allowed Mic

Significant portions of NYT's reporting have been highly misleading, to the extent that it's difficult to conclude it wasn't intentional. "Facebook allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent, the records show, and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages." [0] Netflix and Spotify have Messenger plugins that allow you to share movie trailers and songs from directly within the Messenger app. Spotify's desktop app also used to connect with Messenger to enable similar functionality. NYT equated having standard "read/write" permissions necessary for basic app functionality with Netflix and Spotify being able to access, store, and modify all of your private messages. Read the comments on that article and any prior discussion of it on the internet and you'll see that many technology illiterate people misinterpreted what that meant. Also, it's fair game to examine what Facebook has been doing, but it's also fair game to examine what NYT's motives are for scrutinizing them so closely. When Google, Twitter, Equifax, and others have been largely ignored one naturally begins to wonder if there's an underlying agenda at play. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/technology/facebook-privacy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/technology/facebook-priva...

noelsusman 8y ago
I'm confused. Netflix and Spotify did have the ability to read anyone's private messages. That's what they reported, and as far as I know none of the involved parties disputed that. The point isn't that somebody at Spotify was sitting there reading everyone's messages. The point is that they could have been doing that, and Facebook had nothing in place to know if they were doing that, and none of the users sharing a song with friends would think that doing so would enable them to do that, and such extensive privileges were not necessary to implement a simple sharing feature.
- MrOwen 8y ago
  Without regulatory oversight and third party auditing of certified access logs, you can't really be sure what was or was not accessed. Of course, if you imposed those kind of requirements on Facebook, that would take a significant amount of resources and therefore reduce their profit margins. Probably not very investor-friendly.
- bryan_w 8y ago
  If you read up on FBs response, it's clear that only people who signed into those sites with Facebook would have given Netflix and spotify access to PMs. The user would have to agree to a permission dialog at least before the companies would have access.

noelsusman 8y ago

I'm confused. Netflix and Spotify did have the ability to read anyone's private messages. That's what they reported, and as far as I know none of the involved parties disputed that. The point isn't that somebody at Spotify was sitting there reading everyone's messages. The point is that they could have been doing that, and Facebook had nothing in place to know if they were doing that, and none of the users sharing a song with friends would think that doing so would enable them to do that, and such extensive privileges were not necessary to implement a simple sharing feature.

MrOwen 8y ago
Without regulatory oversight and third party auditing of certified access logs, you can't really be sure what was or was not accessed. Of course, if you imposed those kind of requirements on Facebook, that would take a significant amount of resources and therefore reduce their profit margins. Probably not very investor-friendly.
bryan_w 8y ago
If you read up on FBs response, it's clear that only people who signed into those sites with Facebook would have given Netflix and spotify access to PMs. The user would have to agree to a permission dialog at least before the companies would have access.