What we’ve learned from the DCMS release of Facebook emails

According to Tech Review:

  • Facebook “whitelisted” certain companies, meaning that they still had full access to users’ friends’ data after platform changes in 2014-15, including Airbnb and Netflix.

  • Facebook aggressively tried to shut down competition. When Twitter launched video-clip platform Vine, Facebook revoked access to its API. It also used data on customers’ usage of mobile apps (collected without their knowledge) to work out acquisition targets.

  • Facebook accessed users’ call history without alerting them, to make “People You May Know” suggestions and tweak news-feed rankings. Facebook made it as hard as possible for users to know this was happening.

It’s a hoot, especially when one compares the tone of the emails with Zuckerberg’s sanctimonious cant in his public utterances.