Less than a week after the New York Times revealed in an explosive report that Facebook formed agreements with a number of major device-makers that gave them vast access to users’ personal data without their consent, yet another report—this time by the Wall Street Journal—alleged that the social media giant gave a select list of companies “special access” to user data after it claimed to have “walled off” such information.
The secret access Facebook granted to this limited group of companies came after the tech giant claimed in 2015 that it had stopped granting access to such a broad range of user data.
As Common Dreams reported on Monday, the report showing that Facebook cut deals with device-makers appeared to show that CEO Mark Zuckerberg flat-out lied to Congress when he asserted that users of the platform have “complete control” of who can and can’t see their personal data.
The Journal‘s report appears to add to Facebook’s ever-growing list of lies, deceptions, and extreme violations of privacy, Dellinger concluded.
“Disclosure of the deals punctures a hole in the picture Facebook has tried to paint as a suddenly user-friendly, privacy-minded company after 2014—not that anyone was buying that image anyway,” Dellinger wrote.