After a scathing two-part documentary by Public Broadcasting Service’s Frontline in October (The Facebook Dilemma, discussed in a JPROF.com post a couple of weeks ago), Facebook’s reputation as an idealist company that wants to change the world and do go continues to deteriorate.
Here’s the lead paragraph from a New York Times story (Facebook Used People’s Data to Favor Certain Partners and Punish Rivals, Documents Show – The New York Times) published this week:
Facebook used the mountains of data it collected on users to favor certain partners and punish rivals, giving companies such as Airbnb and Netflix special access to its platform while cutting off others that it perceived as threats.
There is also this from the New Yorker: Facebook’s Very Bad Month Just Got Worse | The New Yorker
Facebook and founder Mark Zuckerberg are sticking with their insistence that Facebook has never sold personal data, but with everything that we know now, skepticism about that real truth of that statement grows. Things will probably get worse for Facebook, at least publically, before they get better.
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Tags: Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg