Facebook Inc gave some companies, including Netflix and Airbnb, preferential access to user data in 2015 as it limited services for most others, according to company emails and presentations released by a British lawmaker.
The 223 pages of communication from 2012 to 2015 between high-level Facebook employees, including founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, show how the social media company debated generating revenue by selling access to data, tracked and fended off rivals and braced for potential blowback as it moved to capture more user data.
Damian Collins, a Conservative member of parliament, made the documents public on Wednesday after demanding them last month under threat of sanction from Six4Three. The defunct app developer obtained them as part of its ongoing lawsuit in California state court alleging that Facebook violated promises to developers.
Facebook, which has described the Six4Three case as baseless, said the released communications are misleading without additional context, but did not elaborate.
“We stand by the platform changes we made in 2015 to stop a person from sharing their friends’ data with developers,” a spokesperson said.
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