Its appetite for self-harm apparently undiminished by the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook is again embroiled in a privacy controversy. The New York Times reports that despite an assurance given to US regulators in 2015 that it would not share user data without explicit permission, the company has been sharing data from users and their friends with about 60 hardware companies, manufacturers of devices like phones and tablets on which Facebook runs. About a third of these relationships appear to have ended, and no evidence has emerged of data misuse. This is not an enormity like the Cambridge Analytica fiasco, where Facebook data was piped out in bulk and used to target swing voters, with possible effects on election results and national sovereignty.
However, it does suggest that Facebook had not told the whole truth in the legislative investigation into its functioning. Besides, the defence that the company has offered is tailor-made to raise suspicions, and hackles. Stripped of legalese and technicalese, it boils down to an insincerity. Essentially, the social media giant is saying that it promised the authorities not to share data with third parties without permission. However, it does not consider the hardware manufacturers it contracted with as third parties, but as part of the Facebook ecosystem, and therefore there has been no violation. In a social context, a rough parallel would be to suggest that even if one had agreed not to divulge the secrets of an acquaintance to other acquaintances, it would be all right to divulge them to one’s mother-in-law, since she is a relation and not an acquaintance.
