The world’s largest social media has had a rough year legally, and with the publication of the “secret documents” things could get a lot worse.
The British Parliament published a slew of secret documents from Facebook that it obtained from Six4Three, a company that is attempting to sue the digital behemoth.
Six4Three is suing Facebook, because it claims the social media giant killed one of the company’s applications called Pikinis. Pikinis was an app that allowed people to see their friends in different swimwear options. The company said that the privacy changes in 2015 are what killed the emerging application.
In California, the “secret documents” were obtained by a court but were placed under seal. In the U.K. however, the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee were allowed to publish the documents under UK parliamentary privilege, claiming they the documents are of an interest to the public.
The documents are damning and include some emails that were sent by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself. See the entire 250 pages of Facebook’s “secret documents” here.
Some of the more serious items to appear in the documents include several “whitelisting agreements” where Facebook would give companies like Netflix and Airbnb special access to friend’s data, even after the privacy changes that sank Pikinis in 2015.
Another revelation is the aggressive position that Facebook took against apps and projects that they considered competitors. One document shows an email from Zuckerberg where he denies access to a video app that is now shut down, but was once owned by Twitter.
There are over 250 pages of documents and some are not very flattering for the social media monster. One documents shows that Facebook was not open with Android users about privacy changes, because they were too controversial.
This isn’t the first time Facebook has been in trouble this year. They have had a few major breaches and one just this past September where 50 million users were affected.
As of publication, Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook have not responded to the latest publication of their “secret documents.”
Are you still going to use Facebook? Do you feel your information is safe? Let us know in the comments below.