Facebook Defends Data-Sharing Pacts with Partners

Facebook hits back against another potential privacy scandal from a report that Facebook exposed users’ personal information to more than 60 device makers.

According to The New York Times report on Sunday, the data of users and their friends could be accessed by more than 60 smartphone and tablet makers under a longstanding data-sharing partnership with Facebook.

The data includes sensitive information on religious, political leanings, and data from users who had asked not to have it shared with third parties.

Facebook said there were no data was misused, and the data of the majority under its platform are stored on people’s own phones, not on a company server.

In addition, Ime Archibong, Facebook’s Vice-President of Product Partnerships, said that the company’s partnerships with other device companies including Apple, Samsung, and Amazon, were ‘very different’ from the social media’s relationship with third-party developers.

He emphasized that the data were used to help people access Facebook on their devices and the company supervised the process. He added that the company’s partners agreed, through an agreement, that the data will be used only for maximizing Facebook experience.

The report published by The New York Times could stop Facebook from regaining its good image. The company has faced several issues since the Cambridge Analytica data breach, where the data of up to 87 million Facebook users were collected to psychologically profile voters for the 2016 US election and EU referendum.

RELATED: Facebook Data-Sharing Fiasco Affects 87 Million Users

No More Temporary Reaction Buttons

On the other hand, Facebook will no longer release custom reactions.

Last year, Facebook released the ‘pride’ reaction as a celebration for Pride month. Any users in the platform who liked Facebook’s LGBTQ@Facebook page could get the custom reaction for a limited time.

Back in 2016, Facebook rolled out various ‘reactions’ -- Love, Like, Haha, Sad, and Angry. Since then, the company launched several temporary reactions like ‘grateful’ for celebrating mother’s day, and a custom reaction to commemorate Star Trek’s 50^th anniversary.

However, Facebook didn’t release any of these reactions this year, and company spokesperson Lisa Stratton said that the company was “no longer doing custom reactions for major holidays or moments in culture.”

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