Does the New York Times Actually Have Anything on the Facebook Device Maker Scandal?

So far, the New York Times has shown that when you let your phone access your Facebook account… *surprise* your phone can access your Facebook account.

A lot of people are pretty upset about Facebook right now. It started earlier this year with the Cambridge Analytica scandal, when the public figured out that those fun games they’d been playing were harvesting their data.

Now, the New York Times is claiming that Facebook had additional deals with device makers to allow those device makers to harvest user data as well.

Does their reporting back up their claims? It doesn’t look like it so far.

Here’s what the New York Times actually showed on Sunday. They took an old BlackBerry which they had previously logged into Facebook on, then used the BlackBerry to download information about the Facebook account’s friends and friends of friends. This is the sort of information that you could get by logging into Facebook yourself through a web browser and going to all your friends’ pages and looking at their information and seeing with whom they are friends.

The big unanswered question is the nature of the data sharing relationship. Did Facebook allow a phone that you’re logged into to download your data and your friends data (which you could access via a web browser instead)? Yes. Does Facebook allow the manufacturers of the device to view that data? Well, that’s unclear and the New York Times hasn’t shown that to be the case. However, the way they’re framing their investigation makes it seem as though the manufacturers themselves get the data. If the manufacturers are getting to download the data, that’s an issue, but again, the New York Times has not shown that.

That is, they’ve shown that the devices can access data. The New York Times hasn’t shown that the device makers are able to access that data.

Now the New York Times is claiming that Facebook gave their user data to a bunch of Chinese companies.

Again, the question is whether or not the Chinese companies actually were given the data or if the devices on which people logged into Facebook accessed the data. There’s a world of difference there — if you’re logging onto any device, you’re giving that device access to all the information that you put into it, which could be your banking info, emails, and yes, your Facebook account. The fact that the device has a direct link to Facebook is no different than letting it sync to your email. If Facebook allowed the Chinese companies to copy the Facebook data to their own servers, that’s an issue, but again, it hasn’t been shown to be the case.

In the meantime, the New York Times seems to be drumming up as much public sentiment as possible on this. The New York Times selects comments on articles as ‘NYT picks’. Rather than a rational discussion about what Facebook’s actually doing, here’s the first sentences from some of the NYT picks on the Times’ articles from Sunday and Tuesday:

Sunday Article — Facebook Gave Device Makers Deep Access to Data on Users and Friends:

“I have no desire to Facebook. I have no desire to have my personal information sold to the highest bidder.”

“ I don’t mind my info being sold, as long as I am fully informed and given a chance to opt out”

“The inexorable logic of the Silicon Valley/Wall St/Main St financial complex has richly rewarded the sociopathic core that has run through Facebook from its very beginnings.”

Tuesday Article — Facebook Gave Data Access to Chinese Firm Flagged by U.S. Intelligence:

“For a lesson in how to get regulated… Facebook!”

“How many more articles like this do we need for people to get off of Facebook?”

“I dream daily of awakening to find the infatuation with tech hipsterism dead.”

Now legislators and other publications are jumping on the bandwagon. Representative David Cicilline of Rhode Island tweeted, “Zuckerberg lied” in response to the New York Times article.

Vox ran an article titled Report: Facebook was letting device makers access your data too. The New York Post ran an article titled Facebook reportedly made deals with device makers for deep access to personal data. Social media reacted, with shocked reactions across Twitter and Reddit.

The New York Times successfully stirred up the pot on this story. The issue is, as it is now they conflated the issue of devices being able to access user data and the device makers being able to access user data. All they’ve shown so far is that the devices can access the data. Hopefully (although not for Facebook) they can show that the device makers have the data as well. Otherwise, I’m not really sure why the New York Times is going after Facebook like this.