Facebook defends its Messaging partnerships with Netflix, Spotify and more

tech2 News StaffDec 20, 2018 08:49:36 IST

After another explosive report by the New York Times which detailed how Facebook was disclosing user private messages and data to partners without the user's consent, the social media giant is trying to clear the air. On 19 December, Facebook posted a blog that detailed about its relationship with its partners.  Today it has come out with another post which tells us the company's policy about Facebook’s Messaging Partnerships.

Representational image.

In this new post, Facebook says that it has worked closely with four partners to integrate its messaging platform on their platform. The company compared its service to Amazon's Alexa reading your email out loud.

"People could message their friends about what they were listening to on Spotify or watching on Netflix, share folders on Dropbox, or get receipts from money transfers through the Royal Bank of Canada app." Facebook said that all of this data was publically discussed and that the messaging service would only work when a user had logged into the third party app using Facebook.

Spotify Messaging.

So then why did messaging partners have read/write/delete messaging access? Facebook said that for users to message their Facebook friends from within partnered apps such as Spotify, Facebook needed to give Spotify “write access.” Facebook also gave Spotify the 'Read access" for you to be able to read messages back.” “Delete access” was given so that when you deleted a message from within Spotify, it would also delete from Facebook.

Netflix Facebook messaging.

Stories which implied that Facebook was "shipping over private messages to partners" is not correct said the company. Facebook said that partnerships with the likes of Spotify, Netflix and more were made after extensive discussions and negotiations so that user data would not be missed.

Facebook has been in PR storm of its own making since the Cambridge Analytica story broke out earlier this year and it has been a downhill road since then. How many more data breaches will we be made aware off before the top brass at Facebook vacate their spots is something only time will te