2024-04-12 08:10:46
New documents indicate that Facebook allowed Netflix to see a user’s direct messages, in order to help them personalize content as part of a close collaboration between the two tech giants.
It revealed that Facebook shared user direct messages with Netflix “for nearly a decade,” according to a lawsuit, noting that Netflix Chairman Reed Hastings was also a member of Facebook’s board of directors.
It also showed that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, allowed Netflix to look into its users’ direct messages “for nearly a decade” to help the streaming giant design better content for its users, a controversial lawsuit claimed.
Court documents unsealed on March 23, filed in April as part of a major antitrust lawsuit against Meta, appear to have laid bare the complex relationship between two of Silicon Valley’s biggest players.
The class action lawsuit was filed by two American citizens, Maximilian Klein and Sarah Grabert, and claimed that Netflix and Facebook “enjoy a special relationship,” in which the social media platform gives the streaming site “tailored access” to user data, according to the Daily Mail.
The two Silicon Valley players also agreed that custom partnerships and integrations have helped bolster Facebook’s ad targeting and segmentation models since at least 2011, thanks to the personal relationship between Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
The lawyers claimed that “within a month” of Hastings joining Facebook’s board, the two companies signed an “Inbox API” agreement that “allows Netflix to programmatically access Facebook user inboxes.”
Newly revealed court documents filed as part of a major antitrust lawsuit against Meta Corporation appear to have revealed the complex relationship between two of Silicon Valley’s biggest players.
In return, Netflix will submit a report to Facebook, which changed its name to Meta in October 2021, every two weeks explaining how its users interact with the platform.
It is noteworthy that this is not the first problem for Meta, as it was forced, along with a large part of Silicon Valley, to pay millions of dollars in fines because of the way it deals with the private information of its users.
In 2022, Ireland imposed a fine of 265 million euros ($284 million) on Meta after the data of more than half a billion online users was leaked.
It is noteworthy that the main plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit against Meta said that “since the outbreak of the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, which revealed Facebook’s lack of privacy protections and low-quality data privacy practices,” neither of them trusted the platform.
Last updated: April 4, 2024 – 04:02
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2024-04-12 08:10:46