Facebook talks to banks about getting user data, sparks backlash

Mark
Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of
Facebook.
Drew Angerer/Getty
Images

• Facebook wants banks to give it users’ financial data
  so it can integrate it into its platform.
• According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook has been
  talking to some big US banks about partnerships.
• The news sent Facebook’s stock popping as high as
  3%.
• But critics have attacked the California tech company
  over the news, arguing it is collecting too much data and
  getting too much power.

Facebook has been in talks with banks about accessing users’
financial data and integrating it into its platform,
according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal on
Monday.

The report has sparked immediate outrage from critics and privacy
activists, who fear the Silicon Valley tech firm is attempting to
gobble up ever-more information, mere months after an
unprecedented crisis over how it handled user data in the
Cambridge Analytica scandal. 

But
Wall Street has taken a very different view, and Facebook’s stock
popped more than 3% on the news, with investors seemingly
viewing it as another money-making opportunity for the company.

According to The Wall Street Journal’s report, Facebook wants to
get “detailed financial information” about users from American
banks, and has talked to JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup
and US Bancorp. The same report says that the banks are largely
reticent to share that data given data privacy concerns. 

Facebook is reportedly considering showing users their bank
balance or potential fraud alerts, as well as encouraging people
to use its Messenger app more, if the partnerships ultimately go
ahead.

Facebook did not immediately respond to request for comment from
Business Insider. However, speaking to
TechCrunch after the Wall Street Journal’s report was
published, a Facebook spokesperson said the company wasn’t asking
for “financial transaction data,” but rather looking to improve
Messenger with banking notifications, and that it was strictly
opt-in.

The report comes as Facebook attempts to bounce back from a chain
of scandals that has shaken the public’s faith in the tech
company, especially the fallout from the revelation that
political research firm Cambridge Analytica had improperly
obtained Facebook data from as many as 87 million users. The
social network also faces broader concerns around misinformation
and fake news.

The news has sparked a backlash from critics worried about the
extent of Facebook’s power and potential repercussions.

Matt Stoller, a fellow at the Open Markets Institute and an
outspoken critic of Facebook and the power of the tech giants,
said
the news was further evidence of how “concentrated tech power
is moving us towards a dystopian social credit scoring system.”

Sociologist Beth Popp Berman said she was surprised that there
isn’t more widespread outrage over Facebook’s business practices.
“It continues to amaze me that the general reaction to pervasive,
dystopian surveillance is ¯_(ツ)_/¯” she
tweeted, using an emoticon that conveys shrugging or apathy.

And Matt
Ford, a reporter at the New Republic, simply joked: “What
couldn’t go wrong?”

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