Facebook accused of contradicting itself on claims about platform policy violations

Prepare your best * unsurprised face *: Facebook is being accused of contradicting itself in separate testimonies made on both sides of the Atlantic.

The chair of a UK parliamentary committee which spent the lion’s share of last year investigating online disinformation, going on to grill multiple Facebook execs as part of an enquiry that coincided with a global spotlight being cast on Facebook as a result of the Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal, has penned another letter to the company — this time asking which versions of claims it has made regarding policy-violating access to data by third party apps on its platform are actually true.

In the letter, which is addressed to Facebook global spin chief and former UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, Damian Collins cites paragraph 43 of the Washington DC Attorney General’s complaint against the company — which asserts that the company “knew of other third party applications [i.e. in addition to the quiz app used to siphon data off to Cambridge Analytica] that similarly violated its Platform Policy through selling or improperly using consumer data”, and also failed to take “reasonable measures” to enforce its policy.

The Washington, D.C. Attorney General, Karl Racine, is suing Facebook for failing to protect user data — per allegations filed last December.

Collins’ letter notes Facebook’s denial of the allegations in paragraph 43 — before raising apparently contradictory evidence the company gave the committee last year on multiple occasions, such as the testimony of its CTO Mike Schroepfer, who confirmed it is reviewing whether Palantir improperly used Facebook data, among “lots” of other apps of concern; and testimony by Facebook’s Richard Allen to an international grand committee last November when the VP of EMEA public policy claimed the company has “taken action against a number of applications that failed to meet our policies”.

The letter also cites evidence contained in documents the DCMS committee seized from Six4Three, pertaining to a separate lawsuit against Facebook, which Collins asserts demonstrate “the lax treatment of abusive apps and their developments by Facebook”.

He also writes that these documents show Facebook had special agreements with a number of app developers — that allowed some preinstalled apps to “circumvent users’ privacy settings or platform settings, and to access friends’ information”, as well as noting that Facebook whitelisted some 5,200 apps “according to our evidence”.

“The evidence provided by representatives of Facebook to this Select committee and the International Grand Committee as well as the Six4Three files directly contradict with Facebook’s answer to Paragraph 43 of the complaint filed against Facebook by the Washington, D.C. Attorney General,” he writes.

“If the version of events presented in the answer to the lawsuit is correct, this means the evidence given to this Committee and the International Grand Committee was inaccurate.”

Collins goes on to ask Facebook to “confirm the truthfulness” of the evidence given by its reps last year, and to provide the list of applications removed from its platform in response to policy violations — which, in November, Allan promised to provide the committee with but has so far failed to do so.

We’ve also reached out to Facebook to ask which of the versions of events it’s claimed are true is the one it’s standing by at this time.