Newly released court documents from an ongoing class action lawsuit against Meta show that in 2016, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was accused of encrypted content on competing apps such as Snapchat, YouTube, and Amazon. It was revealed that he personally instructed executives to “figure out” how to track usage.
tech crunch report In a June 2016 email, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed frustration with Snapchat’s lack of analytics, writing: Given how quickly they are growing, it seems important to find new ways to obtain reliable analysis about them. You’ll probably need to create a panel or write custom software. you should find a way to do this. ”
“We were discussing this with the Onabo team,” Javier Oliván, Facebook’s head of growth at the time, said, referring to the VPN app that Facebook acquired in 2013. Olivan tasked Onavo founder Guy Rosen to come up with “a solution to this problem.” “Box Thinking” to meet Mr. Zuckerberg’s request.
By July 2016, the Onavo team had developed software that could intercept and decrypt traffic from specific domains on iOS and Android devices. An internal email describes this approach as a “‘man-in-the-middle’ approach,” which allows Facebook to “read encrypted traffic and thus measure in-app usage.” is.
The secret data collection, dubbed “Project Ghostbusters” after Snapchat’s ghost logo, continued for at least three years and expanded to include YouTube and Amazon. But not all Facebook executives were happy with the project.
“I can’t think of a good argument for why this is okay,” Pedro Cannahuati, Facebook’s head of security engineering at the time, wrote in an internal email. “No matter what buy-in we get from the public, no security official is going to be happy with this. The public doesn’t know how this works.”
Despite these concerns, Project Ghostbusters proceeded on Zuckerberg’s instructions to gain a competitive advantage over rival apps. The unsealed documents also revealed that Facebook used a third party to recruit users to install the software, making Onavo’s brand invisible unless users took special steps to analyze the tool. I couldn’t see it.
The revelations from court documents have raised serious questions about Facebook’s data collection practices and respect for user privacy. An ongoing class action lawsuit brought by advertisers alleges that Facebook’s actions have allowed the company to unfairly raise ad prices and maintain its monopoly on the social media advertising market.
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Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering free speech and online censorship issues.
