







New docs from a monopoly lawsuit shed light on Facebook's "Ghostbusters" project.
Facebook snooped on Snapchat, Amazon, and YouTube user data, documents reveal
"Project Ghostbusters" lies at the core of it all.

Facebook snooped on users' Snapchat traffic in secret project, documents reveal | TechCrunch
A secret program called "Project Ghostbusters" saw Facebook devise a way to intercept and decrypt the encrypted network traffic of Snapchat users to study their behavior.

Facebook Data Privacy Scandal: A Cheat Sheet - TechRepublic
Read about the saga of Facebook's failures in ensuring privacy for user data, including how it relates to Cambridge Analytica, the GDPR, the Brexit campaign, and the 2016 US presidential election.

Facebook-Cambridge Analytica: A timeline of the data hijacking scandal
Facebook is desperately trying to mend its damaged reputation following the continued fallout of a massive data scandal.

Facebook's alleged use of APIs to crush competition is a warning to other data companies
Forget Instagram and WhatsApp. The real villains in the FTC lawsuit are Facebook's abuse of data and APIs.

Copycat: How Facebook Tried to Squash Snapchat
In an excerpt from a new book on Snapchat, Billy Gallagher explains how Facebook fought back against a tiny rival's challenge.

The Facebook Files
Facebook knows, in acute detail, that its platforms are riddled with flaws but hasn’t fixed them. That’s a key finding of a Journal series that launched this week, based on an array of internal company documents. Read all the stories here.
Facebook pays teens to install VPN that spies on them | TechCrunch
Desperate for data on its competitors, Facebook has been secretly paying people to install a "Facebook Research" VPN that lets the company suck in all of

2021 Facebook leak
In 2021, an internal document leak from Facebook (now Meta Platforms, or Meta) showed it was aware of harmful societal effects from its platforms, yet persisted in prioritizing profit over addressing these harms. The leak, released by whistleblower Frances Haugen, resulted in reporting from The Wall Street Journal in September, as The Facebook Files series from journalist Jeff Horwitz, as well as the Facebook Papers, by a consortium of news outlets the next months.
Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica problems are nothing compared to what’s coming for all of online publishing
Let’s start with Facebook’s Surveillance Machine, by Zeynep Tufekci in last Monday’s New York Times. Among other things (all correct), Zeynep explains that “Facebook makes m…

Facebook’s Attack on Research is Everyone's Problem
Facebook recently banned the accounts of several New York University (NYU) researchers who run Ad Observer, an accountability project that tracks paid disinformation, from its platform. This has

It’s time for third-party data brokers to emerge from the shadows
Facebook announced last week it would discontinue the partner programs that allow advertisers to use third-party data from companies such as Acxiom, Experian and Quantium to target users.
Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal
The data was collected through an app called "This Is Your Digital Life", developed by data scientist Aleksandr Kogan and his company Global Science Research in 2013.[2] The app consisted of a series of questions to build psychological profiles on users, and collected the personal data of the users' Facebook friends via Facebook's Open Graph platform.[2] The app harvested the data of up to 87 million Facebook profiles.[2] Cambridge Analytica used the data to analytically assist the 2016 presidential campaigns of Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.[3][4] Cambridge Analytica was also widely accused of interfering with the Brexit referendum, although the official investigation recognised that the company was not involved "beyond some initial enquiries" and that "no significant breaches" took place.[5][6]
Facebook Is Being Overrun With Stolen, AI-Generated Images That People Think Are Real
The once-prophesized future where cheap, AI-generated trash content floods out the hard work of real humans is already here, and is already taking over Facebook.

One Response to the Cambridge Analytica Scandal: Block Facebook's
With Facebook in a dominant position in hosting a huge portion of the world’s social conversation, we’ve been worried about the incredible power the company has accumulated and the risks that poses

Apple bans Facebook's Research app that paid users for data | TechCrunch
In the wake of TechCrunch's investigation yesterday, Apple blocked Facebook's Research VPN app before the social network could voluntarily shut it down.
