Did Facebook share users’ data?

NP NEWS 24 ONLINE- According to reports, Facebook leaders gave certain big tech firms access to the users data besides refusing such access to its competitors, including video app Vine which the social media giant had targeted soon after it was launched by another social media platform Twitter.

Mark Zuckerberg’s decision made it possible for a quiz app to gather data on about 87 million Facebook users, and later share the information with Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook’s business practices were found in over 200 pages of internal mails and documents for the period between 2012-15 that were released.

Facebook came under a severe criticism a few months ago over its handling of the users’ privacy. Its co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg had to face lawmakers after the social media giant revealed that a whopping 87 million users had their data breached as they were shared with Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm that had worked with the campaign of US President Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election.

Mark Zuckerberg grieved his choice in a Facebook post on Wednesday, saying that cracking down a year earlier could have helped the company avoid a privacy scandal that has tarred its reputation.

By 2014, Facebook had moved to restrict the free promotion and wide data access from which outside developers benefited. Though the tools and data remained free, they became less valuable to many app makers.

The CEO’s 2012 emails, obtained by a British government panel investigating Facebook, provide an unusual window into the internal deliberations over the critical strategic question of how much customer data the social network should share.