Facebooks data policy change was about stopping rivals, not privacy: court filings
Some executives at the worlds biggest social network appeared to refer to the strategy of promoting a privacy-focused explanation for the change as the Switcharoo Plan, internal emails included in sealed California court filings show.
The emergence of nearly 7,000 pages of company emails and executive documents comes as Facebook faces multiple investigations into possible antitrust violations by regulators around the world.
The emails could supply valuable evidence to investigators, including a US House of Representatives panel that sought company records in September on Facebooks decisions to bar apps from its social graph, which maps out relations between users.
Six4Three alleges that Facebooks data policies were anticompetitive and that the company misrepresented those policies both to developers and the public.
A company spokeswoman told Reuters the documents were taken out of context by someone with an agenda against Facebook and made public with a total disregard for US law.
The new documents contain exchanges between executives discussing cutting off access to user data for developers seen as potential competitors at a time when the company said publicly that it provided an open and neutral platform.
They elected to link what they referred to as the bad stuff of PS12N to an unrelated update of the Facebook login system which gave people greater control over their privacy.
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