The memo, which has not been previously reported, offers the fullest accounting yet of what Facebook says was the purpose of the app and the specific data it was harvesting — and also offers a rare window into how the Silicon Valley tech giant attempts to spin scandals and crises to its employees in a positive light.
Apple's response caused havoc at Facebook, with internal apps used for everything from communicating with colleagues to company transportation failing.
Facebook employees were furious about the move, sources previously told Business Insider, alternately blaming their colleagues behind the research app and Apple, which some theorized was out to get Facebook.
New builds of these apps will soon be available and we'll email all iOS users for detailed instructions on how to reinstall.
This is a market research program that helps us understand consumer behavior and trends to build better mobile products.
People participated in this program with full knowledge that Facebook was sponsoring this research, and were paid for it.
Apple has indicated that this broke their Terms of Service so disabled our enterprise certificates which allow us to install our own apps on devices outside of the official app store for internal dogfooding.
Once people are onboarded through a generic registration page, they are informed that this research will be for Facebook and can decline to participate or opt out at any point.
We're interested in information such as watch time, video duration, and message length, not that actual content of videos, messages, stories or photos.
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