Facebook lied about how many teens it used for research
At the time, Facebook said that less than 5 percent of its study participants were teens, and that participants under 18 were required to get parental consent.
Mark Warner asked Facebook for more information about the program; Warner was reportedly frustrated with Facebook's lack of transparency regarding its research programs.
Not only did teenage users comprise 18 percent of participants, but teens were not required to get written letters of parental consent, as Facebook previously asserted, either.
That five percent number apparently came from the amount of teenage users active in the program at the time that revelations about the initiative came to light.
Analysis shows that number is about 18 percent when you look at the complete lifetime of the program, and also add people who had become inactive and uninstalled the app.
Potential participants were required to confirm that they were over 18 or provide other evidence of parental consent, though the vendors did not require a signed parental consent form for teen users.
The report was initially troubling for a few reasons beyond the creep factor of Facebook monitoring teenagers' activities.
Facebook circumvented many of Apple's iOS privacy policies to gain unfettered access to participants' phone usage, which resulted in the app getting booted from iOS.Further, Facebook recruited in teen-populated places like Snapchat, which implied that it was specifically looking in places known for teen users.
Facebook says that it is working hard to regain trust from its users, after multiple scandals and breaches have damaged that trust.
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