Facebook is pushing back against a media report saying that it provided extensive information about its users and their friends to third parties like phone makers.
The New York Times reported Sunday that Facebook struck data-sharing deals with at least 60 device makers, including Apple and Amazon, raising more concerns about what users give up when they use Facebook.
Facebook says it disagrees with reporting by the paper regarding software it rolled out 10 years ago that helped get Facebook on mobile devices like iPhones. Ime Archibong, vice president of product partnerships, said in blog post that Facebook has maintained tight control over the technology and that it is not aware of any abuse by the companies that it teamed with.
In March, Facebook came under heavy fire in the wake of news that Cambridge Analytica had misused user data in the lead-up to the U.S. presidential election. Since then, Mark Zuckerberg has testified in front of Congress in an attempt to answer questions about Facebook's handling of user data.
Facebook posted a response to the New York Times article.
Archibong says that these data agreements were a matter of necessity.
In the early days of mobile, the demand for Facebook outpaced our ability to build versions of the product that worked on every phone or operating system. It's hard to remember now but back then there were no app stores. So companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter and YouTube had to work directly with operating system and device manufacturers to get their products into people's hands. This took a lot of time — and Facebook was not able to get to everyone.
To bridge this gap, we built a set of device-integrated APIs that allowed companies to recreate Facebook-like experiences for their individual devices or operating systems. Over the last decade, around 60 companies have used them — including many household names such as Amazon, Apple, Blackberry, HTC, Microsoft and Samsung.
(The Associated Press, CBS News contributed to this report.)
