Social Networking Giant Facebook Reportedly Considered Selling Its User Data

In April, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg faced off with the senator in a  5-hour hearing Marathon on the privacy scandal. “We don’t sell data,” the CEO said. Nonetheless, in February 2017, a report suggested that Facebook was charging companies fee for accessing user data.

The social networking giant has always emphasized that user's information is not sold directly. However, according to Business Insider, One of the company's employee said:

Back in 2013, when Facebook was negotiating a whitelist deal with Amazon. A document stated that a Facebook employee recommending to others that they should not promise access to the data until payment has been approved. Afterward, in another negotiation with the Royal Bank of Canada, when the bank voiced concerns about data access, a Facebook employee asked internally if the bank had an existing advertising contract. Other firms that have entered into whitelist contracts are Lyft, Nissan, Airbnb, Netflix, and Chrysler / Fiat.

The allegation that claims that the tech firm's CEO Mark Zuckerberg devised schemes through his social media sites to put his rivals and potential rivals out of business. The documents were obtained by the British Parliament while Ted Kramer, the founder of a company called Six4Three which was put out of business due to the change in Facebook's algorithm, was in London. Six4Three had developed the "Pikinis" app which allowed users to look for their friends' bikini pictures on Facebook. Ted Kramer has sued Facebook for the change in their algorithm and accused it of putting his firm out of business. Although the documents are not related to the Cambridge Analytical scandal, which had used a loophole in Facebook's privacy policy to allow third-party applications to access user data, they are still considered as evidence on Facebook's attitude towards data privacy.

Damian Collins who has been a part of the team that ordered the seizure of internal Facebook document tweeted:

Although Facebook did not necessarily choose to recharge, it did try to pull offers from some major vendors for extended access to its Graph API.