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Facebook said on Tuesday it had cut off the personal accounts
and access of the New York University researchers because of
concerns about other users' privacy.
Facebook had initially said that the decision was made out of a
need for the social media giant to live up to a consent
agreement with the Federal Trade Commission.
But Facebook spokesman Joe Osborne later told Wired that the
consent decree was not a reason to disable the researchers'
accounts. Instead, the decree required the creation of rules for
a privacy program, which is what he said the researchers had
violated.
Laura Edelson, one of the researchers, denied any wrongdoing,
Wired said.
The FTC posted a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying
that it was "inaccurate" that the company's actions were
required under the 2019 consent decree.
"While I appreciate that Facebook has now corrected the record,
I am disappointed by how your company has conducted itself in
this matter," wrote Sam Levine, the FTC's acting director of the
Bureau of Consumer Protection.
"The FTC received no notice that Facebook would be publicly
invoking our consent decree to justify terminating academic
research earlier this week."
Facebook paid a record-setting $5 billion fine to resolve the
FTC probe into its privacy practices and boosted safeguards on
user data.
"While it is not our role to resolve individual disputes between
Facebook and third parties, we hope that the company is not
invoking privacy – much less the FTC consent order – as a
pretext to advance other aims," he wrote.
Separately, the FTC sued Facebook in December for allegedly
violating antitrust law. That complaint was dismissed and the
agency has an Aug. 19 deadline to refile it.
(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Stephen Coates)
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