First up, this piece from TechCrunch:
Since 2016, Facebook has been paying users ages 13 to 35 up to $20 per month plus referral fees to sell their privacy by installing the iOS or Android “Facebook Research” app. Facebook even asked users to screenshot their Amazon order history page. The program is administered through beta testing services Applause, BetaBound and uTest to cloak Facebook’s involvement, and is referred to in some documentation as “Project Atlas” — a fitting name for Facebook’s effort to map new trends and rivals around the globe.Pro tip: If you're cloaking your involvement in a shady project because you know it's too shady to be publicly associated with... you should probably be rethinking the whole enterprise. Just saying.
Facebook's "Project Atlas" shenanigans should sound familiar: it wasn't that long ago that Facebook's Onavo app was removed from the iOS app store for violating Apple's terms of service. And the new app is pretty comprehensive, potentially allowing the collections of "photos/videos sent to others, emails, web searches, web browsing activity, and even ongoing location information by tapping into the feeds of any location tracking apps you may have installed." And, while Facebook apparently pulled an about-face at "at 11:20pm PT" (when TC's piece was updated), announced that FB was removing the app from Apple phones, they apparently have no plans yet to do the same on Android phones.
Also, it should be noted that most jurisdictions don't allow 13 year olds to sign legally binding contracts, which means that Facebook's use of just-barely-teens for this effort may be not-quite-legal. Which is when we get to the second piece of Facebook's sketchy and dodgy teen-involving bullshit, as reported by arstechnica:
Two Democratic senators have asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to explain why the social network apparently "manipulated children into spending their parents' money without permission" while playing games on Facebook.
"A new report from the Center for Investigative Reporting shows that your company had a policy of willful blindness toward credit card charges by children—internally referred to as 'friendly fraud'—in order to boost revenue at the expense of parents," US Sens. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) wrote in a letter to Zuckerberg today. "Notably, Facebook appears to have rejected a plan that would have effectively mitigated this risk and instead doubled down on maximizing revenue."
Because parents didn't know that children would be able to make purchases without additional verification, "many young users incurred several thousands of dollars in charges while playing games like Angry Birds, Petville, Wild Ones, and Barn Buddy," the senators' letter said.What, did you think that Facebook had dodged responsibility for this one? Well, think again, Apple fan, because the Democratically-controlled U.S. House of Representatives aren't about to let this go, and their colleague in the U.S. Senate look to also be keen to get in on the regulating-of-Facebook action. I told you that Facebook's troubles were just getting started.
And so, with two different Facebook-exploits-teens stories in the headlines, we can now head into Wednesday... and the rest of the week. That's right, folks, Facebook's week isn't even over yet. Winning!