Social media giant Facebook made more than its fair share of enemies in early 2018. The platform’s security measures (which have since been updated) allowed a researcher to harvest data from 87 million users (against Facebook’s code of conduct, it should be said). That data was passed on to political strategy firm Cambridge Analytica, and used to influence voters in the 2016 US presidential elections. In early 2018, people found out… and they weren’t happy. Ever since, Facebook has been updating systems and trying to repair its damaged image. And it’s making great headway.
Facebook’s share price has risen by 43% so far this year
Source: Yahoo Finance
Straight after the Cambridge Analytica scandal hit the news, Facebook started doubling down on security through its developer tools. By August 2018, the company had suspended 400 third-party apps. And, according to a blog post published on Friday, the company has now suspended “tens of thousands”. That’s a good look for a company that’s trying hard to be seen as responsible and proactive.
The blog post read: “Our App Developer Investigation is by no means finished. But there is meaningful progress to report so far. To date, this investigation has addressed millions of apps. Of those, tens of thousands have been suspended for a variety of reasons while we continue to investigate.”
Nor has Facebook merely confined its actions to suspending suspicious apps. The blog post notes that “in a few cases” apps have been banned outright. And Facebook has even taken legal action against the worst offenders: “In May, we filed a lawsuit in California against Rankwave, a South Korean data analytics company that failed to cooperate with our investigation. We’ve also taken legal action against developers in other contexts. For example, we filed an action against LionMobi and JediMobi, two companies that used their apps to infect users’ phones with malware in a profit-generating scheme.”
According to Facebook, some of these actions are industry firsts. It’s a great start, and Facebook promises that it is “far from finished”.
Disclosure
Dominion holds Facebook in its Global Trends Ecommerce Fund.
Author: Theo Leworthy
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