in 2018, Facebook told Vox that it doesn’t use private messages for ad targeting. But a few months later, The New York Times, citing “hundreds of pages of Facebook documents,” reported that Facebook “gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages.”
Surprising? No. Appalling? Yes.
I want to point out how similar this is to the FYES arrangement which allows close allies to spy on each other’s citizens to skirt the legal blocks of a country spying on its own citizens. This allowed Facebook to honestly say (from a legal standpoint) they didn’t read/use private messages for ads. Because they didn’t say they didn’t sell private messages to other companies for tons of $$$, and let them do the reading and advertising.
Let’s not forget how similar Facebook is to a CIA program that ended from public scrutiny only a few years prior, and how much involvement Facebook now has with US Government entities.
If the CIA (or just Facebook) wanted to
Kill budding decentralization concepts and
Cause overload to the system while Facebook retains ultimate control once everyone gives up or only a few small instances are left
Threads is how it would be done. Interesting naming coincidence too, as pulling a thread causes the entire garment to become structurally compromised.