Internal Facebook documents reveal a pattern of manipulation; fractured Yemen coalition fighting Houthi rebels signs power-sharing agreement.
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Facebook has a leaky document problem
- Thousands of revealing internal documents and emails that Facebook struggled to keep secret were just made public, giving more details about how Facebook dealt with privacy and user data issues. [Business Insider / Rob Price]
- Read the nearly 4,000 pages of previously sealed documents here. [NBC News]
- The documents are part of a lawsuit filed in 2015 by a now defunct bikini photo-sharing app, Six4Three. They reveal that Facebook pressured hundreds of thousands of developers to use the site’s platform to build their apps, purchase ads with Facebook, and hand over user data to the social media giant. [Computer Weekly / Sebastian Klovig Skelton]
- Facebook then presented the move to limit the developers’ access to user data as a move to secure their patrons’ privacy. Six4Three claims that these company policies were anticompetitive and that Facebook willfully misled consumers and app developers. [Reuters / Katie Paul and Mark Hosenball]
- This isn’t the first anti-competitiveness complaint against Facebook, of course: Congress and federal and state authorities have also been looking into its business practices. [NBC News / Olivia Solon and Cyrus Farivar]
- Nor is it the first time that Facebook has faced consequences for releases of closed-door information. Leaked audio recordings of Mark Zuckerberg addressing his employees frankly this summer provoked further calls from presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren to break up the company. [Vox / Peter Kafka]
- In February of this year, internal Facebook documents, from the same Six4Three lawsuit as the most recent leak, came to light that detailed how Zuckerberg planned to sell user data to developers. [The Guardian / Julia Carrie Wong]
Is this the first step in ending Yemen’s civil war?
- Yemen’s government and southern separatists signed a peace agreement, turning a corner in the country’s conflict that is on its way toward its fifth year. [Reuters / Marwa Rashad]
- Previous alliances between the two groups to fight the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels crumbled when the United Arab Emirates-aligned Southern Transitional Council separatists seized the capital city of Aden from the Saudi-supported government. [BBC]
- In signing the deal in Riyadh on Tuesday, the STC separatists entered a power-sharing agreement with Yemeni government forces that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called “a joyful day in Saudi as the two sides come together … this agreement will open a new period of stability in Yemen.” [Al Jazeera / Ali Younes]
- But experts, like Peter Salisbury of the International Crisis Group, caution against assumptions that the end of the civil war is near. [International Crisis Group / Peter Salisbury]
- CNN uncovered footage of US-made arms being unloaded by Saudi-led coalition forces at port in Aden last week, despite well-documented bipartisan congressional outrage at the continued use of American weapons in Yemen, where over 100,000 people have been killed in the conflict. [CNN / Nima Elbagir, Salma Abdelaziz, Mohamed Abo El Gheit, Florence Davey-Attlee and Ed Upright]
Miscellaneous
- Vice President Mike Pence is also in the business of mishandling foreign aid. [ProPublica / Yeganeh Torbati]
- A step-by-step guide to deleting everything you’ve said to the digital assistants you own. [Gizmodo / David Nield]
- Here are Tuesday’s election winners and losers. [Vox / Ella Nilsen, Tara Golshan, Li Zhou, and German Lopez]
- How former Vice President Joe Biden took up the cause of banning the sale of horses to be killed for meat. [Politico / Ben Schreckinger]
- Women’s bodies are better suited for space. Here’s why. [Medium / Starre Julia Vartan]
Verbatim
“The people of our borough deserve to feel safe and to know that their justice system is working for everyone.” [First female Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz after winning her race Tuesday night]
Watch this: Why spend money in video games?
Glad You Asked’s Alex Clark explores why we spend so much money on video games and how the virtual products became so pricey. [YouTube / Alex Clark]
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