Facebook wants to refer to the large data breach in which data was scraped as a common problem. The company expects more incidents related to scraping in the future and wants to ‘normalize’ this, according to an internal memo that DataNews has in its hands.
Facebook sent the communication strategy around on April 8 as a memo among PR employees. DataNews managed to get its hands on the email , in which Facebook discusses its long-term strategy for how it feels about scraping incidents. The company does this after the data of 533 million users appeared on the internet, including that of 5.4 million Dutch and 3 million Belgians. That probably happened as a result of scraping. Facebook said shortly after the incident that it would not inform users about it, because scraping is not the same as hacking.
In the memo, Facebook mentions a long-term strategy in which it “expects more scraping incidents.” “We think it is important to identify this as an industry problem and that we will treat its frequent occurrence as normal,” the company writes. work that Facebook does to combat scraping. “We hope that this activity, because it occurs frequently, is considered normal and that we avoid criticism that we are not transparent about specific incidents.”
Facebook also writes internally that many media were critical of the company’s behavior, but blames this on ‘quotes from data experts or regulators who like to criticize the company’. Facebook warns PR employees not to say anything about questions that regulators have asked the company. In Europe, the Irish privacy watchdog has now started an investigation into the data breach.
