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According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, Facebook considered directly selling API access to other companies between 2012 and 2014. According to TechCrunch, the WSJ's allegations come from sealed court documents from a lawsuit by app developer Six4Three. By all accounts, Facebook never followed through with the plan, as they've repeatedly stated that Facebook won't sell user data. But news of this discussion comes at a bad time for Facebook, especially with the possibility that high-ranking executives were part of that discussion. Facebook gave TechCrunch the following statement:
As we've said many times, the documents Six4Three gathered for this baseless case are only part of the story and are presented in a way that is very misleading without additional context. Evidence has been sealed by a California court so we are not able to disprove every false accusation. That said, we stand by the platform changes we made in 2015 to stop a person from sharing their friends' data with developers. Any short-term extensions granted during this platform transition were to prevent the changes from breaking user experience. To be clear, Facebook has never sold anyone’s data. Our APIs have always been free of charge and we have never required developers to pay for using them, either directly or by buying advertising.
As we've said many times, the documents Six4Three gathered for this baseless case are only part of the story and are presented in a way that is very misleading without additional context. Evidence has been sealed by a California court so we are not able to disprove every false accusation. That said, we stand by the platform changes we made in 2015 to stop a person from sharing their friends' data with developers. Any short-term extensions granted during this platform transition were to prevent the changes from breaking user experience. To be clear, Facebook has never sold anyone’s data. Our APIs have always been free of charge and we have never required developers to pay for using them, either directly or by buying advertising.
