Update at 15:42 pm: Netflix's statement to MediaNama said: "Over the years we have tried various ways to make Netflix more social. One example of this was a feature we launched in 2014 that enabled members to recommend TV shows and movies to their Facebook friends via Messenger or Netflix. It was never that popular so we shut the feature down in 2015. At no time did we access people’s private messages on Facebook, or ask for the ability to do so." ** Earlier at 11:48 am: Internal documents from Facebook reveal that it gave access to users' personal data to several of the world's largest technology companies, exempting them from its privacy rules. The development was reported by the New York Times. Facebook allowed Microsoft's Bing search engine to see the names of all Facebook users' friends without consent It allowed Spotify, Netflix, and Royal Bank of Canada to read, write and delete Facebook users' private messages It let Amazon access users' names and contact information through their friends (via contact lists from partners) It let Yahoo view streams of friends' posts Sony, Microsoft, Amazon and others could obtain users' email addresses through their friends, as recently as 2017 Apple devices had access to contact numbers and calendar entries of users who had disabled such sharing The deals described in the documents show that over 150 companies, most of which were tech businesses, benefitted from the partnerships, along with some media organizations and online retailers. All the deals were active as recently…
