[msbarnett]

> 2) NYT seems to intentionally not elaborating on the "access to users' private messages" part and conflating app permissions to actually scanning, parsing, storing, deleting, modifying individual messages. Until disproven, it sounds like these are just standard app permissions needed to implement functions like song sharing in Messenger chat (in the case of Spotify), or sending payments over chat (in the case of RBC).

I find your argument to highly misleading. Facebook asked users for permission to grant the apps the permission to send messages, and then when the users approved that request, implemented that access by white-listing the applications to give them carte-blanche access to a deprecated API that included not just message-sending abilities, but full read-write access to their entire Messenger history, along with the rest of the deprecated Instant Personalization API.

Cambridge Analytica has already demonstrated how bad actors will misuse any access they have for profit -- granting broader than described permissions simply opens the door to further such abuses. It's utterly naive to believe that these companies would all voluntarily restrain their access to the subset users had been told about, rather than full suite of data they were handed access to.

[beaner]

> Facebook asked users for permission to grant the apps the permission to send messages, and then when the users approved that request, implemented that access by white-listing the applications to give them carte-blanche access to a deprecated API that included not just message-sending abilities, but full read-write access to their entire Messenger history

Is that in the article though? I don't think OP is guilty of being misleading, maybe just not fully informed. I didn't know this bit, either. Can you source it?

[bhk]

> Cambridge Analytica has already demonstrated how bad actors will misuse any access they have for profit ...

Facebook was the bad actor. Facebook divulged user data to the thisisyourdigitallife app in ways that were counter to what it told users. When the scandal broke, Facebook claimed that its terms of service were violated because the app was collecting the data for commercial purposes, not research[1], but in either case FB would have been divulging private data improperly.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analy...