INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
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The apps were associated with around 400 developers
Facebook says
it has suspended tens of thousands of apps as part of an investigation it launched in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data harvesting
scandal.The suspended apps were associated with about 400 developers, it said.Facebook said not all the apps posed a threat to users.The
company came under huge pressure in 2018 after it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica had accessed many users' data without permission.The
political consultancy firm is alleged to have used this data - harvested by a personality quiz - to target political advertising
Facebook was fined $5bn in July by the US Federal Trade Commission, in what was believed to have been the biggest ever fine imposed on any
company for violating consumers' privacy.Why is Facebook suspending apps? The Cambridge Analytica scandal, which involved the data of tens
of millions of people, was hugely damaging for Facebook and the company has since faced lawsuits and international criticism.It is now
seeking to improve its privacy safeguards and its image.As part of that, in March last year Facebook launched an investigation into apps on
its platform, involving hundreds of lawyers, data scientists and engineers."Our review helps us to better understand patterns of abuse in
order to root out bad actors among developers," the company's vice-president for product partnerships, Ime Archibong, said in a statement
on Friday.Media playback is unsupported on your deviceMedia captionHow the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal unfoldedWhat do we know
about the apps? Facebook has released little specific information on the tens of thousands of apps or hundreds of developers in question
The statement said that the suspension of the apps was not necessarily an indication that they posed a threat to people
"Many were not live but were still in their testing phase when we suspended them," Mr Archibong said
In some cases developers were subjected to in-depth questioning after being flagged
Some apps were banned completely for reasons including inappropriately sharing data obtained from Facebook or making data publicly available
without protecting people's identity.One banned app called myPersonality was found to be sharing information with researchers and
companies with only limited protections in place, and then refused to take part in an audit, according to Facebook.The app review is
