The company, best known for its Firefox web browser, has suspended its advertising on Facebook, the company announced in a blog post. The move is directly due to the Cambridge Analytica scandal currently engulfing the social media giant, which saw tens of millions of Facebook users have their personal information shared through a third-party app without their consent. From Mozilla’s blog post:
We understand that Facebook took steps to limit developer access to friends’ data beginning in 2014. This was after Facebook started its relationship with Cambridge University Professor Aleksandr Kogan, whose decision to share data he collected from Facebook with Cambridge Analytica is currently in the news. This news caused us to take a closer look at Facebook’s current default privacy settings given that we support the platform with our advertising dollars. While we believe there is still more to learn, we found that its current default settings leave access open to a lot of data–particularly with respect to settings for third-party apps.
If Facebook does improve its default privacy settings in favor of users, Mozilla says it’s open to returning to advertising on the platform. Until then, it’s taking its ad dollars elsewhere.
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