Is Myspace protecting user data?
Back in October of this year, after the Facebook App transmitting investigation, the Wall Street Journal published an investigation into Myspace Apps that were said (which Myspace confirmed) to be transmitting user data to data brokers.
Context & Ripple Effects
The Wall Street Journal spent late 2010 running a serial investigation into social-network app ecosystems: first Facebook's app practices drew privacy scrutiny, then the paper turned to Myspace Apps and found user data flowing to data brokers — a finding Myspace confirmed rather than disputed.
The timing is awkward for Myspace: just last month it launched Mashup with Facebook, letting users build personalized entertainment streams from their Facebook profiles, deepening exactly the kind of cross-platform data flow now under examination. It also extends a pattern dating back years — MySpace was fielding state attorneys general over user data as far back as its 2007 response to states' sex-offender data requests.
First-order effects
- Users of third-party Myspace Apps learn their identifying data reached data brokers, with Myspace itself confirming the transmission instead of contesting the Journal's findings.
- Myspace now sits in the same disclosure position Facebook occupied when the Journal examined Facebook Apps earlier in 2010 — its developer ecosystem becomes the named subject of ongoing investigative coverage.
Second-order effects
- The November 2010 Mashup integration with Facebook means the two networks' data-sharing arrangements get read together, so scrutiny of one app platform transfers directly to the other.
- App developers and the data brokers receiving transmitted identifiers face reputational and legal exposure as the reporting extends across platforms.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, third-party app access becomes the standard channel through which regulators, litigants, and journalists test social platforms — forcing networks to govern developer data practices rather than treat them purely as a growth feature.
- Privacy suits already probing platform limits since 2007 gain concrete documentation of broker transmissions to argue against.
The trend: Social-network app ecosystems are turning from growth engines into liability surfaces, with each platform's developer data-handling practices subjected to the same investigative template in turn.