Why We Disagree with The New York Times

It reads like a long defensive argument, "how else did you expect us to make huge sums of money"? It is exactly as tone-deaf and legalese as you would expect. There is no new information here; Facebook says legal contracts actually protect your data so it can't go anywhere, "just trust us", etc.

> These partners signed agreements that prevented people’s Facebook information from being used for any other purpose than to recreate Facebook-like experiences.

That sentence does not make any sense. Signed agreements do not prevent your information from being used in other ways. That's insane, literally.

> Contrary to claims by the New York Times, friends’ information, like photos, was only accessible on devices when people made a decision to share their information with those friends.

In the past, Facebook Legal has stated that once a Facebook user has signed up, they consent to having psychological experiments performed on them with no further notice or direct consent. Facebook has acted on this and intentionally made hundreds of thousands of people fall into a depression, just to see if they could, and then they bragged about it. The sentence quoted above actually means "friends’ information, like photos, was only accessible [whenever and however we wanted to]" as Facebook considers those people to have already "made a decision to share their information with those friends" when they signed up.

The fact that you can't read messages (without switching to 'desktop mode') on their mobile web app is such horse shit. Yuck.

... and thus begins a new series of regulations designed to pierce the plausible deniability of "terms of service". People complain about GDPR and other regulations, but they are created to close loopholes that were abused by companies like Facebook.

> All these partnerships were built on a common interest — the desire for people to be able to use Facebook whatever their device or operating system.

Facebooks best interest, not 'common interest'