Facebook revealed on Friday that it suspended tens of thousands of apps from the platform because of privacy reasons.
Facebook Suspends Thousands Of Apps Built By 400 Developers
Facebook did not give a specific number of suspended apps but merely said in a blog post that the apps were built by 400 developers.
The company said that it has also looked into millions more and the investigation is ongoing.
"Our App Developer Investigation is by no means finished. But there is meaningful progress to report so far," Ime Archibong, VP of Product Partnerships at Facebook wrote in the blog post. "To date, this investigation has addressed millions of apps."
Causes Of Suspension
The apps were banned for several reasons, such as collecting Facebook user profile data, making the data public without protecting the users' identities, and other violations of the company policies.
Facebook, for instance, banned the app MyPersonality, which refused to comply with the company's audit and allegedly shared information with third particles sans proper protections in place.
Archibong said that the action does not necessarily mean that the apps were posing a threat to people. Some were still in the testing phase when they were suspended, while in other cases, the developers did not respond to the company's request for information.
Facebook And Data Privacy
The social media company's announcement comes amid concerns about how it handles its users' data in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which saw thousands of profiles scraped to influence the last presidential election in the United States.
Facebook has since been inundated with investigations on data privacy. In a recent private meeting, Sen. Josh Hawley even challenged Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to sell the company's WhatsApp and Instagram properties to prove he is serious about protecting data privacy.
