Facebook Defends API Integration Following Criticism By The New York Times

• Facebook replied to an editorial article published by The New York Times that criticized the social media company’s device-integrated APIs.
• The social media company believes device-integrated APIs are a result of common interest between platforms like Android or iOS and third-party developers.
• While other companies are allowed to create Facebook-integration on their devices and platform, the social media company mentioned they work only with reliable household names like Apple, Google, Amazon among many others.

The New York Times discussed how Facebook and its device-integration could mean the social media company’s user data is handed out to all third-party partner developers. With Facebook focusing on device-integration with companies like Apple, Amazon, Google and many others, the news publishing house claimed personal user information on the social media platform was being put at risk.

Facebook made a statement responding to the claims by The New York Times, mentioning how the third-party developers the company has worked with was built out of common interest. With a lack of large-scale app stores like we have access to right now like Apple’s App Store or the Google Play Store, hardware manufacturers relied on partnerships with YouTube, Facebook and others to integrate the services to their phones.

Image Courtesy of Time In

Roughly sixty companies have partnered with the social media platform for integration with their hardware and to offer the social network on hardware like tablets, phones and smart devices. With mobile app stores being hugely popular, reliance on third-party APIs has gone down with Facebook and related apps from the company being available for download to almost every mobile user out there. The social media company has already ended 22 third-party API partnerships and are providing partners alternative means of access to the social platform.

Facebook clarified that they have always worked closely with the manufacturers to integrate the platform’s features tightly and to protect the privacy of its users. The devices that use third-party integration with Facebook are not allowed to access user data without explicit permission from the individual users themselves. Personal information or access to photos is accessible by the third-party developers only when the users agree to share the data in the integrated applications or services.