Facebook has been in the eye of the storm of late. The company has gone public on last May and its stock has been taking a nose-dive since then. The social networking giant has been criticized continually from multiple quarters for the compromises it has made to excel monetarily. Now, a new report from FTC suggests another such shady scheme by the social network.
The scheme is called ‘Verified Apps’ and it was launched by Facebook in 2009. However, the scheme worked for only six months after which Facebook abrogated it. Under this scheme, the social network charged its app developers to pay up an additional $375 to receive a Verified App badge and a green check mark. The charges were $175 if you were a student or belonged to a non-profit organization.
While there’s nothing wrong with such a scheme per se, FTC has now raised concerns about that. The regulatory body has hinted that although Facebook minted all this cash from the developers, it didn’t carry out any additional checks into the apps. Rather, it simply provided the Verified App badge to everyone who paid up.
According to FTC’s report on this, “In many instances Facebook has permitted a Platform Application to display its Verified Apps badge when its review of the application’s security has not exceeded its review of other Platform Applications.”
What rather affirms these suspicions is that Facebook was quick to reach a settlement with FTC as soon as this report came out. And one of the terms of settlement was pretty surprising. It says, Facebook will be audited every 20 years under the settlement.
Source: FTC
Courtesy: Fast company
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