SAN FRANCISCO (Diya TV) — Newly released court documents have revealed that Meta Platforms, led by Mark Zuckerberg, allegedly engaged in surveillance on users of Snapchat, YouTube, and Amazon. The revelations came to light as part of a class action lawsuit between consumers and Meta, shedding light on the company’s secretive initiative known as “Project Ghostbusters,” aimed at decrypting network traffic and gaining insights into user behavior.
Launched in 2016, Project Ghostbusters was Meta’s attempt to intercept and decrypt encrypted network traffic between users of Snapchat and its servers. The project later expanded to include users of YouTube and Amazon. Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, reportedly emphasized the importance of understanding user analytics on Snapchat despite its encrypted traffic, suggesting the need for alternative methods to gather data.
To circumvent encryption, Meta engineers proposed using Onavo, a VPN-like service acquired by Facebook in 2013. This service allowed Meta to intercept traffic for specific subdomains, enabling the analysis of in-app usage that would otherwise be encrypted. However, not all Facebook employees were supportive of Project Ghostbusters, with some expressing concerns about its ethical implications.
The lawsuit, filed in 2020, alleges that Meta deceived users about its data collection practices and exploited the data obtained to identify competitors and undermine them unfairly. The revelations have sparked discussions about privacy issues and the ethical boundaries of data collection practices employed by tech giants like Meta.
