Facebook is taking steps to ban personality quiz apps from its platform, more than a year after the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
On Thursday, the social networking giant updated its to say that apps with 鈥渕inimal utility,鈥� such as personality quizzes, will no longer be allowed. The update also states that apps can no longer ask for user data that doesn鈥檛 鈥渆nrich the in-app or user experience.鈥�
The announcement comes the same day Canada鈥檚 federal privacy watchdog announced plans to take Facebook to court following an investigation into the platform鈥檚 privacy practices following the Cambridge Analytica scandal last spring.
The investigation was prompted by reports that a third-party app called 鈥淭his is Your Digital Life鈥� (TYDL), which encouraged users to complete a personality quiz, collected personal information from users and their network of Facebook friends.
The data was later used by Cambridge Analytica, which has been accused of being involved with U.S. political campaigns.
More than 620,000 Canadians had their data improperly shared in the scandal, which affected 87 million users worldwide.
A Facebook spokesperson told CTVNews.ca the updates to the social network鈥檚 platform policies are not related to the federal privacy commissioner鈥檚 investigation.
The ban on personality quizzes is part of a larger effort to limit what user information developers have access to in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
In March 2018, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said the platform would automatically remove developers' access to user data if the app hadn鈥檛 been used in the previous three months. The social network also reduced the data required to sign in to a third-party app to a user name, profile picture and email address.
