Why Facebook just suspended another data analytics firm

Facebook said Friday it suspended a longtime partner that had used data from Facebook and other social networks to assist governments -- including Russia, Turkey, and the U.S. -- in monitoring public sentiment, a more cautious approach in the wake of a data privacy scandal. Facebook said it had found no evidence of wrongdoing by the Boston-based company, Crimson Hexagon, but it was curtailing the company's access to its data while it investigated the matter. The preemptive move represents a shift for Facebook in the wake of the controversy over political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, which Facebook said inappropriately collected the private profiles of more than 80 million Facebook users. The social network is under investigation from three different federal agencies over its work with Cambridge Analytica and, since the crisis erupted, has suspended more than 200 apps which had access to Facebook data. Crimson Hexagon, which primarily used public, aggregated data from people who made their profiles available for anyone to see, is the largest of this new wave of suspensions.