Behind the news. Who’s afraid of Huawei?

Motu was merrily humming Jo wada kiya woh nibhana padega... when Chotu walked in to the room.

“Hello Motu! What a song! “If a promise is made, you must keep it”.

Oh why? Did he break a promise?

Well, are you sure, Motubhai? Because Facebook has clarified that it was not a data-sharing partnership akin to the kind it had with the now-controversial firm Cambridge Analytica.

Reports say that FB has said it has been sharing data with four Chinese device makers to help them recreate Facebook-like experiences on their phones. And mind, these are no small fries.

Wah! you’re on the dot with the news, Motu. Yes, the hullabaloo is over the way Facebook shares data with Huawei, which a House Intelligence Committee panel termed a national security threat (along with ZTE) in 2012. The Trump administration has upped the ante with some more rhetoric against Huawei for allegedly spying for the Chinese government through the devices it sells.

Well, hold your horses. To be fair to Huawei, which is the world’s third largest mobile manufacturer, no concrete evidence has been placed on the table yet, to prove the spying theory. But of course, governments always know more than what lesser mortals like us do. Still, I would like to remind you Motu that the UK, a close ally of the US in almost all its sanctions and wars, has whole-heartedly welcomed Huawei to its soil.

Ah, I guess you were offline the day the news was reported. Just a few days after the latest Valentines Day, British PM Theresa May met the lady heading Huawei — Sun Yafang — in Beijing. Soon, Huawei said it would invest more than $4 billion over the next five years in the UK. Which means, the US needs to really go beyond conspiracy theories to prove the alleged Huawei ‘back-door’ to Beijing.

Yes and no. Sharing user data with a device maker is not a big deal. It is basic knowledge that without such data-exchange, tech companies won’t be able to understand each other, especially what their users want improved in terms of, say, access to content, user interface changes, and similar stuff. Take Uber, it needs to know your location information (using the GPS in your device, among many other things) and Uber relies on a partnership with your operating system, the map app in your phone and, of course, the device maker.

Exactly my point, Motuji. I’m not here to jump the gun and cry foul on the latest expose on Facebook. To be fair, the kind of data-sharing partnerships that FB has with Huawei came up for a reason. In the initial days, to get Facebook “experience” on gadgets that didn’t have app stores, Facebook had allowed gadget-makers like Apple or, yes, Huawei to build Facebook apps. Yes, this meant there was some agreement that the device-makers run these projects, which Facebook okayed later.

Yes, of course. Now, with advancements in technology and access, FB may not need such contracts. But many people still use those old devices and Facebook is saying it is ending most such tie-ups. You must understand that if FB had ignored such a large player like Huawei, it would have had to sacrifice a lot in terms of reach. So, I think it is justified in saying the data-sharing pact was a normal thing and it has reviewed it and was in the process of ending it.

Not to me, Motubhai. You may safely surf FB on your Huawei phone or go back to Rafi saheb ’s numbers. To be fair, Huawei says it has never collected or stored FB user data. A privacy scandal is a very remote possibility as things stand now in this case. But in the murky world of data-sharing, don’t rule out anything.