This headline has been modified from the original, and is a mischaracterization of what's happening here. Facebook isn't collecting this data, rather the authors of many popular apps are sending these statistics to Facebook's analytics tool to better target with ads. The article explains Facebook doesn't want these companies sending users' personal data to them without their knowledge.
They are not completely absolved of blame because they should be monitoring for personal data (somehow), but the app developers should be to blame more using this data without users' knowledge.
Now if Facebook were to use this data for their own purposes, we'd have (another) real scandal on our hands.
They are not completely absolved of blame because they should be monitoring for personal data (somehow), but the app developers should be to blame more using this data without users' knowledge.
Now if Facebook were to use this data for their own purposes, we'd have (another) real scandal on our hands.