French public broadcaster drops plan to use Israeli firm for political program: Report

France Televisions scrapped plans to use an Israeli company to develop an interactive tool for a political program after internal concerns were raised over the handling of viewers’ personal data, French investigative outlet Mediapart reported Monday.

The public broadcaster had reportedly planned to work with Terrific, an Israeli company specializing in e-commerce, on an interactive platform called Agora for the relaunch of France 2’s political program, L’heure de verite (The Hour of Truth), scheduled for Oct. 8.

The platform was intended to allow viewers to send questions to presidential candidates and participate in polls in real time, according to the report.

Mediapart reported that the project could have involved the collection of data on the political preferences of users of France Televisions’ Franceinfo website.

The outlet also reported that Terrific CEO Israel Grintz co-founded a company in 2018 that markets political campaign targeting tools.

France Televisions ultimately abandoned the project and assigned the work to its own technical teams, according to Mediapart.

The broadcaster told Mediapart that Terrific had proposed a public-interaction system for television programs, including political programs, but that tests conducted by its editorial and technical teams had not been conclusive.

Mediapart also reported concerns over another Terrific-developed advertising tool, Shoppable, used on the France.tv platform.

The tool was removed from the platform on Sept. 3 after users reported that their antivirus software had detected risks related to phishing and personal data.

France Televisions’ technical teams had found the tool was collecting data that could contribute to creating user profiles, including a unique identifier, URLs of pages visited and certain content metadata.