Court documents have revealed that in 2012 Facebook Inc. started cutting off access for developers to its user data, only it’s alleged that the company sold this as a way to strengthen privacy when it was in fact a move to stifle competition.

According to those documents, obtained by Reuters Wednesday, Facebook called this technological canard the “Switcharoo Plan.” This piece of information was part of 7,000 leaked documents supplied by an app that was banished from Facebook called “Six4Three.”

Those documents consist of about 4,000 internal emails and other communications dating from 2011 to 2015. It’s reported there are also 1,200 pages that are marked as “highly confidential.” The lawsuit was originally filed in 2015.

Facebook has responded to the leaked documents, saying they “have been taken out of context by someone with an agenda against Facebook,” and that they “have been distributed publicly with a total disregard for U.S. law.”

The company is already being investigated in the U.S. and the EU for antitrust violations, and on Wednesday it was revealed that the state of California is suing Facebook for its alleged monopolistic practices and how it treats user data.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said Facebook had continually ignored requests for documents over an 18-month period, although Facebook has denied it. “To date we have provided thousands of pages of written responses and hundreds of thousands of documents,” Facebook said in a statement.

It’s unusual to disclose such a probe, said Becerra “unless there’s a legal action that makes it public. This is one of those times. If Facebook had complied with our legitimate investigative requests, we would not be making these announcements today, but our work must move forward.”

Photo: Mike Fleming/Flickr