Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer and founder of Facebook Inc. attends the Viva Tech start-up and technology gathering at Parc des Expositions Porte de Versailles on May 24, 2018 in Paris, France.

Facebook on Wednesday evening published a blog post explaining why it allowed Spotify, Netflix and the Royal Bank of Canada to read, write and delete private user messages, as was reported by the New York Times on Tuesday.

In its blog, Facebook said it gave these companies the ability to read, write and delete access to private messages so that users could communicate with one another using those third-party services.

"No third party was reading your private messages, or writing messages to your friends without your permission," the Facebook blog said. "Many news stories imply we were shipping over private messages to partners, which is not correct."

The blog comes after Facebook's stock price fell by more than 7 percent on Wednesday, one of the worst days for the stock in 2018.

Throughout the year, Facebook has been mired by a number of scandals related to its treatment of users' privacy and the handling of their data. Facebook shares are down more than 25 percent so far this year and down nearly 40 percent since a peak in July.