Facebook Suspends Donald Trump's Data Operations Team For Misusing People's Personal Information (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Facebook said late Friday that it had suspended Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL), along with its political data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica, for violating its policies around data collection and retention. The companies, which ran data operations for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential election campaign, are widely credited with helping Trump more effectively target voters on Facebook than his rival, Hillary Clinton. While the exact nature of their role remains somewhat mysterious, Facebook's disclosure suggests that the company improperly obtained user data that could have given it an unfair advantage in reaching voters. Facebook said it cannot determine whether or how the data in question could have been used in conjunction with election ad campaigns.

In a blog post, Facebook deputy general counsel Paul Grewal laid out how SCL came into possession of the user data. In 2015, Aleksandr Kogan, a psychology professor at the University of Cambridge, created an app named "thisisyourdigitallife" that promised to predict aspects of users' personalities. About 270,000 people downloaded it and logged in through Facebook, giving Kogan access to information about their city of residence, Facebook content they had liked, and information about their friends. Kogan passed the data to SCL and a man named Christopher Wylie from a data harvesting firm known as Eunoia Technologies, in violation of Facebook rules that prevent app developers from giving away or selling users' personal information. Facebook learned of the violation that year and removed his app from Facebook. It also asked Kogan and his associates to certify that they had destroyed the improperly collected data. Everyone said that they did. The suspension is not permanent, a Facebook spokesman said. But the suspended users would need to take unspecified steps to certify that they would comply with Facebook's terms of service.

Comments

What a joke.

[Narcocide]

And they seriously say they don't know how that information could have been misused? Bullshit. If I can figure it out after spending 20 minutes with their stupid API, then they built it into the business plan and it's not possible they aren't fully aware of exactly how it was meant to work.

Re:What a joke.

[Chris Mattern]

It is rather amazing how they can track everything about you down to what you had for breakfast this morning, but when comes to determining any possible negative information about their operations, why, they just have no idea.

Re:What a joke.

[SharpFang]

From bulk of available data, completely new, formerly unavailable data can be extracted. Correlations, statistics, trends - stuff "hidden in plain sight". Use geolocation and racial background and you can reliably predict credit capacity. Analyze shopping patterns and you can find hobbies. Finding political preferences, in particular "hesitant, open to suggestion" is definitely possible following history of likes on various articles, and sites frequented.

Of course the excuse of "misusing" here is total bullshit. Facebook constantly misuses personal information. Their app listens in while your phone is in sleep mode, to fine tune their ad suggestions,

The only "misuse" here was "regular use, but helping Trump".

pure political bs

[harvey the nerd]

Perhaps NSA needs to suspend Facebook operations for a few days. Ya know, aiding and abetting known terrorists and Maoist communists, to probably a number of financial frauds, starting with the founder...

The DC kleptocrats, from DNC-Hill to Sen. Cruz(R) had much more intrusive data operations.

Blame allocation

[bugs2squash]

I would attach more blame to Facebook for allowing people to pull a stunt like this

Re:Blame allocation

[AlanObject]

I would attach more blame to Facebook for allowing people to pull a stunt like this

If you are referring to the elevation of Donald Trump we should attach all blame where it belongs: on the idiots that voted for him.

Whatever stunts were pulled with social media by these guys and the Russians, the essential facts about Donald Trump and what an incredible dishonest, morally cretinous fraud he is were out there for anyone with the slightest inclination to do so could find. They elected this scumbag all pumped up with inane slogans. To this day too many of them defend him regardless of the constant stream of scandals and lies any one of which would have had them calling for the blood of any Democratic president.

On this scale of things Facebook is an innocent bystander.

Re:Blame allocation

[iamhassi]

Maybe they voted for Trump because he was the better of the two options? I mean, US seems to be doing good from where I'm sitting, at least better than it was before the election. What I wonder is why are there still people that refuse to accept Trump is actually doing a good job?

Re:Blame allocation

[GrimSavant]

How far away are you sitting?

Because you seemed to have missed the unending stream of scandals that are getting pretty hard to keep track of at this point both due to their depth and number. I guess if you don't want a fully functioning US Federal government for whatever reason it looks pretty good, but there big gaping holes in multiple key federal agencies functions, and those holes have only been growing bigger this week. Neither the political appointee level nor the career civil servant level seem particularly healthy. The diplomatic situation is utterly abysmal, and makes the Bush years look good in comparison. I guess the economy seems to be doing well, but that only works until it doesn't.

Will the Trump supporters only realize that there's something wrong with him knocking down the pillars and the walls after the ceiling falls down on our head? Because it will be too late then.

Re:Blame allocation

[BlueStrat]

Line ticket democrats will never, ever admit that a Republican is doing a good job. They will admit grudgingly to Republicans that might have done a good job in the past so long as there is a greater Republican evil in the present.

The people nor the country matter.
It's all about that Blue Tribe.

What's happening today including foreign collusion by political parties, corruption, and the bitter division among people, was foretold with shocking accuracy and precision over 200 years ago.

A portion of a quote on the subject of the dangers of political parties:

"...It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another. ..." -- George Washington

I don't think Washington could have written more of a spot-on description of the current state of the US body-politic, unless it had a line at the bottom; "sent from my damned iPhone"!

Strat

Re:Blame allocation

[AmiMoJo]

Are you kidding? Trump is running out of staff to fire and just started a damaging trade war. He failed to improve healthcare, backed out of Paris, made the office of POTUS a global laughing stock...

Is there anything positive he has actually done? H1B reform perhaps. He was a useful idiot for Kim. Not much of an achievement.

Re:Blame allocation

[AmiMoJo]

1. Supreme Court Judge Gorsuch
2. 59 missiles dropped in Syria
3. He took us out of TPP
4. Illegal immigration is now down 70%( the lowest in 17 years)
7. Arranged from 7% to 24% Tariff on lumber from Canada
8. Bids for border wall are well underway
9. Pulled out of the lopsided Paris accord
10. Keystone pipeline approved
11. NATO allies boost spending by 4.3%
12. Allowing VA to terminate bad employees
13. Allowing private healthcare choices for veterans
18. $89 Billion saved in regulation rollbacks
19. Rollback of A Regulation to boost coal mining
20. MOAB for ISIS
21. Travel ban reinstated
22. Executive order for religious freedom
24. $600 million cut from UN peacekeeping budget
29. Created a commission on voter fraud
31. Giving power to states to drug test unemployment recipients
36. Reversed Dodd-Frank
39. End of DAPA program
43. Cutting regulations - 2 for every one created
45. Review of all trade agreements to make sure they are America first
55. Signed An Executive Order To Promote Energy Independence and Economic Growth
56. Has already accomplished more to stop government interference into people's lives than any President in the history of America
58. Has given head executive of each branches 6 month time frame, dated March 15, 2017, to trim the fat, restructure and improve
60. Repealed the abusive EPA WOTUS regs imposed by Obama.

These are all bad things he did.

5. Consumer confidence highest since 2000 at index 125.6
6. Mortgage applications for new homes rise to a seven year high
15. Median household income at a 7 year high
16. The Stock Market is at the highest ever in its history
23. Jump started NASA
27. Signed 41 bills to date
41. Promoted businesses to create American Jobs
47. Highest manufacturing surge in 3 years
52. Dept of Treasury reports a $182 billion surplus for April 2017 (2nd largest in history)
53. Negotiated the release of 6 US humanitarian workers held captive in Egypt
54. Gas prices lowest in more than 12 years

These would have happened anyway.

Re:Blame allocation

[penandpaper]

How is Judge Gorsuch bad? Everything that I have seen and read about Gorsuch has shown a well tempered, honorable, intelligent, and principled man.

If you think he was soooo bad you have to explain why he was appointed to the Circuit court of appeals unanimously by the same people that voted against his Supreme court nomination.

You may not like Trump or what Trump does but Gorsuch is a good judge by every measure.

Re:"Nobody can misuse our data but us!"

[iamhassi]

They're only mad that their proprietary data got out, not that it was being "misused." That's the power of marketing, baby!

Exactly. Can't have other people selling personal data, only Google and Facebook are allowed to do that.

There's plenty of blame to go around

[rsilvergun]

All Hilary had to do was take him seriously and campaign properly (or at all) in the swing states. Instead she wasted time in states like Az where she didn't have a prayer in hell of winning. She thought she was gonna get some sorta Reaganesque style super victory. Funny thing is there were two things that I kept hearing people say they didn't like about her: Cold & Arrogant. And boy, did she prove that right.

Worst thing is the right wing corporate Dems haven't learned a damn thing and they're probably gonna run Hilary 2.0 (Kamala Harris). What they hell is the bloody point of voting for a Democrat who's gonna run things like a Republican?

Re: There's plenty of blame to go around

[c6gunner]

All Hilary had to do was take him seriously and campaign properly (or at all) in the swing states.

Hillary's campaign had and spent about double the money that Trump did on his campaign. Seems they were pretty serious. The thing is ... no matter how much money you spend buying makeup for a pig, it's still going to be a pig.

Re:You're making it too complex

[penandpaper]

Was he lying? It seems to me that he is actually trying to fulfill those promises. You may disagree on what he is doing and disagree on whether his policy will help but I honestly do not believe he lied about trying to help those people. He has been keeping is campaign promises.

How has he lied to them?