Facebook Hires Firm To Conduct Forensic Audit of Cambridge Analytica Data (cbsnews.com)

After it was revealed that political data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica, harvested personal data from more than 50 million Facebook users, the social media company has been scrutinized for not better protecting its users. Today, CBS News reports that Facebook has recently hired Stroz Friedberg, a digital forensics firm, to conduct an audit of Cambridge Analytica. According to a press release issued by Facebook on Monday, Cambridge Analytica has agreed to "comply and afford the firm complete access to their servers and systems." From the report: The social network said it asked Christopher Wylie and University of Cambridge professor Aleksandr Kogan to submit to an audit. Facebook says Kogan has verbally agreed to participate, but Wylie has declined. Wylie is a former employee of Cambridge Analytica who described the company's use of illicit data in interviews late last week. Cambridge Analytica, Kogan and Wylie were banned from Facebook on Friday. Cambridge Analytica did not immediately confirm that it had agreed to comply with the audit. The firm has denied the allegations that it improperly collected and used the data. A spokeswoman for Stroz Friedberg declined to comment on the firm's involvement with an audit.

"We are moving aggressively to determine the accuracy of these claims," Facebook officials said in a statement. "We remain committed to vigorously enforcing our policies to protect people's information. We also want to be clear that today when developers create apps that ask for certain information from people, we conduct a robust review to identify potential policy violations and to assess whether the app has a legitimate use for the data. We actually reject a significant number of apps through this process. This is part of a comprehensive internal and external review that we are conducting to determine the accuracy of the claims that the Facebook data in question still exists. If this data still exists, it would be a grave violation of Facebook's policies and an unacceptable violation of trust and the commitments these groups made."

Comments

Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Train0987]

"The Data Crunching Prowess of Barack Obama" - https://politics.slashdot.org/...

Carol Davidsen, former director of integration and media analytics for Obama for America:
"“They [Facebook] came to office in the days following election recruiting & were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side,” Davidsen tweeted." https://ijr.com/2018/03/107708...

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Train0987]

The Obama campaign invented the deep-dive into Facebook data for their 2008 and 2012 campaigns. They not only openly bragged about doing what CA did and far more, but somehow the media fawned all over him for it. Odd, that:

https://www.cnn.com/2012/11/07...

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

http://swampland.time.com/2012...

https://www.technologyreview.c...

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[GrumpySteen]

Slightly different situation. Facebook sold data to the Obama campaign. Cambridge Analytica harvested data that they didn't pay Facebook for. Facebook wants their cut.

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[rickb928]

Why would you describe this as 'odd'? Nothing 'odd' about it. Friends help each other.

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, you're a liar. Obama used readily available public data and analytics databases. Cambridge used an essentially fake app that was deployed to collect private data that was not otherwise publicly available, under the pretense of research. Over 99% of the people that hit 'no' to the question of whether or not they would like their data shared also had their data compromised, anyway. Then that data was given to the campaign. Lies all the way down. Probably not illegal, but to characterize blatant theft of personal data through outright lying to consumers to be akin to data mining public information is more than disingenuous, it reeks of GOP operatives attempting to downplay this rather shifty incident. BTW, the principals in Cambridge are foreign nationals, who are explicitly and outright barred, in no uncertain terms, from participating in American elections. And they've done it at least twice (starting with Macro Rubio.) You clearly have not read in-depth about this at all and are only interested (per usual) in regurgitating the GOP talking points, of which you have no context or meaning.

My main beef with all this is not what Cambridge did but on Facebook's utter lack of accountability or process to raise red flags while originally allowing access to this information. They're very careful to use terms like 'policies' without talking about why this didn't go across the desk of a lawyer or two, or a privacy advocate, and raise a few red flags along the way. Their sheepish request to the effect "Will you please, pretty please, delete this data we gave you?" leads me to believe there was no proper terms of service, NDA or privacy agreement in place before they let some dude collect all that data and do whatever he wanted with it.

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Woldscum]

https://ijr.com/2018/03/107708...

"A former Obama campaign official is claiming that Facebook knowingly allowed them to mine massive amounts of Facebook data — more than they would’ve allowed someone else to do — because they were supportive of the campaign.
  In a Sunday tweet thread, Carol Davidsen, former director of integration and media analytics for Obama for America, said the 2012 campaign led Facebook to “suck out the whole social graph” and target potential voters. They would then use that data to do things like append their email lists."

“They came to office in the days following election recruiting & were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side,” Davidsen tweeted."

"Davidsen began the tweet thread with a link to a Time article outlining the Obama campaign's Facebook targeting campaign, which she said was codenamed “Project Taargus”

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[K. S. Kyosuke]

"It's just being smart." -- Trump

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like that data service was a campaign contribution. Maybe those should be disclosed, with the tax information on all runners? ;) Now, it's funny how Facebook tries to sideline any issues related of their actual data business to the problems with individual apps. Maybe one of their customers could sometimes enlighten us what they can buy from Facebook.

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[AmiMoJo]

How predictable that the first part would be a copy/paste what-about-ism.

If you have evidence that Obama's campaign did something wrong, post it. Tell the ICO, maybe they will look for those documents when they raid Cambridge tomorrow.

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Anonymous Coward]

But he did it for the right reasons which was to inform the public. Trump used this information to order people to vote for him, and they did. Obama informed. Trump ordered.

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Woldscum]

https://ijr.com/2018/03/107708...

Ex-Obama Campaign Director Drops Bombshell Claim on Facebook: 'They Were on Our Side'

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Anonymous Coward]

It's hilarious that the left had to invent the term "whataboutism" to counter the deluge of examples on their side that are 10x worse than whatever it is they are accusing conservatives of doing today.

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Xarius]

Jeez there's a lot of Whataboutism on every single article on here these days. Is it new? Or am I just noticing it more?

@Parent: How about you, instead, tell us what you actually think about the mass harvesting, potential abuse, and resale of people's personal information - how does it make you feel? Do you think it's a problem? If so, do you think there are any solutions?

Me? It make me feel very uncomfortable, and I think we need legal mechanisms in place to take control over our data from these parties - even if we misguidedly gave some control away in the past, usually by having our trust betrayed or being bamboozled by small-print and legal linguistics.

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[DASH-8HYPHEN-8]

Backing up your post with link and quotes:

So the firm [Cambridge Analytica] harvested private information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their permission, according to former Cambridge employees, associates and documents, making it one of the largest data leaks in the social network’s history.

In the United States, Mr. Mercer’s daughter, Rebekah, a board member, Mr. Bannon and Mr. Nix received warnings from their lawyer that it was illegal to employ foreigners in political campaigns, according to company documents and former employees.

documents viewed by The Times indicate that the firm’s British affiliate claims to have worked in Russia and Ukraine. And the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, disclosed in October that Mr. Nix had reached out to him during the campaign in hopes of obtaining private emails belonging to Mr. Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Re: Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Anonymous Coward]

A: We're punishing you

B: That seems like a double standard, here's why.

A: whataboutism!

Re: Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Anonymous Coward]

Whataboutism is when unrelated misdeeds are used to deflect criticism. Facebook's double standards are not unrelated. Whataboutism does not cover the pointing out of hypocrisy.

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[AHuxley]

When one side of US politics enjoys working deep in social media its all cyber trendy and all very legal.

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Anonymous Coward]

It's hilarious that the left had to invent the term "whataboutism"

It's merely a new label for the fallacy, a subspecies of argumentum ad hominem, traditionally known as the tu quoque fallacy. It remains a fallacy no matter who calls it or by what name they call it. The putative wrongdoing of a speaker is no answer to that speaker's accusations of wrongdoing. This is not, or should not be, a left vs right issue.

If you are not capable of mounting an argument (or defence) any more substantial than "no you are!" perhaps arguing (or defending) isn't your forte?

... examples on their side that are 10x worse

Any particular wrong doing by other parties is a separate question. Whatever wrongs the Obama campaign may have committed, especially if they encompass criminality, should certainly be pursued in their own right. However, not only is a claim that Obama's campaign was just as bad, a fortiori that was "10x worse," hopelessly irrelevant as an answer to the accusations now being levelled against Cambridge Analytica --nothing in the articles presented above to bolster this fallacy even approaches the level of malfeasance suggested by the recent news that is coming out about CA's activities.

Re: Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Anonymous Coward]

Whataboutism is when unrelated misdeeds are used to deflect criticism. ... Whataboutism does not cover the pointing out of hypocrisy.

That sounds nice and fine, but sadly it's 100% wrong.

It is precisely the fallacy of "pointing out ... hypocrisy" to deflect criticism, that the objection of "Appeal to Hypocrisy" (aka. 'whataboutism,' 'to quoque') addresses.

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[GrimSavant]

Right wing authoritarianism is on the rise nowadays, and it seems to have taken root pretty strongly in the internets, or at the very least it has taken root very loudly. Principles don't really matter for that, what matters is particular people, and whether it's my guy doing something or if it is your guy. Tu quoque is what passes for a standard rhetorical technique.

So for this subject, the underlying issue of whether or not Facebook hoovering up tons of personal data with poor controls on how that data is handled with political actors or even hostile criminal or foreign entities is immaterial to the RWA, much less the particular details of each case. What matters is whether Obama did it or Trump did it, or choose your own dichotomy if you are not in the US.

It really looks like it is time for the Wild West days of social media to come to an end, and the Europeans at the very least seem to have come that conclusion already. I'm not really expecting the Republicans in control of the US government currently to do much about it until the next time it bites them in the ass, though. Shouting "but Obama!" doesn't seem to be very motivated by the concept that there's a more general underlying problem, but rather as an excuse.

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama isn't an illiberal piece of shit.

No, he's a liberal piece of shit. (You begged for that.)

Re: Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Uberbah]

That sounds nice and fine, but sadly it's 100% wrong.

100% projection. The word Whataboutery itself is propaganda, used by hypocrites to deflect from their hypocrisy. Like all the whining, bitching and moaning about Trump's supposed collusion with foreign intelligence agents, when the Hillary campaign not only did that in fact, but they paid for it.

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Uberbah]

It's merely a new label for the fallacy, a subspecies of argumentum ad hominem, traditionally known as the tu quoque fallacy. It remains a fallacy no matter who calls it or by what name they call it.

You're deflecting and hand waiving.

The putative wrongdoing of a speaker is no answer to that speaker's accusations of wrongdoing.

It is when the speaker is completely and utterly full of shit. And you'd be doing the same damn thing if it was a speaker you disagreed with - hypocrite.

Any particular wrong doing by other parties is a separate question

But it's going to be a part of the same conversation, a fact you're just going to have to deal with.

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Uberbah]

Jeez there's a lot of Whataboutism

Not when it's the same subject, and you're pointing out double standards and hypocrisy. As is usually the case, the people breaking out the "W" word are the real tools in the conversation.

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Anonymous Coward]

You're deflecting and hand waiving.

Not at all. I'm directly and substantively addressing the falsehood "that the left had to invent the term "whataboutism," which incidentally was coined in the 1970s in response the to habit of the Soviet propaganda machine over past decades to respond to any accusation of human rights violations by pointing, for example, to the lack of civil rights for black Americans.

It is when the speaker is completely and utterly full of shit.

No. It's simply logically avoidable that [t]he putative wrongdoing of a speaker is no answer to that speaker's accusations of wrongdoing. Sorry.

And you'd be doing the same damn thing if it was a speaker you disagreed with - hypocrite.

Objection: not only is that itself an argument tu quoque, it's one in the weakest form: for you can't show me to have done so, but found it on some unsupported supposition that in your untethered imagination I would. Very weak indeed.

But it's going to be a part of the same conversation, a fact you're just going to have to deal with.

It is best dealt with by highlighting how fallacious it is within that conversation, as was done by another poster above. The conversation I'm in is about informal fallacies.

Re: Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Anonymous Coward]

100% projection.

If that be a confession, it might explain your post above.

The word Whataboutery itself is propaganda, used by hypocrites to deflect from their hypocrisy.

You are growing weaker by the comment. No 'whataboutery' is simply old wine in new bottles, a logical fallacy remains fallacious even after it no longer serves your particular political purposes.

While an observation of hypocrisy may at times be apposite, it cannot be an answer to an accusation of wrong-doing. As I noted above, if your argument cannot rise above the Kindergarten technique of "no you are!" and actually touch upon the substantive perhaps you better not embarrass yourself?

Like all the whining, bitching and moaning about Trump's supposed collusion with foreign intelligence agents, when the Hillary campaign not only did that in fact, but they paid for it.

The accusations of collusion which have been levelled at President Trump need to be substantiated with compelling evidence to that point (proof of the intervention of Russia in the US election does not suffice to evidence actual collusion). That is so in a universe in which another campaign paid foreign intelligence agents, that remains so in a universe where another campaign did not pay foreign intelligence agents. The question of the other campaign paying foreign intelligence agents is thus demonstrably irrelevant to the question of establishing collusion between Mr Trump's campaign and Russian intelligence, if indeed any such collusion took place.

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[AmiMoJo]

The important part that Trump's favourite media outlet left out is that she says they didn't break the rules. Cambridge appear to have broken at least UK law, possibly US law.

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Anonymous Coward]

Similar happened in France with Marcon. The millions that the banks were willing to lend were invested in LMP driven campaign. The difference is not the method but who they supported. The claims of moral supremacy are fake as they can only be. Moral is here used to silence critics, nothing else.

Re: Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[mapkinase]

whataboutism is a bullshit argument. Always has been, always will be.

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeez there's a lot of Whataboutism on every single article on here these days. Is it new? Or am I just noticing it more?

@Parent: How about you, instead, tell us what you actually think about the mass harvesting, potential abuse, and resale of people's personal information - how does it make you feel? Do you think it's a problem? If so, do you think there are any solutions?

Me? It make me feel very uncomfortable, and I think we need legal mechanisms in place to take control over our data from these parties - even if we misguidedly gave some control away in the past, usually by having our trust betrayed or being bamboozled by small-print and legal linguistics.

Or you could try not being a fucking hypocrite for once. Yes, I know, your patron saint Alinsky says you should make the enemy live up to his own standards. That still doesn't mean your leftist bleating has any argumentative merit.

Facebook does all that shit you are whining about, and nobody could use their data to do the same if they didn't gather it, bitch at them about it.

Liberals, if they didn't have double standards, they wouldn't have any standards at all.

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[sabbede]

Wait, "right wing authoritarianism is on the rise", so government authority has to be expanded over social media? Which you don't expect Republicans to do??

Do I need to point out how absurdly self-contradictory that is? Because I will.

You said that the Right is both authoritarian, which you imply is bad, and not authoritarian enough, which you're also saying is bad. A double contradiction!

That aside, do you know what Authoritarianism is?

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[sabbede]

Seems to me that Facebook approved a researcher's harvesting of massive amounts of data through their API (the core of their business model), and said data was then resold.

That's how Facebook works, but now that it helped elect someone they didn't like it's a problem?

To my knowledge, it is not illegal for a campaign to hire foreign-based consultants.

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[cascadingstylesheet]

"The Data Crunching Prowess of Barack Obama" - https://politics.slashdot.org/...

Carol Davidsen, former director of integration and media analytics for Obama for America: "“They [Facebook] came to office in the days following election recruiting & were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side,” Davidsen tweeted." https://ijr.com/2018/03/107708...

Indeed. All things are good when done by Democrats, and all things are evil when done by Republicans.

If you disagree, you are guilty of whataboutism. And also probably racism, somehow. I'll figure out how later.

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[cascadingstylesheet]

Me? It make me feel very uncomfortable, and I think we need legal mechanisms in place to take control over our data from these parties - even if we misguidedly gave some control away in the past, usually by having our trust betrayed or being bamboozled by small-print and legal linguistics.

"misguidedly gave some control away in the past"?

That's a nice rewriting of "actually bragged about our preferred politician's supposed tech savviness in doing this exact same thing."

Re: Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Anonymous Coward]

Your demonstrated ignorance makes such activities no less illegal.

  11 CFR 110.20.i

Hey, what's that? An actual legal citation on /.? Will wonders ever cease?

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Anonymous Coward]

He is the authority on it.

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's an executive who says drug dealers should be put to death, and guns should be taken away from certain people without due process. Or an executive who pressures the justice department over who or who not to investigate. Or a majority party shoving unpopular legislation through at breakneck pace while not even allowing their own members to read it first, let alone the opposition.

And the larger point is that the GOP, and by extension much (but not all) of their support, are unwilling to compromise; it's their way or else nothing. To the point they've managed a couple of government shutdowns while being in full control of 2 of the three branches of government, that adds nicely to the shutdowns they caused when they didn't have control. And they arguably control the third branch since they decided to put party over country when it came to Obama's compromise SC nominee.

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Anonymous Coward]

Total fail. Nothing in there is about accessing private information on Facebook users. Working with Facebook isn't the issue. Taking private information without informing the Facebook user is. I don't see anything close to that in any of your links. And why the stupid dig on the media?

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Dread_ed]

Blah blah blah...

In some cases, an appeal to a more fundamental principle is justified and which invalidates your your highfalutin "your argument is invalid" bullshit, namely this:

*What is good for the goose is good for the gander.*

Tu quoque is a misapplied method of argumentation when one person's wrongdoing is compared to another's similar wrongdoing. I posit that if both parties are doing exactly the same thing, and only one party is being held up for ridicule and discipline, this is not whataboutism or tu quoque. There is a deeper issue at work than some semantics and rules of rhetoric.

*To whit: selective enforcement;*

an intolerable injustice in a society based on the rule of law. That you would call it whatboutism is exact proof of the same. Your behavior is indistinguishable from someone who has completely ingested injustice in their being, and so deeply so that when presented with prima facie evidence of it you can't address or speak to it, choosing instead to use an invalid appeal to authority to avoid the conversation completely.

*You are attempting to steer the conversation toward a conclusion while intentionally avoiding gathering all of the facts.*

So, lets take it a step further and speak to the other, more personal (for you) issue at hand. In the discussion of the issue of misuse of Facebook information, pointing out all parties that engaged in this activity and incidents where this behavior occurred is abso-fucking-lutely funda-fucking-mental to addressing the issue as a whole. The only reason why you or anyone else would cry "whataboutism" as the full scope of the problem is being plumbed and probed is that the issue, for you, is not the misuse of personal information from Facebook at all. You don't actually care about misuse of personal information from Facebook. You just care about how a single incident of misuse affects the perception of a certain individual, group, or party you are opposed to, as evidenced by your inane and insipid attempts to redirect the conversation back to a certain person/group rather than the overarching issue of personal information and Facebook, and certainly not toward a full understanding of every incidence of this type of manipulative behavior.

*Bias, Bias, Bias.*

You are showing your hand you blithering dolt. Rank amateurs do better. Now, if you would like to have a fully fleshed out discussion of the issues of misuse of Facebook's data you could present some of your own examples of not only how this has occurred in other instances, but also how it was spun to the public, their reaction, etc. If you don't want to participate in the fact finding part of this discussion that is fine, but don't you dare presume the authority to shut down valid data points about the subject of Facebook spewing personal data for the manipulation of voters. It is counterproductive to the information space and fact field necessary to make honest, informed, and effective judgement about the issue and how to confront it.

TL;DR: STFU SHILL!!!

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Shotgun]

Mr. Bannon and Mr. Nix received warnings from their lawyer that it was illegal to employ foreigners in political campaigns, according to company documents and former employees.

You can't be serious. You mean like how Hillary's campaign hired that British spy to compose a dossier?

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[GrimSavant]

Right-wing authoritarianism is an academic term, I didn't make it up, and perhaps the mods should look it up before they decide that I am misusing it. It refers to a psychological outlook, and the "right wing" portion of it does not refer to the typical right-wing versus left-wing political spectrum. Stalinism is arguably fueled by RWA, even though communism is the opposite of right-wing from a traditional political standpoint.

I used the term right wing authoritarianism explicitly to differentiate it from an authoritarian regime, which is a related but different thing. But you don't seem to be referring to either, but rather just throwing shade, and not in a particularly informed manner.

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Anonymous Coward]

We got us a melting snowflake over here!

Re: Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Uberbah]

The word Whataboutery itself is propaganda, used by hypocrites to deflect from their hypocrisy.

You are growing weaker by the comment.

More whining and bitching but it doesn't change your hypocrisy. And waiving around tu quoque doesn't change the fact that you are engaging in propaganda when you attack other countries for XYZ but protest that it's just not faaaaair when anyone points out that you not only do XYZ as well, but on an infinitely larger scale.

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Uberbah]

I'm hand waiving, avoiding and equivocating

FTFY

in response the to habit of the Soviet propaganda machine over past decades to respond to any accusation of human rights violations by pointing, for example, to the lack of civil rights for black Americans

Western propaganda about propaganda. The United States only cares about civil rights abroad when it can use it as a weapon against people it doesn't like. And you can fill an encyclopedia set of abuses it's committed at home, much less abroad. That's inconvenient for American Exceptionalists, which is why you try to shut down any such conversation with bleating about "whatabboutery".

So yeah, you try to use human rights as a political football, expect to have that shit thrown right back in your face where it belongs.

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[sabbede]

I'm well aware of the nature and meaning of the term. Which is how I recognize the inapplicability to the American political right, which holds dear an ideology of limited government. Authoritarianism maximizes the authority (hence the name) of government, American Conservatism demands strict limits on government authority and Republicans generally believe the Federal government has already exceeded it's constitutional limits. It is, by definition, impossible for the American Right to be Authoritarian.

While Stalinism is Authoritarian and Totalitarian, ideologically it is anti-nationalist as opposed to hyper-nationalist (a key element of the Fascist variants of Right wing authoritarian-totalitarianism) and economically communist as opposed to the pseudo-capitalism of it's Right wing cousin.

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[GrimSavant]

The American Right contains libertarian elements, but they are no where near as libertarian as they believe they are, much less represent themselves as. Ron Paul was one of the best examples of right-wing libertarianism in America, and he was an also-ran that never went much of anywhere in the Republican party. The authoritarian parts of that coalition have grown in power and really are in the driver's seat with Trump, and they were most strongly represented in the "Religious Right". This may come across as rude, but your insistence that the American Right wing can't be authoritarian comes across as a sort of forced naivete you'd see in an Orwell novel, because your notions of small government conservatism are both not uniformly held on the right nor are they the primary motivation for the dominant political actors in the current power structure on the right, and you haven't really been paying attention if you think they are.

Trumpism isn't really much of a coherent ideology, but if Trump is anything he is pretty strongly authoritarian, and the cult of personality built around him is also pretty authoritarian. In the psychological sense, the central elements of Right Wing Authoritarianism are as follows:

1. Authoritarian submission — a high degree of submissiveness to the authorities who are perceived to be established and legitimate in the society in which one lives.
2. Authoritarian aggression — a general aggressiveness directed against deviants, outgroups and other people that are perceived to be targets according to established authorities.
3. Conventionalism — a high degree of adherence to the traditions and social norms that are perceived to be endorsed by society and its established authorities and a belief that others in one's society should also be required to adhere to these norms.

These seem a much better fit of descriptors for Trump support than traditional small government conservatism. The central and consistently overwhelming anti-immigrant nature of him and his most ardent supporters should be a major tell demonstrating that, as the more pro-business and small government elements of the American right are no where near as hostile towards immigration in general or immigrants in particular. Duterte-like executions for drug dealers is also squarely authoritarian in nature. Authoritarian submission is a particularly interesting one, as that looks like that can turn on a dime with authoritarians when given the right push, as they can be "Blue lives matter" in one moment and deep state conspiracy theorists who want purges of the FBI in the next. The Stalinist purges are even less comforting historical examples of that, where old school Leninists who were in on the ground floor of the communist revolution in Russia were forced to confess as traitorous agents conspiring with the imperialists and the capitalists and executed and exiled to the gulags en masse, and also shows that the same impulses can take over the political "left".

As for authoritarian regimes, you seem to be missing the point a bit there too, because that seems to be what Trump wants, even if he can't get it. Wikipedia might not pass for a great scholarly resource, but authoritarianism in the other sense is a lot more complicated than simply having a more powerful central government. Burning down actual mechanisms of a free society while chanting it is in the name of "Freedom!" would hardly be out of character for an authoritarian movement, and if you need an example look at the base hatred towards the free press and the properly Orwellian invocation of "fake news!"

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[Anonymous Coward]

FTFY

You fixed nothing, but simply repeated your own essentially nonsensical words. What does 'handwaiving' mean in this context? What woudl I be avoiding? And far from equivocating I'm saying it like it is.

Perhaps you have me confused with another AC, which I'll concede is a danger when posting as AC. My 2 interventions (which you inexplicably felt necessary to answer), were:

A. to demur against the statement "the left had to invent the term "whataboutism" to counter the deluge of examples on their side that are 10x worse than whatever it is they are accusing conservatives of doing today" That is wrong as a matter of fact. Firstly, the term 'whatabout(ery|ism)' is of much older coinage, probably originating during the Cold War and then in use against the left. (Nor could my observation as to the West accusing the USSR of "whataboutery" be taken as support for either side). Secondly the term is merely a new name for a long established informal fallacy, known inter alia as tu quoque.

B. similarly to object to the notion the this fallacy did not embrace the idea of using a charge hypocrisy as a deflection or defence against some accusation, when, (as it's other name indicates) that is exactly what it does.

Those are simply statements of fact, no equivocation. Anyone who took a side Russia vs USA, Trump v Clintion, pink v blue, left v right etc. was not me.

The United States only cares about civil rights abroad when ...

All of that may or may not be true, but none of it relevantly addresses anything I wrote, I cannot hear it.

Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics

[sabbede]

By specifying "Right Wing", you are specifying a political context. Which is fine by me because I'm not interested in discussing the psychology of conformance, obedience, and group dynamics today. Nor am I at all interested in opinions of Trump.

In America, the Right and Left argue constantly over where authority over specific matters lies within the framework of the Constitution. Under Authoritarianism, there is no argument.

Fishy

[Anonymous Coward]

UK's Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham demanded access to Cambridge Analytica's servers by 18:00 GMT but said the firm had missed her deadline.

And now Facebook are in there?

Re:Fishy

[harvey the nerd]

The reach and initimidation power of the British government today just isn't what it was 100 years ago...

Re:Fishy

[Hognoxious]

From what I heard on the TV they gave them prior warning. They'll have scrubbed anything incriminating by now.

Wait a second...narrative shifting

[argStyopa]

...when I first heard this story, it was that Facebook sold an analytics firm a shit-ton of data on their users. You can argue all day long whether FB's gathering was moral or no, but the sale seemed straightforward.

Now this has morphed into "..it was revealed that political data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica, harvested personal data from more than 50 million Facebook users,..." . ...which has an entirely more malignant sound. Coincidence?

So - did CA "harvest" this data in any sort of illegitimate way, or does that have more to do with the person/party they did it FOR than anything?

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook sells that data. They're pissed that the political party they didn't want to help got it for free.

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[rickb928]

FB had better stat recasting this as abuse, not as a sale gone in a way they didn't expect, IE better for the buyer.

Which they will, and are, since they, FB, are caught selling access to data to people they are not supposed to be helping at all. Shame on them, shame!

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[AmiMoJo]

The created a Facebook app. It looked innocent, one of those stupid personality tests. But in the ToS that no-one read it said it would grab your private data AND the private data of your friends.

That last bit is definitely illegal. You can't agree to give up personal data on behalf of your friends. About 300k people took the test, 50m people's data was stolen.

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[Trailer Trash]

Here's what's happening. The Russia narrative fell apart. Even with Democrats screeching about it 24/7 for months, it's obvious that Trump isn't going to be ensnared in that and nobody right of Bernie Sanders believes it. So the next thing was some porn star that Trump apparently had sex with. Oh, wow, *nobody* knew he was a womanizer. Right. Of course, the left lost all their credibility on this being a big deal 20 years ago.

So this is the latest. Some company tied to Trump stole a bunch of data from Facebook. Oh, they haven't said "stole" yet, have they? I don't even read this shit at this point because it's not worth it. But my guess is that they'll go that route, and the retards who think Trump's going to be impeached and that'll make Hillary president will be dancing again.

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[Anonymous Coward]

They have also labelled this as "illicit data" now. It was certainly not illicit by any stretch.

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[sexconker]

The created a Facebook app. It looked innocent, one of those stupid personality tests. But in the ToS that no-one read it said it would grab your private data AND the private data of your friends.

That last bit is definitely illegal. You can't agree to give up personal data on behalf of your friends. About 300k people took the test, 50m people's data was stolen.

How is it illegal? Cite the law, please.

How, exactly, did it grab that data? Did it reach out to people's PC's and grab it? Or did they buy it from Facebook?

What setting to NOT share that kind of data was ignored? A setting in CA? Or a setting in Facebook?

Re: Wait a second...narrative shifting

[Anonymous Coward]

When I saw the many headlines, I thought some company had hacked Facebook for the data, or had used Facebook's name to fool users as their own app mined data from the users. But increasingly it looks like they just used Facebook's API to get data that any app can request. It wasn't hacked or illegally accessed as the headlines all want to suggest. It was a apparent violation of rules that said you could have the data (the API gave it out) but couldn't use the data in certain ways. So the question is: is this a selectively enforced rule?

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[DASH-8HYPHEN-8]

The Russia narrative fell apart.

Lol, over 100 charges so far. I don't think "falling apart" means what you think it means.

The full list of known indictments and plea deals in Mueller’s probe

1) George Papadopoulos, former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, pleaded guilty in October to making false statements to the FBI.

2) Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, pleaded guilty in December to making false statements to the FBI.

3) Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chair, was indicted in October in Washington, DC on charges of conspiracy, money laundering, false statements, and failure to disclose foreign assets — all related to his work for Ukrainian politicians before he joined the Trump campaign. He’s pleaded not guilty on all counts. Then, in February, Mueller filed a new case against him in Virginia, with tax, financial, and bank fraud charges.

4) Rick Gates, a former Trump campaign aide and Manafort’s longtime junior business partner, was indicted on similar charges to Manafort. But he has now agreed to a plea deal with Mueller’s team, pleading guilty to just one false statements charge and one conspiracy charge.

5-20) 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies were indicted on conspiracy charges, with some also being accused of identity theft. The charges related to a Russian propaganda effort designed to interfere with the 2016 campaign. The companies involved are the Internet Research Agency, often described as a “Russian troll farm,” and two other companies that helped finance it. The Russian nationals indicted include 12 of the agency’s employees and its alleged financier, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

21) Richard Pinedo: This California man pleaded guilty to an identity theft charge in connection with the Russian indictments, and has agreed to cooperate with Mueller.

22) Alex van der Zwaan: This London lawyer pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI about his contacts with Rick Gates and another unnamed person based in Ukraine.

Two ex-Trump advisers lied to the FBI about their contacts with Russians

Michael Flynn Mario Tama/Getty So far, no Trump associates have been specifically charged with any crimes relating to helping Russia interfere with the 2016 election.

The closest we’ve come to that is that both Papadopoulos and Flynn both now admit that they lied to the FBI about their contacts with people connected to the Russian government. (Papadopoulos’s contacts took place before the election, and Flynn’s after it.)

Papadopoulos: Back in April 2016, Papadopoulos got a tip from a foreign professor he understood to have Russian government connections that the Russians had “dirt” on Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.” He then proceeded to have extensive contacts with the professor and a Russian woman, during which he tried to plan a Trump campaign trip to Russia.

But when the FBI interviewed Papadopoulos about all this in January 2017, he repeatedly lied about what happened, he now admits. So he was arrested in July, and later agreed to plead guilty to a false statements charge and start cooperating with Mueller’s probe.

Flynn: In December 2016, during the transition, Flynn spoke to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about sanctions that President Barack Obama had just placed on Russia, and about a planned United Nations Security Council vote condemning Israeli settlements.

But when FBI agents interviewed him about all this in January 2017, Flynn lied to them about what his talks with Kislyak entailed, he now admits. In December 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to a false statements charge and began cooperating with Mueller’s investigation.

Both Papadopoulos and

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[GrimSavant]

We have always been at war with Eastasia.

It has been pretty well established that the Russians waged a psychological warfare campaign in the 2016 election, and it looks like they were reaching out to elements of the Trump campaign at least both through Papadapolous and the Trump Tower meeting about "adoptions", aka the Magnitsky Act and the sanctions surrounding that. I suppose you can bullshit if you want about that, but there have been many indictments and even several guilty pleas around with these issues, and Don Jr. outed some of his emails himself about this last year.

It hasn't been made clear yet what Trump's role himself in all of this is, but his behavior has been, in the parlance of our times, acting guilty as all hell. His twitter tirade this weekend against McCabe and Mueller is not the behavior that comes out of an innocent person, or at very least it is of an extremely aggressive defense strategy desperate to discredit law enforcement and the prosecution in the face of indictments. He might run afoul of the same issues that Nixon did and follow a similar path, though, he might not get charged for the underlying criminal behavior like his underlings have been and will be, but instead for obstruction of justice and abuse of power. Go back and read about Watergate, you'll find that Nixon was actually quite a bit more subtle than Trump has been in that regard, and the impeachment case against Nixon was a slam dunk.

Cambridge Analytica being a criminal enterprise sure doesn't help though. Malware versus not malware and data breach versus not data breach is a lot more subtle of an issue than bribery and honeypots.

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[HiThere]

Oh, it probably is illicit. Probably if they'd known how much was being taken they'd have quadrupled their prices.

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[Trailer Trash]

1. Get back with me when Trump is convicted
2. It'd be interesting to set Mueller loose on Clinton's campaign staff, wouldn't it?

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[Anonymous Coward]

Meet Hillary Clinton's Other, More Powerful And Shadowy Oppo Research Firm

Meet London-based Hakluyt & Co., founded by three former British intelligence operatives in 1995 to provide the kind of otherwise inaccessible research for which select governments and Fortune 500 corporations pay huge sums.

Whereas Fusion GPS was created by three former Wall Street Journal reporters with links to the U.S. intelligence community, Hakluyt — with offices in London, New York, Singapore, Tokyo and Sydney — was founded by an enterprising trio of former British intelligence operatives with deep connections throughout the world’s official and corporate corridors of power and influence.

Hakluyt is described by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s Henry Williams as “one of the more secretive firms within the corporate investigations world” and as “a retirement home for ex-MI6 [British foreign intelligence] officers, but it now also recruits from the worlds of management consultancy and banking ”

The firm’s “style appears to be much more in the mold of the Christopher Steele dossier. Clients pay for pages of well-sourced prose from Hakluyt’s contacts across the globe,” Williams wrote.

Hakluyt isn’t familiar to the American public. But what has become well-known in recent days is the role played by one of the London firm’s most visible figures in drawing the FBI into the world of Trump-Russia collusion allegations, a world largely created by Steele in the infamous dossier bearing his name.

When the drunken junior Trump foreign policy adviser George Papodopoulous boasted in a London bar in May 2016 about Russian intelligence operatives peddling hacked emails that were damaging to Clinton, his most interested listener, according to The New York Times, was Alexander Downer, Australian high commissioner to the U.K.

It was Downer who told the FBI of Papodopoulos’ comments, which became one of the “driving factors that led the FBI to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia’s attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump’s associates conspired,” The Times reported.

Downer, a long-time Aussie chum of Bill and Hillary Clinton, had been on Hakluyt’s advisory board since 2008. Officially, he had to resign his Hakluyt role in 2014, but his informal connections continued uninterrupted, the News Corp. Australian Network reported in a January 2016 exclusive:

But it can be revealed Mr. Downer has still been attending client conferences and gatherings of the group, including a client cocktail soirée at the Orangery at Kensington Palace a few months ago.

His attendance at that event is understood to have come days after he also attended a two-day country retreat at the invitation of the group, which has been involved in a number of corporate spy scandals in recent times.

The News Corp. Australian Network quoted an unnamed British diplomatic source explaining that Hakluyt “operates in the shadows, it’s not exactly open and transparent and so any serving, and that’s the difference, serving diplomat with access to sensitive information and insight associating with the group raises a worry in Whitehall.” Whitehall is the British government’s equivalent to the White House.

Downer’s continued involvement with Hakluyt locates the shadowy operation in the world of the Clintons. As previously reported by LifeZette, it was Downer in 2006 who as Australian foreign minister signed a memorandum of understanding with Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation.

The memorandum committed $25 million from the Australian government to the foundation for HIV/AIDs programs in China, Papua New Guinea, and Vietnam. A subsequent audit was unable to account for how those funds wer

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[Anonymous Coward]

That last bit is definitely illegal. You can't agree to give up personal data on behalf of your friends.

Facebook's terms of service state that by using their service, you agree to make all of your data, private or not, available to Facebook and their customers (hint: you are not their customer). Furthermore, you also agree that your friends can share your data indirectly. That last part is the key: you preapprove your friends giving up your personal data by accepting the TOS. Don't like it? Don't use Facebook: although with shadow profiles, that might not matter much anyway.

Facebook is like an STD. You let it into your life and it spreads like crazy, infecting everyone you connect with. It benefits only Facebook and their bank account, not you, when they sell all your personal information including data you might not expect (delete the app off your phone if you have a single shred of sanity left).

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[Uberbah]

It has been pretty well established that the Russians waged a psychological warfare campaign in the 2016 election

As well established as the ideas that:

• Moon landings were faked
• Clinton's ordered a hit on Vince Foster
• Obama is a Kenyan-born muslim
• The CIA puts mind-controlling drugs in jet fuel

And so on. Russiagaters have exactly the same amount of evidence as all those other whackjob conspiracy theorists: none.

It hasn't been made clear yet what Trump's role himself in all of this is, but his behavior has been, in the parlance of our times, acting guilty as all hell.

Uh, no. His behavior is the same as its always been: a loudmouthed game show host, WWE character who has diarrhea of the mouth. Doesn't make him a Putin puppet.

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[Uberbah]

Lol, over 100 charges so far.

None of which have anything to do with Russia changing the results on voting machines or colluding with Trump.

I don't think "falling apart" means what you think it means.

Oh, but it does. See above. The rest of your post is a classic Gish Gallop:

The term Gish gallop refers to a fallacious debate tactic in which one barrages one's opposition with a deluge of individually weak arguments which take far too long to debunk individually in a way that sustains the audience's interest. This is all Russiagate amounts to. When Russiagaters tell you that there's "too much smoke for there not to be fire", they are unwittingly telling you "I've been won over by a Gish gallop fallacy." Every single aspect of their argument can be easily debunked without exception, but since there's so much of it and since pundits are assuring them of its reality so confidently, they believe.

Every few weeks there's some major new "bombshell" revelation which Russiagaters get all excited about, only to have people read the actual information in the "bombshell" and find out it's not actually anything incriminating or particularly remarkable. Take all those "bombshells" together, though, and you create the illusion of something real. That's all this nonsense is.

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[AmiMoJo]

Data Protection Act. EU rules on personal data are much stricter. The ICO is applying for a warrant to raid them today.

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[GrimSavant]

Next you'll tell me the mafia isn't real. Or that Paul Manafort is a figment of my imagination.

List crazy conspiracy theories all you want, but you're just flashing shiny objects to distract from what's actually happening. Maybe in Russia you can get indictments with no evidence at all, but it typically doesn't work quite that way in the US federal legal system, at least as long as democracy isn't torn down. There's evidence both in the indictments and found by the news media, as well as forensic analysis of the email thefts of the dems. Though I suppose indictments aren't the way the Russians always handle problems, there seem to be a lot of dead Russian expats in Britain who died under mysterious circumstances after they ran afoul of Putin's gangster government. Or perhaps not so mysteriously when the poison was polonium or a Soviet era nerve agent.

Curious that you went out of the way to deny Trump being a Putin puppet, I just said he was acting extremely guilty, not particularly what he was guilty of. Because I'm not sure precisely what Trump is guilty of, it's a target rich environment given his business and personal history.

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[sabbede]

"They", as in Cambridge Analytica, did not create the app or use it to gather any data. Kogan did that, with Facebook's approval and using the tools provided by Facebook. Cambridge got the data from Kogan.

I believe the only real issue is that Kogan may have violated terms by selling data that was for non-commercial use.

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[AmiMoJo]

There are also the tapes C4 released, where they talk about setting up political rivals with honeypots and the like.

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep safe in that bubble and never leave.

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[meta-monkey]

But in the ToS that no-one read it said it would grab your private data AND the private data of your friends.

That last bit is definitely illegal.

That's just part of FaceBook's API. Is FaceBook's API that allows a user to grant access to their friends list illegal?

You can't agree to give up personal data on behalf of your friends.

Here's what the Obama campaign did in 2012:

Every time an individual volunteers to help out – for instance by offering to host a fundraising party for the president – he or she will be asked to log onto the re-election website with their Facebook credentials. That in turn will engage Facebook Connect, the digital interface that shares a user's personal information with a third party.

Consciously or otherwise, the individual volunteer will be injecting all the information they store publicly on their Facebook page – home location, date of birth, interests and, crucially, network of friends – directly into the central Obama database.

"If you log in with Facebook, now the campaign has connected you with all your relationships," a digital campaign organiser who has worked on behalf of Obama says.

The only thing I can see that CA did differently than the Obama campaign is that they (allegedly) told FB it was for "research" but in fact used it for commercial purposes. So if you're mad at CA for violating FB's TOS and want to make sure Zuck gets his cheddar, then okay, that's fair. But if it's all just "conservative politicians are using social media to target political advertisements is evil!" then it's just more partisan selective outrage.

The significance of the fusion of Facebook and voter file data is hard to overemphasise. "This is the Moneyball moment for politics," says Sam Graham-Felsen, Obama's chief blogger in 2008. "If you can figure out how to leverage the power of friendship, that opens up incredible possibilities."

Obama does it: "We're leveraging the power of friendship!"

Trump does it: "Insidious fascist psychological warfare!!"

El oh el.

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[squiggleslash]

None of which have anything to do with Russia changing the results on voting machines

Something nobody has accused the Russians of. It's very easy to pretend that there's no scandal if you pretend the scandal is something other than what it is.

The Mueller investigation is on-going. People are being indicted left, right, and center. No, Trump hasn't been indicted yet, but he hasn't even been questioned at this point, as the lawyers have been trying to negotiate with Mueller for months a viable questioning environment where he's unlikely to screw up, a very real concern given he has a reputation for telling people things and then denying he said them afterwards (his own lawyers meet him in pairs.) If he does that in front of Mueller, then he's already committing a criminal offense.

The available evidence that's been made public suggests some degree of collusion took place, but it seems to involve a high enough degree of stupidity from those on Team Trump to merit questioning as to what degree it was deliberate.

Trump has committed numerous impeachable offenses since gaining office. The Russian investigation is important because regardless of Trump's involvement, it's fairly obvious Putin has tried to influence the election, was trying to get Trump elected, and did so using illegal means. From that point of view, it's more important to get to the bottom of it than, say, the slam dunk charges of emoluments clause violations, which are useful from the point of view of removing the senile neo-Nazi shithead, but not from the point of view of protecting our democracy from meddlers.

So sit tight, and quit it with the partisanship. If you care about America, you'll want Mueller to do his job.

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[squiggleslash]

Yeah, the US State Media has been pushing that the "But Obama" line.

I would say that trying to equate an American Presidential candidate saying "Hey, I'm Barack Obama, would you mind if I had access to the information you store on Facebook to help with my campaign?" to willing, knowing, volunteers is 100% the opposite of a foreign company pretending to be asking for a Facebook ID for reasons having nothing to do with politics, harvesting the data, and secretly passing it on to a US election campaign.

That's kinda obvious to me, but I suppose "Democrats used Facebook, Republicans used Facebook, both sides!" must look attractive when you're desperately flailing for excuses.

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook's terms of service ...

... cannot override the municipal law of the countries in which they operate.

In Germany, for example, using WhatsApp (tremendously popular there) has now been found (in almost all use cases) to be a crime, since it involves giving personal details of third persons (the folks in your address book) without their explicit permission. Similarly taking a test which requires you to share information about your friends would be criminal.

Data privacy laws elsewhere may also invalidate Facebooks ToS insofar as these are inconsistent with local legislation. Contract law extends only so far: You and I, for instance, could not, by means of a contractual term, legalise our murder of a third party.

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[Uberbah]

Something nobody has accused the Russians of.

Of course they have.

It's very easy to pretend that there's no scandal if you pretend the scandal is something other than what it is.

1) There is no scandal

2) Russiagaters keep moving the goalposts. First it was hacking the DNC servers, then it was hacking electric grids, then it was spreading "discord" amongst Black Lives Matter activists. That minorities live in a murderous police state was a big shocker to them until Russia said it was happening.

The Mueller investigation is on-going.

With zero probable suspison of any Russian hacking or colluding with Trump to do so. And he's never bothered to subpoena the DNC servers, the alleged hacking of which is only the foundation for the entire Russiagate narrative. Which either means this "investigation" was a farce from day one, or Mueller is so incompetent he couldn't find his ass with both hands and a couple of interns. Pick one.

a very real concern given he has a reputation for telling people things and then denying he said them afterwards

Muller's reputation is of a professional liar and propagandist. But people like yourself just love getting fooled again and again.

The available evidence that's been made public suggests some degree of collusion took place

Not even remotely close. This is one of the many plot holes with Russiagate - how is it that Putin would be so clever to see that a failed businessman, racist, sexist, WWE character could be president years in advance - yet at the same time was dumb enough to collude with someone as dumb as Trump or any of his equally dumb inner circle?

Trump has committed numerous impeachable offenses since gaining office.

Trump could kill and eat a human baby on the White House lawn - and it wouldn't change the fact that Russiagate is the dumbest and most baseless conspiracy theory of all time.

it's fairly obvious Putin has tried to influence the election

Plot hole #3,478 of Russiagate: why would Putin try to influence an American election between two parties that have both been virulently anti-Russian for over a hundred years. It's like accusing MLK of trying to swing a primary election between George Wallace and Strom Thurmond in the 50's. It's just asinine on its face when both sides hate your guts.

So sit tight, and quit it with the partisanship. If you care about America, you'll want Mueller to do his job.

When your grandkids ask you how anyone could possibly believe a story with more plot holes than Chem Trailers, are you going to get red in the face and stay quiet, or fess up?

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[Uberbah]

Next you'll tell me the mafia isn't real. Or that Paul Manafort is a figment of my imagination.

Or you could stop waiving those hands for five seconds and post some evidence. If, say, I'm arguing with an Obamabot who insists 44 had the greatest intentions but was held back by a Republican Congress, I will bury his dumb ass with facts and citations on how the worst policies from the Obama Administration came from Obama himself, not Republicans.

If you Russiagaters weren't completely full of it, you would come into any discussion armed with hard facts and citations. You don't because you can't. All you have is a classic Gish Gallop:

• The term Gish gallop, named after a Young Earth creationist who was notoriously fond of employing it, refers to a fallacious debate tactic in which a bunch of individually weak arguments are strung together in rapid-fire succession in order to create the illusion of a solid argument and overwhelm the opposition's ability to refute them all in the time allotted.

And that's why you're in the same club as Birthers, Chem Trailers, and Lunar Conspiracy nuts. Because you have as much evidence for your crackpot ideas as they do.

as forensic analysis of the email thefts of the dems

You mean Crowdstrike that cites blog posts as evidence? Their analysis isn't fit to be toilet paper. And have you ever noticed that Mueller has never bother to subpoena the DNC servers for a proper FBI investigation, even though the alleged hacking of said servers is the entire foundation for Russiagate?

Either this was a farce of an investigation from day one, or Mueller is too incompetent to wipe his own ass, much less lead an investigation of a sitting president. Pick one.

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[GrimSavant]

I must hate myself to bother this much a Russian troll like yourself, but the indictment of the Internet Research Agency and the associated group of Russians has plenty of evidence in it. And I'm sure they will find out just how much more evidence there is against them if they decide to leave Russia and go to a country with an extradition treaty with the US. That sort of indictment is not an idle threat, as another Russian hacker extradited to the US from Spain found out the hard way.

I guess you can go back to apologia to the Russian invasion of Ukraine if you want to by pretending that the overthrow of Yanukovych was actually the done by the US government. I'm sure you have a wonderful Gish Gallop to justify that nonsense.

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[meta-monkey]

No, AniMojo's objection was about CA harvesting of the data of your friends. Yet you sign up for Obama's stuff and he takes your friends' data. It's the same thing.

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[sabbede]

Yes, but not in relation to this incident. They may be bad actors, but they don't seem to have done anything illegal under US law in this case.

Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting

[AmiMoJo]

They are a British company. They very likely broke British law.

Having said that, isn't foreign interference in US elections illegal?

What a sham

[Anonymous Coward]

This is such a joke. WHY did two-Facebook give them access to the data in the first place? "Research purposes" LOL .... Come on now. They have a look-but-don't-touch policy with your personal data and now they've got their knickers in a twist. I'm certain if this was Hillary Clinton's campaign they would be just as publically upset *eyeroll*

Be careful what you click

[Orne]

“This was unequivocally not a data breach,” tweeted Andrew Bosworth, a Facebook executive. “No systems were infiltrated, no passwords or information were stolen or hacked.”

So, what really happened is that a bunch of people installed a bunch of Facebook apps, and the users authorized their personal data to be used by the app. What happened after that was standard Facebook Business Model stuff, they sell your eyeballs to advertisers and take a 30% share of sales. It's how all social media stays in business, by passively collecting data about you, where you eat, your income levels, what you buy, etc. All in the name of "targeted advertising", which we as users frankly embrace. We love seeing ads for things that may interest us, companies like the opportunity of us buying stuff, FB loves collecting data and giving it to the govern.... I mean collecting data.

So, if we the public are clicking Accept every time we want to do a survey, or use a service, or install an app.... the horse is out of the barn. Then we get to Cambridge Analytica, who is accused of using personality quiz apps to gather information.. yeah, which is pretty much the whole purpose of those little quizzes to find your interests. The user answers a bazillion personal questions, and it spits out "Your Medieval Name Would Be Patsy", but what do you think happens to all that data after you click Commit? They aren't even building a profile of you, because Facebook already did that work by getting you to fill it out yourself. CA figured out, like Obama did in 2012. What do you think "big data" is really all about? Joining all these little data sets, like purchased this here, travelled there, likes flying, hates TSA, lives here, people that live here tend to earn this much, people that travel there and live here tend to vote this way, so hook them up with some targeted political ads and bam, you've increased your probability of an election win.

Re:Be careful what you click

[Anonymous Coward]

Now tie in that google, Facebook and Twitter are all blocking conservative bloggers and websites that violate their terms of service - including running ads of that type. Is this really to stop “hate speech” or an attempt to swing an election where analytics can only be used by political parties the tech companies approve of?

Re:Be careful what you click

[sphealey]

A couple of points: (1) did Cambridge Analytical or a partner/contractor use a degree-of-network harvesting license that had been provided for academic research only, then transfer the data collected to a for-profit political consulting firm/division? A lot of conflicting information on this question and key parties including Cambridge University have now clammed up (2) if Facebook user A accepts an app Facebook argues she/he has accepted harvesting of their personal data as consideration for the use of the app. We'll take that as given, even though it took me, a person with considerable computer security experience, 20 minutes to track down the fine print and figure that out the first time FB offered me an app (and why I have never accepted one). Please show me where User A accepting the app gives Facebook or its clients the right to harvest personal data from User A-Friend, who did not accept the app or its offer?

Re:Be careful what you click

[quantaman]

“This was unequivocally not a data breach,” tweeted Andrew Bosworth, a Facebook executive. “No systems were infiltrated, no passwords or information were stolen or hacked.”

So, what really happened is that a bunch of people installed a bunch of Facebook apps, and the users authorized their personal data to be used by the app. What happened after that was standard Facebook Business Model stuff, they sell your eyeballs to advertisers and take a 30% share of sales. It's how all social media stays in business, by passively collecting data about you, where you eat, your income levels, what you buy, etc. All in the name of "targeted advertising", which we as users frankly embrace. We love seeing ads for things that may interest us, companies like the opportunity of us buying stuff, FB loves collecting data and giving it to the govern.... I mean collecting data.

The difference here is that even with that authorization there were things that Kogan (who collected that data) and CA were not allowed to do with that data. And even after Kogan and CA claimed to have destroyed the data they were still misusing that data.

I agree it's a very difficult policy to enforce, and if you're in the habit of clicking agree some of those 3rd parties are probably violating it, but it doesn't change the fact that Kogan and CA are one of those scummy 3rd parties misusing your data.

Re:Be careful what you click

[AmiMoJo]

If it was just the person who used the app it would be okay, at least legally. But it's their friends as well. Friends who didn't agree to anything.

Re:Be careful what you click

[sexconker]

They agreed when they signed up for Facebook.
Facebook collected the data. Facebook claims ownership over all data you send to the.
Facebook ignored their user's privacy settings. Facebook sold that data.

At worst, CA is guilty of violating a Facebook ToS regarding the use of that data.

Re:Be careful what you click

[AHuxley]

Place too many restrictions on how big brand social media can collect on their users then social media will have to find another way to offer a "free" service.
The users data and the ads pay the bills. That allows the social media brand to grow.
Social media is not free. Something has to be sold to make a profit.

Re:Be careful what you click

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook sold that data.

Not, to CA they didn't.

Facebook permitted (or forgave what was being taken without permission) Alexandr Kogan (or as he calls himself in academia Dr Spectre ... no seriously!) to harvest data on the understanding that it was for academic research only. Doctor Spectre (soz, can't resist ;) created a company called Global Science Research (GSR) which "replicated" the work of Stillwell and Kolinsky who were apparently unwilling to (legally restrained from?) let GSR have the data set they had gathered. This This was, of course, not replication in the traditional sense of the word, Dr Kogan was not interested in testing the conclusions of the earlier paper but only in gaining access to a similar data set. GSR's research went further in glooping data from friends and friends of friends of the people who voluntarily too Kogan's personality quiz. It was this gathering of large data streams that first alerted FB to Kogan's activities, which were then OKed for academic research purposes. Later, when FB became concerned that GSR might sell on the data, they demanded the destruction of the dataset.

At worst, CA is guilty of violating a Facebook ToS regarding the use of that data.

With all due respects your honour, CA is a stranger to the agreement between FB and GSR. If anyone has to pay restitution for theft of the data or it's subsequent use, it is GSR.

They don't just "analyze".

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll just leave this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpbeOCKZFfQ

Oh really?

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes you think all those negative ads didn't effect Democrat voters? The turnout for Hillary was far lower in 2016 than it was for Obama in 2012.

Re:Oh really?

[Archangel Michael]

A lot of people stayed home because they just couldn't pull the trigger for Hillary. There was plenty of reasons to not vote for her. Including the ongoing meltdown she's still has over her second failed attempt at being president. And the worst part is, Trump beat the only person he was capable of beating, because she stank so bad.

Now, you can blame that loss on all sorts of reasons, but the plain fact is, she sucked as a candidate. Most of the reason she lost was her own making.

Re:Oh really?

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of people stayed home because they just couldn't pull the trigger for Hillary.

There were plenty of other candidates. If they didn't want Trump to win, they would have voted for someone else.

Anyone wanna step forward and admit they didn't vote, but also say they wanted Trump to lose?

I didn't think so.

Re: Oh really?

[Anonymous Coward]

They did. But primary shenanigans to suppress Sanders turned off many of them.

Re:Oh really?

[HiThere]

Really? I don't think more than half the reasons she lost were her own doing. But it's true, the only two reasons I heard to vote for her were:
1) She's a woman.
2) She's not Trump.
Both were ok reasons, but hardly very good. (Well, not being Trump was a pretty good reason...but for a candidate?? Not being something doesn't say who you are, and there's more than one way of being a poor choice.)

The thing is, I didn't run across a single person who liked her as a candidate. Some people approved of her, but only because "it's about time for a woman". She did stand for a few good things, but it was hard to be sure how honest she was being, and mainly she didn't. She seemed to thing that because most people didn't like Trump, that was enough.

Re:Oh really?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are being honest though you will also have to acknowledge the fact that she won the popular vote by a huge margin.

Re:Oh really?

[Uberbah]

If you are being honest though you will also have to acknowledge the fact that she won the popular vote by a huge margin.

And as long as we're being honest, you know there's no such thing as a popular vote for president in the United States. Millions of people stay home or vote third party because they know full well their state is going for one party or the other. If everyone's vote actually counts, both candidates would have actually run completely different campaigns with completely different outcomes. Democrats in Texas would have a reason to go to the polls as well as Republicans in California.

Re:Oh really?

[Uberbah]

Really? I don't think more than half the reasons she lost were her own doing.

Really? So who forced her to:

• Lie about being shot at in Bosnia
  Smear black and brown kids as Superpredators
  Pick a right-wing pro-life running mate
  Be a homophobe until the Supreme Court legalized gay marraige
  Be an incompetent neocon warmonger
  Not bother to campaign in the Rust Belt states that went for Trump
  Rig the Democratic primary
  Take hundreds of thousands from dirty banks as she was running for president

And so on. Hillary is rare among candidates in that the more she campaigned, the less people like her. Because she was a complete trainwreck of incompetence.

Re:Oh really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, do you feel trotting out this tired, simplistic point adds to the discussion? Yeah, some people didn't like Hillary. I'm so glad in a complex and nuanced world, you are one of the ones that can see one, simple reason for everything; screw multiple factors! It's social science, we all know exactly how things operate at all times! So let's make definitive statements without any reproducible results or really, evidence of any sort.

Re:Oh really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lie about being shot at in Bosnia -
ahahahaha, because the alternative to her doesn't lie AT ALL!

Smear black and brown kids as Superpredators
Uh-huh, nice trick - take a specific statement about a subgroup and pretend it applies to the other group. Next step,act offended.

Pick a right-wing pro-life running mate -
Yeah, dumb move. Thank god Trump didn't do that.

Be a homophobe until the Supreme Court legalized gay marraige -
Yeah, dumb move, so glad Trump isn't like that. And all of society's attitude towards gay marriage certainly didn't shift in the last twenty years - ONLY HILLARY CLINTON'S DID! Glad you're savvy enough to have caught that fact.

Be an incompetent neocon warmonger -
Yeah, dumb move, thank God Trump has shown he's not incompetent or a warmonger.

Not bother to campaign in the Rust Belt states that went for Trump -
Finally, an actual Hillary mistake. Yup, she listened to the wrong advice about where to focus resources.

Rig the Democratic primary
Do you know how politics works at all? Do you know the relationship between candidates and fundraising for their party vs themselves? Yes, it was bullshit that DWS agreed to coordinate with a candidate in return for fundraising, but Bernie set himself up for that by fundraising for himself only. And nothing that happened in the Democratic primary is illegal in any way whatsoever. You might dislike how it's done, but so what?

Take hundreds of thousands from dirty banks as she was running for president -
LOLOLOLOLOL, yeah, it's a very dumb move to take financing from shady sources. I'm so glad there's no investigation of the current administration into similar dealings, only from a hostile foreign power.

Excellent points, I can now see why Hillary was a terrible choice to the alternative.

Re:Oh really?

[Archangel Michael]

1) isn't a reason. The many of the very people voting for Hillary because she was a woman, wouldn't vote for a Republican Woman. That means that being a woman was just an excuse to vote for her, because she had nothing else going for her.

2) Plenty of people voted for Trump because he wasn't Hillary. Voting for someone because "they aren't the other person" is a pretty lame ass reason.

Both were ok reasons, but hardly very good

They are reasons. Saying they are "ok" is a large part of why we had Hillary and Donald as the two options. Neither option was "ok".

Re:Oh really?

[Uberbah]

ahahahaha, because the alternative to her doesn't lie AT ALL!

Irrelevant. What Trump does or does not do does nothing to change the worth of Hillary's actions. It's not like you're going to give Trump a pass on some stupid lie he's told just because dumbass Hillary credited the Reagan's for their AIDS activism.

Care to try again, without the butthurt partisan drivel?

Auditing the wrong company

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a forensic audit of Facebook....

Re:Auditing the wrong company

[HiThere]

Well, the do say the man who pays the piper calls the tune. I suppose they could hire them to prove that Facebook was innocent.

What crime is being alleged here?

[mi]

A private firm used computers and access to social networks to learn about people's opinions on various political matters. What's the crime in that?.. Why would this even be unethical, much less illegal?

Maybe, this violated Facebook's TOS — but that's the most, that can even be alleged here... If that...

Re:What crime is being alleged here?

[sphealey]

We'll see. Or probably we won't, since violations of US election law are no longer prosecuted, but in any case it looks a bit darker:

- - https://www.wired.com/story/ca...
In a series of undercover videos filmed over the last year, Britain's Channel 4 News caught executives at Cambridge Analytica appear to say they could extort politicians, send women to entrap them, and help proliferate propaganda to help their clients. The sting operation was conducted as part of an ongoing investigation into Cambridge Analytica, a data consulting firm that worked for President Trump's 2016 campaign. - -

Re:What crime is being alleged here?

[Zocalo]

In terms of illegal activity that seems to be all that can be claimed, and it's a civil issue at that. So far, anyway. Facebook appears to have gone into full-on panic mode all of a sudden which makes me think there's a lot more to this than has been made public yet. Or they just really, really, fear the regulation that seems like it's almost inevitable at this point, at least in the EU, and I dare say Trump will tweet out the US' position soon enough. IIRC, Zuck's a Democrat and Trump's not that fond of Democrats *or* Silicon Valley execs, so place your bets...

Supposedly Facebook's CSO, Alex Stamos, who actually wanted Facebook to look into the Russian misinformation campaign during the US elections, is leaving Facebook after clashes with other senior management, most notably Sheryl Sandberg. Even more potentially damning is that according to Carole Cadwalladr Facebook staff were in Cambridge Analytica's London offices "securing data" when agents of the UK's ICO turned up to do the same. Whether this occured before Cambridge Analytica became the subject of a formal request for a seach warrant is a little unclear though. I think this is starting to look like it's might have got some real legs to it, so I'm going to stock up on the popcorn and see how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Facebook and Cambridge Analytica can at least count their blessings on one thing though; they managed to have all this blow up in their faces *before* the GDPR kicked in.

Re:What crime is being alleged here?

[burtosis]

Boo boy Nix (the CEO of CA) got stung by undercover news agents saying he plants video surveillance on Ukrainian hookers or sends in wealthy developers with bribes too good to be true, and gets komoromat on them. Tomorrow, they are airing how they secretly taped thier operations in the USA. It's not clear if the British government will shut down the broadcast due to its sensitive nature. I'd list the stated crimes but slashdot has a viewable limit.

Re:What crime is being alleged here?

[mi]

So, planting a provocateur is illegal now? There goes the Democratic Party...

Re:What crime is being alleged here?

[Uberbah]

A private firm used computers and access to social networks to learn about people's opinions on various political matters. What's the crime in that?.. Why would this even be unethical, much less illegal?

It's not - but it's everything that Russiagaters have been whining about for over a year and a half. A foreign company openly bragging about changing American elections - but the company is based in the U.K., not Russia, so the media and Stepford Democrats DGAF.

Hi-res Farm to Conduct Frensic Adult of Cambridge

[Anonymous Coward]

WHat ??? Facebook did that? who hires a a Cambridge Conduct

Fucking Cambrige cant even spellt Analytical right why hi re them to condunct anything? Facebook is gay shit for chatty fagggets

Forget the Kremlin...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Cambridge Analytica are more responsible than anyone for illegal activities that influenced the 2016 US election. They're a lot easier to investigate and prosecute too. On the other hand, a lot of billionaires, corporations, and governments are probably salivating at the thought of having that much power at their disposal.

Re:Forget the Kremlin...

[Anonymous Coward]

Still looking for a scapegoat, eh? Hint: the one most directly responsible has the initials HRC.

How long is it going to take people to realize

[mark_reh]

how awful social media is and just quit using it?

The first time I saw someone post a picture of one of my inebriated classmates I realized facebook's potential for destruction and deleted my 2 month old account.

I advise everyone to do the same.

Pull the plug.

Re:How long is it going to take people to realize

[HiThere]

I don't use Facebook either, and I've never created an account. But I don't fool myself into believing that this means they don't have a dossier on me, or that the way they store those isn't as accounts on their system...possibly with a flag saying "non-user".

Re:How long is it going to take people to realize

[mark_reh]

I hear you, but it's better to make them have to dig for info on me and doubt its veracity than to give them all the info voluntarily. They exist to sell me to anyone with a big enough budget to screw me and others. The really big budgets buy millions of records and win elections. The low budgets send me postcards in the mail advertising a new local tattoo parlor.

I think if you're going to have a facebook or other social media account you should do everything you can to give them false data to compete with whatever they already have on you.

Re:How long is it going to take people to realize

[Anonymous Coward]

FB probably buys information about people from all the information brokers-providers like Google (probably even gmail user data?) and whatnot ...
And they probably buy info on people who do not use facebook, and they compile a "dossier and info" on all humans and sell it to buyers of such information.
They probably work a lot more like a NSA hub than a "friendly peoples company" ...

Cleaned for research

[Anonymous Coward]

When medical data is used for "research purposes" doesn't the data get cleaned of personally identifying detail. "Joe Smith" -> "user 1", etc

Why couldn't Facebook have done the same. Granted, it would be a big database duplication, but that's the public expectation of privacy.

Re:Foreigners in erections, O dear

[harvey the nerd]

Obamunists don't have much sense of humor over simple truths...

This is Facebook in panic mode

[Anonymous Coward]

Their (primarily) more left-of-center user base has become aware that the Trump people used Facebook data like the Obama people had in previous years and Facebook knows their users VERY well (since that's their business model) and thus they have realized that their showflake users may be about to have an anti-facebook temper tantrum. The same left-leaners who start massive boycotts to oppose speakers and ideas they dislike, and who start riots to block the free speech of others, might get mad at Facebook.

The problem they have now, is that this stuff about Cambridge came out at the same time that the Democrats are looking for somebody else to blame for Hillary's loss to Trump since the Russia thing has come up empty after a year-and-a-half of unrelenting attack by the FBI, DOJ, social media, mainstream media, all Democrats and even some Republicans. Team Hillary took in nearly $2 BILLION dollars for her campaign and guaranteed her win - but she lost, and she desperately needs somebody/something else to blame it on. I'm guessing she and her friends got some of that cash from some unsavory people who expected SOMETHING for their "contributions". The Dems in DC may have decided that social media was great when it only served their party, but now that it looks like the GOP might also benefit from it, they just might be willing to make it into a sacrificial goat.

Paying attention, Russiagaters?

[Uberbah]

This a company that has bragged about subverting American elections - but they're based in the U.K., so don't expect to see Democrats or Rachael Maddow freaking out about them 24/7 for the next two years or more.

Re:Paying attention, Russiagaters?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you referring to the 19 individuals with criminal indictments for around 100 different crimes as Russiagate? Including multiple individuals in senior campaign and administration positions of our current president? And many of them are cooperating, which generally suggests they are targeting someone higher up the chain-of-command - which is pretty tough to do when you already have the campaign manager and deputy campaign manager snared.

And you're wondering why the attention is there rather than on a partisan youtube video that makes unfounded claims? You can't think of any difference between the two that might lead to a difference in coverage?

Re:Paying attention, Russiagaters?

[Uberbah]

Including multiple individuals in senior campaign and administration positions of our current president? And many of them are cooperating, which generally suggests they are targeting someone higher up the chain-of-command - which is pretty tough to do when you already have the campaign manager and deputy campaign manager snared.

Again - are you paying attention? Even the Russian indictments have nothing to do with hacking election systems and even the DOJ says they had no impact on the election. Probably because they're Twitter farms looking to make money from clickbait and ad revenue - similar business model to sites like Huffington Post or Drudge.

And even if Putin himself came over and rigged some Diebold machines, if there was no collusion with the Trump campaign, there is no Russiagate. That's one of the many plot holes in your dipshit conspiracy theory - if Putin was crafty enough to know years in advance that a failed businessmen and WWE character could win the presidency, why would he be so stupid as to collude with someone as stupid as Trump?

And you're wondering why the attention is there rather than on a partisan youtube video that makes unfounded claims?

The makers of the Youtube video backs up their claims, unlike deranged partisan Russiagaters. Is there a UK company that brags about changing elections in America? Yes, yes there is. So what's your point again?

Re:Foreigners in erections, O dear

[Anonymous Coward]

Every single statement you wrote is incorrect.
Since you didn't provide any source I don't even know where you have to go to get so misinformed as you are.

Re:Foreigners in erections, O dear

[harvey the nerd]

Demonstrated it again

Re:This wouldn't be an issue if....

[sabbede]

Did you really think conservatives, whether or not they used Facebook, were going to vote for Hillary?

Hearing it called "misused data"

[sabbede]

Facebook sells data to people who want to target their marketing campaigns. Pretty sure Cambridge used the data exactly as Facebook intended our data to be used.

Re:Foreigners in erections, O dear

[harvey the nerd]

Yes, it would be nice if someone presented fully verified information on O. That reflects my original statement, "...lack of clarity."
It sounds like your statements accept a lot of facile "answers" to questions about O that.are.not.fully.verified.information with a variety of excuses and simple assertions.

Still waiting after all these years.

The crime is Hypocrisy

[Anonymous Coward]

If I took 5 minutes to search this site, which I won't, I bet we'll pull up all kinds of Mi's posts shitting his pants and rabidly calling for a negro head on a pike when /. posted the story about Obama's NSA vacuuming up every byte they could. He knows what the crimes are and he knows why it's wrong to do that. But since it's his boy, trump, well nothing to see here, move along!

Highly illogical

[Anonymous Coward]

More whining (?) and bitching (?!) but it doesn't change your hypocrisy(?!!)

What hypocrisy? More to the point even if I were hypocritical (actually clumsy) enough to proffer a tu quoque, that would not change the fact that it remains fallacious: reason does not change because of my behaviour, nor is the putative guilt of a accused lessened by the guilt of their accuser.

... the fact that you are engaging in propaganda when you attack other countries for XYZ

What are you talking about? I didn't attack any other countries, nor did I even take a side in this political dispute --I mean feel free to fight about Trump and Hillary all you want guys --I simply addressed the false statement that "[w]hataboutism does not cover the pointing out of hypocrisy," when that is precisely what the fallacy of Appeal to Hypocrisy does cover.

Re:Highly illogical

[Uberbah]

What are you talking about? I've been perfectly clear what the problem is with the term whataboutery: it is propaganda thrown out whenever someone points out western hypocrisy on the subject of human rights.

And yes, fuck your noise about that being a fallacy - that's an argument only made by people trying to excuse an indefensible position.