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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."

33 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics by Train0987 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "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...

    1. Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics by Train0987 · · Score: 4, Informative

      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...

    2. Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics by GrumpySteen · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

    3. Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

    4. Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics by Woldscum · · Score: 4, Informative

      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”

    5. Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics by Woldscum · · Score: 2, Interesting

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

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

    6. Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics by Xarius · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

      --
      C17H21NO4
    7. Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics by DASH-8HYPHEN-8 · · Score: 2

      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.

    8. Re: Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A: We're punishing you

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

      A: whataboutism!

    9. Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

    10. Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics by Uberbah · · Score: 2

      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.

    11. Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics by sabbede · · Score: 3, Funny
      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?

    12. Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics by sabbede · · Score: 2
      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.

    13. Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics by Dread_ed · · Score: 2

      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!!!

      --
      When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
    14. Re:Slashdot loved Obama Campaigns data analytics by Shotgun · · Score: 2

      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?

      --
      Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
      Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
  2. Wait a second...narrative shifting by argStyopa · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...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?

    --
    -Styopa
    1. Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    2. Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting by Trailer+Trash · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting by DASH-8HYPHEN-8 · · Score: 2

      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

    4. Re:Wait a second...narrative shifting by GrimSavant · · Score: 2

      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.

  3. Be careful what you click by Orne · · Score: 3, Informative

    “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.

    1. Re:Be careful what you click by quantaman · · Score: 2

      “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.

      --
      I stole this Sig
    2. Re:Be careful what you click by sexconker · · Score: 2

      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.

  4. What crime is being alleged here? by mi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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...

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
    1. Re:What crime is being alleged here? by sphealey · · Score: 2

      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. - -

    2. Re:What crime is being alleged here? by Zocalo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    3. Re:What crime is being alleged here? by burtosis · · Score: 2

      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.

  5. Re:Oh really? by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
  6. Re:Oh really? by Uberbah · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  7. Re:Oh really? by Uberbah · · Score: 2

    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.

  8. Paying attention, Russiagaters? by Uberbah · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  9. Hearing it called "misused data" by sabbede · · Score: 2

    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.

  10. Re:Oh really? by Uberbah · · Score: 2

    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?