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Cambridge Analytica May Have Had Facebook Data From 87 Million People (recode.net)
Cambridge Analytica may have had data from more unwitting Facebook usersthan originally thought. From a report: Facebook now says that the data firm, which collected data about users without their permission, may have collected data on as many as 87 million people. Original reports from the New York Times pegged that number at closer to 50 million people. "In total, we believe the Facebook information of up to 87 million people -- mostly in the U.S." may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica by apps that they or their friends used," Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer wrote in a blog post Wednesday. From Facebook's blog post, "Given the scale and sophistication of the activity we've seen, we believe most people on Facebook could have had their public profile scraped in this way. "
Nobody was upset with the Obama campaign for doing this same thing. They where all but in bed together in the Lincoln bedroom on a regular basis and nary a peep from anybody.
Trump + 13 trolls + $100K > Clinton + $1.5B + media collusion + foreign collusion + illegal votes
Is watching people on the left sputter in anger that it was somehow OK or totally not as reported when Obama's team harvested the social graph with Facebook's tacit official approval. One of their lead staffers boasted recently on Twitter that Facebook reps showed up and said they were only able to keep going because Facebook was "on their side."
*Puts on Morpheus mask* What if I told you that you can condemn Facebook and call Obama's campaign and Cambridge Analytica symptoms of the disease...
But in Obamaâ(TM)s case, direct users knew they were handing over their data to a political campaign. In the Cambridge Analytica case, users only knew were taking a personality quiz for academic purposes.
If you don't want someone seeing your public profile data, don't take their "personality quiz", because even at best that "quiz" for "academic purposes" has the intent of finding things out about you that you may not want to expose. In a similar vein, don't take the MMP (Minnesota Multi-phasic mumble something) if you don't want the results known by anyone.
And for God's sake, if you don't want someone to see your public profile data, don't give your name to them so they can go look it up easily.
The Obama campaign used the data to have their supporters contact their most persuadable friends. Cambridge Analytica targeted users and their friends directly with digital ads.
The only difference is a difference that isn't a difference. Obama had volunteers contact people. Cambridge Analytical did it directly.
If you don't want anyone to know your public profile data, don't post it to a place where they call it a "public profile". What would a reasonable person expect would happen with a "public profile" but be viewable, and thus harvestable, by the PUBLIC?
...Obama campaign for doing this same thing.
Both campaigns accessed users' friends information without consent. But there were several differences between what Obama's campaign did and what Cambridge Analytica did. A couple:
But in Obama’s case, direct users knew they were handing over their data to a political campaign. In the Cambridge Analytica case, users only knew were taking a personality quiz for academic purposes.
The Obama campaign used the data to have their supporters contact their most persuadable friends. Cambridge Analytica targeted users and their friends directly with digital ads.
That doesn't remotely excuse what O's campaign did, but it's not entirely the same.
Fucking PolitiFART is a bunch of weasels:
But in Obama’s case, direct users knew they were handing over their data to a political campaign.
Note the use of that "direct user" weasel word.
Because Obama's campaign actually gained access to Facebook's entire social graph:
Data You Can Believe In
The Obama Campaign’s Digital Masterminds Cash In
The campaign’s exhaustive use of Facebook triggered the site’s internal safeguards. “It was more like we blew through an alarm that their engineers hadn’t planned for or knew about,” said St. Clair, who had been working at a small firm in Chicago and joined the campaign at the suggestion of a friend. “They’d sigh and say, ‘You can do this as long as you stop doing it on Nov. 7.’ ”
Yeah, I wonder if Facebook giving Obama that data was reported as a political contribution-in-kind...
Not only that, Obama strip-mined private details from cable TV boxes:
But Gershkoff had come upon a cache of data that all the strategists would come to appreciate. She had contracted with a relatively new firm called Rentrak that was competing with Nielsen and was buying up real-time, raw viewing data directly from cable and satellite companies that had nearly 20 million set-top boxes in eight million homes. When Gershkoff told Grisolano, he was thrilled. Rentrak’s huge new trove of data, he surmised, could help him find out with relative certainty what shows were being delivered to the homes of the roughly 15 million persuadable voters Wagner’s department had identified.
PolitiFART glossed over that entirely.
Note that article was written in 2013, and it was CELEBRATING how the Obama campaign abused privacy - along with campaign finance laws.
But that was all "for the cause", so it was OK four years ago...