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Facebook Suspends Another Data Analytics Firm After CNBC Discovers It Was Using Tactics like Cambridge Analytica (cnbc.com)

Posted by msmash on from the gift-that-keeps-giving dept.

Facebook suspended a company from its site over the weekend while it investigates claims it harvested user information under the guise of academic research, in a case with echoes of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. From a report: Facebook is suspending a data analytics firm called CubeYou from the platform after CNBC notified the company that CubeYou was collecting information about users through quizzes. CubeYou misleadingly labeled its quizzes "for non-profit academic research," then shared user information with marketers. The scenario is eerily similar to how Cambridge Analytica received unauthorized access to data from as many as 87 million Facebook user accounts to target political marketing. CubeYou, whose CEO denies any deception, sold data that had been collected by researchers working with the Psychometrics Lab at Cambridge University, similar to how Cambridge Analytica used information it obtained from other professors at the school for political marketing.

2 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. The issue here isn't... by ebrandsberg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That there was another one. The issue is that a news organization needed to point it out, instead of Facebook discovering this through the analysis of their access patterns from these firms. After they realized that one was doing this, they should have been analyzing to find others immediately.

  2. It's a feature, not a bug by complexanimal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problem here is that this isn't a problem. You can't fix this because this is how the product and business model were designed. The goal in mind is to suck as much information out of the population as possible and to slice our social groups into manageable and manipulatable chunks so as to maximize ad revenues. "I'm shocked, shocked to find that abuses of privacy on a global scale is going on here!" This model is most definitely not in the best interest of fostering healthy societies and social constructs, despite how much the Zuck et al claim to be about 'connecting the world.' Expect much more news like this from Facebook in the near future unless they are forced to change.