Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Knew of Cambridge Analytica Data Misuse Earlier Than Reported (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Facebook employees were aware of concerns about "improper data-gathering practices" by Cambridge Analytica months before the Guardian first reported, in December 2015, that the political consultancy had obtained data on millions from an academic. The concerns appeared in a court filing by the attorney general for Washington DC and were subsequently confirmed by Facebook. The new information "could suggest that Facebook has consistently mislead [sic]" British lawmakers "about what it knew and when about Cambridge Analytica," tweeted Damian Collins, the chair of the House of Commons digital culture media and sport select committee (DCMS) in response to the court filing.
In a statement, a company spokesperson said: "Facebook absolutely did not mislead anyone about this timeline." After publication of this article, the spokesperson acknowledged that Facebook employees heard rumors of data scraping by Cambridge Analytica in September 2015. The spokesperson said that this was a "different incident" from Cambridge Analytica's acquisition of a trove of data about as many as 87 million users that has been widely reported on for the past year. "In September 2015 employees heard speculation that Cambridge Analytica was scraping data, something that is unfortunately common for any internet service," the spokesperson said. "In December 2015, we first learned through media reports that Kogan sold data to Cambridge Analytica, and we took action. Those were two different things." The filing raised questions about when Facebook first learned about the misuse of personal data by Cambridge Analytica, the now defunct political consultancy.
In a statement, a company spokesperson said: "Facebook absolutely did not mislead anyone about this timeline." After publication of this article, the spokesperson acknowledged that Facebook employees heard rumors of data scraping by Cambridge Analytica in September 2015. The spokesperson said that this was a "different incident" from Cambridge Analytica's acquisition of a trove of data about as many as 87 million users that has been widely reported on for the past year. "In September 2015 employees heard speculation that Cambridge Analytica was scraping data, something that is unfortunately common for any internet service," the spokesperson said. "In December 2015, we first learned through media reports that Kogan sold data to Cambridge Analytica, and we took action. Those were two different things." The filing raised questions about when Facebook first learned about the misuse of personal data by Cambridge Analytica, the now defunct political consultancy.
This is somewhat easy to misconstrue. Most people will take that as the data was used in the general election, when according to the mainstream media:
"In late September 2016, Cambridge and other data vendors were submitting bids to the Trump campaign. Then-candidate Trump's campaign used Cambridge Analytica during the primaries and in the summer because it was never certain the Republican National Committee would be a willing, cooperative partner. Cambridge Analytica instead was a hedge against the RNC, in case it wouldn't share its data.
The crucial decision was made in late September or early October when Mr. Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and Brad Parscale, Mr. Trump's digital guru on the 2016 campaign, decided to utilize just the RNC data for the general election and used nothing from that point from Cambridge Analytica or any other data vendor. The Trump campaign had tested the RNC data, and it proved to be vastly more accurate than Cambridge Analytica's, and when it was clear the RNC would be a willing partner, Mr. Trump's campaign was able to rely solely on the RNC. "
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-campaign-phased-out-use-of-cambridge-analytica-data-before-election/
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
It just shed its skin. It's now called Emerdata. Same people, same building.
When democrats abuse information for elections..."it's justified for the cause" but when republicans do it... "it's because they are evil".
Read this guys article.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-ch...
Yes, BOTH side really are the same, big business federalists that have no reason to care about you beyond your vote. They only care about their constituents and that is where they appear different is because their constituents have differences.
The Cambridge Data lesson is in a nutshell... a beacon of the Hypocrisy of the Left... no so much on the right because it benefited them this time. BOTH Parties have been doing things like this in all sorts of ways for decades. Before Cambridge, Before the internet. They have been using census data, voter records, polls, and anything they can get their hands on to redraw districts, target campaign speech locations, issue spotting, and just about anything a campaign manager can think of to get the upper hand.
This is nothing shocking or surprising but instead, a NATURAL result of people giving up their privacy to a feckless company that generates revenue off of their personal data! The people upset about this are really just pissed off they didn't do a better job at it.
It's still going to be done, they will just now do it a different way and because of the mfg outrage machine they will just have to find other less obvious ways to do it.
....because it wasn't MISUSE. It was Facebook's bloody BUSINESS MODEL.
Further, CA (and Facebook) is only in hot water today because they dared to use this information in a way that benefited Donald Trump. In the 2012 election we were bombarded with news stories about how 'sophisticated' and 'cutting edge' the Obama campaign was about leveraging internet big data for voter-engagement and campaigning.
-Styopa