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[llien]

The way Facebook has disclosed the abuse of its system by Cambridge Analytica, which has been reported this week, speaks volumes of Facebook's core beliefs.

Sample this except from Business Insider: Facebook executives waded into a firestorm of criticism on Saturday, after news reports revealed that a data firm with ties to the Trump campaign harvested private information from millions of Facebook users. Several executives took to Twitter to insist that the data leak was not technically a "breach." But critics were outraged by the response and accused the company of playing semantics and missing the point.

Washington Post reporter Hamza Shaban: Facebook insists that the Cambridge Analytica debacle wasn't a data breach, but a "violation" by a third party app that abused user data. This offloading of responsibility says a lot about Facebook's approach to our privacy.

Observer reporter Carole Cadwalladr, who broke the news about Cambridge Analytica:Yesterday Facebook threatened to sue us. Today we publish this. Meet the whistleblower blowing the lid off Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. [...] Facebook's chief strategy officer wading in. So, tell us @alexstamos (who expressed his displeasure with the use of "breach" in media reports) why didn't you inform users of this "non-breach" after The Guardian first reported the story in December 2015?

Zeynep Tufekci: If your business is building a massive surveillance machinery, the data will eventually be used and misused. Hacked, breached, leaked, pilfered, conned, "targeted", "engaged", "profiled", sold.. There is no informed consent because it's not possible to reasonably inform or consent. [...] Facebook's defense that Cambridge Analytica harvesting of FB user data from millions is not technically a "breach" is a more profound and damning statement of what's wrong with Facebook's business model than a "breach."

MIT Professor Dean Eckles: Definitely fascinating that Joseph Chancellor, who contributed to collection and contract-violating retention (?) of Facebook user data, now works for Facebook.

Amir Efrati, a reporter at the Information: May seem like a small thing to non-reporters but Facebook loses credibility by issuing a Friday night press release to "front-run" publications that were set to publish negative articles about its platform. If you want us to become more suspicious, mission accomplished.

Further reading: Facebook's latest privacy debacle stirs up more regulatory interest from lawmakers (TechCrunch).

Via slashdot.

 

[Airola]

Hasn't this been a thing for years and years now? Third party apps collecting all kinds of data and selling the information to ad companies, or something like that?

 

[Corrik]

Hasn't this been a thing for years and years now? Third party apps collecting all kinds of data and selling the information to ad companies, or something like that?

It matters because Trump.

 

[Scopa]

I resisted signing up for a Facebook account in the early days after pressure from friends. Still haven’t. I’m glad I stuck to my guns. Always thought the concept was dumb and was going to dumb society down. Giving up on so much personal privacy for what? Instant internet gratification and being spoon-fed curated propaganda?

I don’t feel I’ve missed out on anything of value.

 

[Corrik]

I resisted signing up for a Facebook account in the early days after pressure from friends. Still haven’t. I’m glad I stuck to my guns. Always thought the concept was dumb and was going to dumb society down. Giving up on so much personal privacy for what? Instant internet gratification and being spoon-fed curated propaganda?

I don’t feel I’ve missed out on anything of value.

If you have a cell phone, you likely didn't prevent anything.

 

[TrainedRage]

Class action lawsuit when? I want my share of those billions.

 

[Scopa]

If you have a cell phone, you likely didn't prevent anything.

I never said I prevented anything. I said I never signed up for Facebook. I am aware how the smartphone ecosystem works. We can control what we can control.

 

[Ridcully]

America rather needs data protection laws.

 

[ickythingz]

Data protection laws are exactly what we need and it is something all parties should be working toward, though none of them do. That speaks volumes about who is actually in control of this world.

 

[Future]

People need to think twice before they ok 3rd party apps to have access to all their data. Apparently the app company is still at fault because they violated Facebook policy, but still.... really it’s just feeding off the gullible nature of most people.

 

[MisterFalcon]

The interview The Guardian is setting off a few bells for me. You'd think that if they had the guy who, if his claims are true, got Trump elected he'd not be described in such glowing term as a genius, "he was clever, funny, bitchy, profound, intellectually ravenous, compelling". He'd be a monster, the one who ushered in a new Dark Age. My gut says he is playing up his own role and presents himself as exactly what people want to see: the evil genius who is the sole reason Trump got elected.

From what is known now the data was harvested by having people take a personality test, which they got paid for, and then they would get both their Facebook profile and that of all of their friends. The second part it of course where you go from 300.000 to 50 million profiles harvested. It's not quite clear to me what is harvested, there are several possibilities:

-My FB friend Jim takes the test, presses OK on the approval for FB data and my entire profile is sent. This would be criminally poor behaviour of FB's part and should get people jailed and Zuckerberg fined billions. I would also delete my FB after May 25th where EU regulations force companies to delete all data from a customer who leaves.
-My FB friend Jim takes the test, presses OK on the approval for FB data and my profile is sent except for my name and some other personal info like birthday, company, education and so forth. This is a pretty standard way how data is shared and while it is stil very possible to get to individual persons it's a lot of effort. Way too much to do on 50 million profiles.
-My FB friend Jim takes the test, presses OK on the approval for FB data and info is given on profile like '50 of Jim's friends also like Fox News', '13 of Jim's friends also watch Game of Thrones'. while you will have useful data of 50 million profiles it's quite impossible to identify anyone. Even the EU's now strict guidelines would allow this for academic purposes, not commercial ones.

I guess in the following weeks more will be revealed what was harvested.

 

[highrider]

It’s as if ad revenue is really important to online companies..

 

[KMS]

1. C.A. writes app to scrape users data taking 50 million users data while telling Facebook it's for university research only.
2. Corey Lewandowski was meeting w/ C.A. in 2015, prior to DJT announcing his candidacy, for the purpose of using C.A.'s data
3. Psychologists who were using the data traveled back and forth from London to Russia, and even delivered some of the information to the 2nd largest oil company in Russia
4. When Facebook confronted C.A. about the breach of data agreement all they did was send them a form to check a box saying they deleted all the data. Of course they didn't but Facebook felt they then had plausible deniability.

Anyone have anything else to add to the list?

 

[synchronicity]

We are the product.

Soylent green is people.

 

[TTOOLL]

It's funny to think that some people actually believe Trump was elected because Facebook or some kind of Russian influence on Facebook.

 

[Trogdor1123]

Wait, isn't this just scraping data that was voluntarily posted?

 

[pramod]

I still don't understand why it's being called a "breach", as if some hacker came in and stole the data. It was all voluntarily provided by app users, would this even be news if people didn't find out it was used to help elect Trump?

 

[ChuckeRearmed]

From what is known now the data was harvested by having people take a personality test, which they got paid for, and then they would get both their Facebook profile and that of all of their friends. The second part it of course where you go from 300.000 to 50 million profiles harvested. It's not quite clear to me what is harvested, there are several possibilities:

-My FB friend Jim takes the test, presses OK on the approval for FB data and my entire profile is sent. This would be criminally poor behaviour of FB's part and should get people jailed and Zuckerberg fined billions. I would also delete my FB after May 25th where EU regulations force companies to delete all data from a customer who leaves.
-My FB friend Jim takes the test, presses OK on the approval for FB data and my profile is sent except for my name and some other personal info like birthday, company, education and so forth. This is a pretty standard way how data is shared and while it is stil very possible to get to individual persons it's a lot of effort. Way too much to do on 50 million profiles.
-My FB friend Jim takes the test, presses OK on the approval for FB data and info is given on profile like '50 of Jim's friends also like Fox News', '13 of Jim's friends also watch Game of Thrones'. while you will have useful data of 50 million profiles it's quite impossible to identify anyone. Even the EU's now strict guidelines would allow this for academic purposes, not commercial ones.

I guess in the following weeks more will be revealed what was harvested.

Data is being harvested all the time. As soon as device is connected to something some data is stored somewhere. One would argue that people voluntary share their personal data.

The interview The Guardian is setting off a few bells for me. You'd think that if they had the guy who, if his claims are true, got Trump elected he'd not be described in such glowing term as a genius, "he was clever, funny, bitchy, profound, intellectually ravenous, compelling". He'd be a monster, the one who ushered in a new Dark Age. My gut says he is playing up his own role and presents himself as exactly what people want to see: the evil genius who is the sole reason Trump got elected.

As if dark ages wouldn't come without Trump ROFL. We were moving towards them ~10 or more years.

 

[HStallion]

Well this is looking pretty fucking crazy. Channel 4 did an undercover operation and well... just read: https://www.channel4.com/news/cambr...x-workers-to-entrap-politicians-investigation

Or watch:

 

[Airola]

It's funny to think that some people actually believe Trump was elected because Facebook or some kind of Russian influence on Facebook.

2016:
Trump: "The election is fixed! There's something fishy going on!"
People against Trump: "Lol, you are delusional, there's nothing shady going on!"

2017 and beyond:
Trump: "There wasn't anything wrong with the election!"
People against Trump: "The election was fixed! No, Trump made a deal with Russia! No, Putin made Trump win! No, Russia hacked the votes! No, Russia controlled all social media to help Trump win! No, Russia influenced Facebook messages! No, there was a piece of software on Facebook that took information that was used to influence the election!"

Crazy times.

 

[F0rneus]

2016:
Trump: "The election is fixed! There's something fishy going on!"
People against Trump: "Lol, you are delusional, there's nothing shady going on!"

2017 and beyond:
Trump: "There wasn't anything wrong with the election!"
People against Trump: "The election was fixed! No, Trump made a deal with Russia! No, Putin made Trump win! No, Russia hacked the votes! No, Russia controlled all social media to help Trump win! No, Russia influenced Facebook messages! No, there was a piece of software on Facebook that took information that was used to influence the election!"

Crazy times.

That's not really true though. Everyone talked about Trump's weird Russian ties during the campaign process. Hell even Hillary made a Russian dig at him.

 

[Scopa]

That's not really true though. Everyone talked about Trump's weird Russian ties during the campaign process. Hell even Hillary made a Russian dig at him.

Hillary said a lot of things.

 

[zelo-ca]

Btw guys this is nothing new. The Obama campaign did this exact same thing during the 2012 elections.....
Also this was not a breach. People opted into getting their data given away. Do I agree with it? No, but to say it's a breach is very misleading.

 

[HStallion]

Btw guys this is nothing new. The Obama campaign did this exact same thing during the 2012 elections.....
Also this was not a breach. People opted into getting their data given away. Do I agree with it? No, but to say it's a breach is very misleading.

I didn't realize Obama was talking about using sex workers to entrap people

 

[zelo-ca]

I didn't realize Obama was talking about using sex workers to entrap people

I'm talking about the facebook stuff. I just got home from work so I don't know what else that has happend. Tbh I wouldn't count sex workers out though with Obama lol

 

[HStallion]

I'm talking about the facebook stuff. I just got home from work so I don't know what else that has happend. Tbh I wouldn't count sex workers out though with Obama lol

You're gonna have to back that claim up big time. Not too mention that the facebook "stuff" was because of Cambridge Analytica, that's the entire controversy here.

 

[zelo-ca]

You're gonna have to back that claim up big time.

lol means laugh out load aka it was a joke. God no one can take a joke now a days.

 

[NickFire]

I'm kind of shocked anyone is surprised by this. I mean, who would have thought that a corporate behemoth would collect massive amounts of personal data from almost everyone in the entire world with internet access, and then not use it to make as much money as possible?

On a different note, I will not be shocked if we find out later other political campaigns have benefited from Facebook's data harvesting as well, perhaps on an even larger scale.

 

[zelo-ca]

I'm kind of shocked anyone is surprised by this. I mean, who would have thought that a corporate behemoth would collect massive amounts of personal data from almost everyone in the entire world with internet access, and then not use it to make as much money as possible?

On a different note, I will not be shocked if we find out later other political campaigns have benefited from Facebook's data harvesting as well, perhaps on an even larger scale.

Watch the video I posted a couple posts up. The Obama campaign used facebook during the 2012 election

 

[NickFire]

Watch the video I posted a couple posts up. The Obama campaign used facebook during the 2012 election

I bet almost every successful or near successful campaign since 2012 has done so as well. I bet tons of other corporations, advertisers, etc., have done so as well. People have been selling customer information for decades. The only reason the media is acting shocked by this on TV, is because of 1 of 2 things. They are either looking for someone knew to blame for Trump / put out a story that might keep the Russia thing going, or they hate Facebook.

 

[zelo-ca]

I bet almost every successful or near successful campaign since 2012 has done so as well. I bet tons of other corporations, advertisers, etc., have done so as well. People have been selling customer information for decades. The only reason the media is acting shocked by this on TV, is because of 1 of 2 things. They are either looking for someone knew to blame for Trump / put out a story that might keep the Russia thing going, or they hate Facebook.

I think it's a mix of both but I will say that facebook is in a lot of trouble now. I think this could be the start of the end for them.

 

[infinitys_7th]

I guess the Zuckerbot 9000 still has some glitches.

 

[NickFire]

I think it's a mix of both but I will say that facebook is in a lot of trouble now. I think this could be the start of the end for them.

Will be interesting to see. My guess is this will pass soon enough because someone with media connections will find a way to drop it from the headlines before themselves of their friends get popped for buying the same information. But the likely initial drop in users, coupled with the reports I have seen suggesting the younger crowd is moving away from it, might give something new the user base to cut many deep wounds that they might never recover from. So to an extent, I think I agree with you, but I think the end will be decided by the younger generation more than the drop they will probably get (in my opinion) from this.

 

[F0rneus]

We have a video of the CEO of a Russian connected firm, tied to Steve Bannon and Donald Trump (conservative source even) talking openly about bribery, using sex workers and entrapment to manipulate elections and politicians. A video in which he also talks about using social media to manipulate people. The "persuadable" are his own words. A company that is in deep shit right now, for mining Facebook to target voters for Trump.

But immediately it's "But Obama!" I also expect Ben Ghazi to be brought up soon.

 

[zelo-ca]

We have a video of the CEO of aRussian connected firm, tied to Steve Bannon and Donald Trump (conservative source even) talking openly about bribery, using sex workers and entrapment to manipulate elections and politicians. A video in which he also talks about using social media to manipulate people. The "persuadable" are his own words. A company that is in deep shit right now, for mining Facebook to target voters for Trump.

But immediately it's "But Obama!" I also expect Ben Ghazi to be brought up soon.

Im talking about the other side and saying that the dems do it too. They both do it, they both manipulate the media/social media. That is my point. Obama did it in 2012 and Trump did it in 2016. I wouldn't be surprised if Hilary manipulated facebook as well.

They are all corrupt is my point.

 

[rokkerkory]

lol means laugh out load aka it was a joke. God no one can take a joke now a days.

Yeah for reals esp in a thread about millions of americans got their data breached!

 

[NickFire]

We have a video of the CEO of aRussian connected firm, tied to Steve Bannon and Donald Trump (conservative source even) talking openly about bribery, using sex workers and entrapment to manipulate elections and politicians. A video in which he also talks about using social media to manipulate people. The "persuadable" are his own words. A company that is in deep shit right now, for mining Facebook to target voters for Trump.

But immediately it's "But Obama!" I also expect Ben Ghazi to be brought up soon.

I don't think anyone is seriously blaming Obama. There is a difference between assuming everyone is doing it and pointing to Obama's campaign as one such everyone (on the first hand), and blaming Obama for something that has been going on in one form or another for decades. Research "good will" and customer lists. This is nothing new. It's just the scale that is new.

 

[zelo-ca]

Yeah for reals esp in a thread about millions of americans got their data breached!

They did not get their data breached. They did surveys on facebook that asked for their info and the people consented. I think facebook should change their rules on it but as it stands now it was not a breach and is fully legal.

 

[zelo-ca]

I don't think anyone is seriously blaming Obama. There is a difference between assuming everyone is doing it and pointing to Obama's campaign as one such everyone (on the first hand), and blaming Obama for something that has been going on in one form or another for decades. Research "good will" and customer lists. This is nothing new. It's just the scale that is new.

100% agree and that is what I was trying to say. You are way better at explaining things than I am lol

 

[rokkerkory]

They did not get their data breached. They did surveys on facebook that asked for their info and the people consented. I think facebook should change their rules on it but as it stands now it was not a breach and is fully legal.

Fully legal? Are you a russian spy?

 

[F0rneus]

Im talking about the other side and saying that the dems do it too. They both do it, they both manipulate the media/social media. That is my point. Obama did it in 2012 and Trump did it in 2016. I wouldn't be surprised if Hilary manipulated facebook as well.

They are all corrupt is my point.

Well TBH, yeah Hilary Clinton always pinged me hard on the "Not 100% honest" scale. Like she was "corrupt" on the scale, but like all politicians. And honestly, she was at least competent.

But this supervillain like conspiracy stuff, is another level.

 

[zelo-ca]

Fully legal? Are you a russian spy?

Using opt ins to get data is fully legal. We all do it all the time, all our information is being sold all the time you know.

 

[rokkerkory]

Using opt ins to get data is fully legal. We all do it all the time, all our information is being sold all the time you know.

CA secretly collected data on millions of folks that’s illegal.

 

[NickFire]

CA secretly collected data on millions of folks that’s illegal.

It might be, and it probably is. But I bet any successful prosecution will be more akin to a shoplifting case than anything espionage related. IE, they took the data before they paid Facebook for it all.

 

[Sàmban]

I hear Chanel 4 is having a video about CA tomorrow that should be illuminating to say the least

 

[Scopa]

Well TBH, yeah Hilary Clinton always pinged me hard on the "Not 100% honest" scale. Like she was "corrupt" on the scale, but like all politicians. And honestly, she was at least competent.

But this supervillain like conspiracy stuff, is another level.

She can’t even navigate a flight of stairs, let alone competent enough to trust to run a country.

‪

 

[F0rneus]

Wow what a profound point.

 

[Scopa]

Wow what a profound point.

As profound as claiming she is competent.

 

[F0rneus]

As profound as claiming she is competent.

Anything to back that up? Other that a couple of GIFs? That have nothing to do with leadership qualities?

Especially in a thread talking about actual video evidence showing the Trump campaign's corruption with Cambridge Analytica?

 

[Scopa]

Anything to back that up? Other that a couple of GIFs? That have nothing to do with leadership qualities?

Especially in a thread talking about actual video evidence showing the Trump campaign's corruption with Cambridge Analytica?

What evidence do you have that she is competent?