8 ms·

I remember when the Obama campaign hired data scientists and used targeted social networking tools to pursuade voters who were on the fence and it was heralded

by gfodor 9y ago

I remember when the Obama campaign hired data scientists and used targeted social networking tools to pursuade voters who were on the fence and it was heralded as brilliant and the future of politics. I worked for a company crawling Facebook data by creating viral apps the year the original API came out. By now I am sure this is done by many companies. Why is any of this news? My understanding is that companies harvesting social networking data via viral apps and then reselling it to perform targeted voter advertising is literally a 10 year old concept. Were any laws broken here? Were there any techniques used here that were novel or done by one political party and not the other? Why are we talking about this one firm and not the many others that surely exist that are trying to do the same thing for <insert political candidate of choice>

clay_the_ripper 9y ago
Isn’t harvesting data prohibited by Facebook TOS? (Not to say that people don’t still do it). Also, could you elaborate on what kind of data you get access to by doing this data harvesting versus just using Facebook targeting data that Facebook explicitly gives advertisers access to? I’m curious because fb gives a lot of targeting criteria, so I’m wondering what kinds of things this harvesting unlocks. Sentiment analysis on post language or something?
- cloakandswagger 9y ago
  > Isn’t harvesting data prohibited by Facebook TOS? This should be the main takeaway from this article--that Facebook relies on the honor system for protecting user data. Breaking a company's TOS isn't a crime in and of itself, and social media data has been used for political targeting for years now. Insinuating that Trump won because of a nefarious brain control operation fueled by data from a "data breach" is irresponsible.
- frankzinger 9y ago
  > Isn’t harvesting data prohibited by Facebook TOS? Facebook gives companies access to the data (e.g., "for research") but they're not allowed to sell or provide that data to third parties (which is what these people did).
tanilama 9y ago
I am not shock by the facts that they are collecting data. The fact they are designing a psychological procedure to feed their narrative and agenda to you in an unconscious way, shaping and changing your world view, with that message only tailored to you, is very creepy to me. This doesn't sound like advertising to me, this is manipulation and brainwashing.
- gfodor 9y ago
  Explain the difference in semantics between the two because the mechanics sound the same, best I can tell this company was just running ads like everyone else. Creating psychological profiles of voters to craft messages to them to pursuade their vote I believe is the same thing as political advertising and is exactly what Obama's campaign were doing and had countless fawning articles written about them (just Google it.) Best I can tell the real facet here being used to paint this in a new light is the use of harvested data in a way that violated Facebook ToS but that is 100% nothing new and crawling FB via the API to do data science was a new idea like 10+ years ago (and it has since been locked down due to the prevalence of abuse I'd assume.)
  - pm90 9y ago
    Why is this hard to understand? The same technology can be used for both good and bad. Obama used it to inform people about his polcies and get the out to vote. Trump used it to spread lies, falsehoods and half-truths. Essentially any media that was outlandish enough to become viral was promoted and promoted to hapless people who probably might have wondered why they were seeing so many distressing articles about America in "Carnage" (as Trump puts it).
    - jlborxes 9y ago
      https://pics.me.me/our-blessed-homeland-their-barbarous-wastes-our-glorious-leader-their-30162740.png https://pics.me.me/our-blessed-homeland-their-barbarous-wast...
      - 9y ago
banned1 9y ago
“Why is any of this news?” Primarily because Obama could do no wrong! wink And this time is Trump, who obviously did not win the election! double wink
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
tim333 9y ago
>Why is any of this news? I think the clue is in the article: > ... Russians ... had used the platform to perpetrate “information warfare” against the US
golemiprague 9y ago
From the same reason Obama got the Nobel prize.
SZJX 9y ago
And do you think the so-called "Russian influence" and the special counsel investigation have much substance to them anyways? Everybody can see from a mile how charged everything has become in American politics. They drum up the rhetoric on this one simply because they perceive Trump as their enemy and want him down no matter what, even though their "own" candidate might well have done the same thing or at least very similar things. If this incident helps protect user privacy further it would be great. However I doubt it would happen at all. Most likely they'd just take this opportunity to aim another round of barrage at Trump instead of talking any substance about the issue itself. The purpose of this reportage is political attack against Trump instead of any concern for privacy in the first place.
blablabla123 9y ago
I guess the other question is why this hasn't been any news yet. But the answer might be that 10 years ago Tech wasn't much in the news because it was just not interesting for most people. This has changed a lot in the last few years though, which might explain why the news agency now have to work through (at least!) 10 years of tech news backlog. I'd definitely like to see coverage of these topic from 'traditional journalists' who then bring this stuff into context and link it with politics for instance. It's a little sad that we needed the politic right and their friends to bring these things to public attention. > Were any laws broken here? In Germany they would have broken it by that. At least here every website needed already 10 years ago not only Terms of Services but also a data privacy section/page. Such a page would be of no use if you could collect data from people before they even visit your website.
- verylittlemeat 9y ago
  >I guess the other question is why this hasn't been any news yet. But the answer might be that 10 years ago Tech wasn't much in the news because it was just not interesting for most people. This 100% untrue: https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/how-obamas-internet-campaign-changed-politics/ https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/how-obamas-interne... https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/10/exclusive-how-democrats-won-the-data-war-in-2008/27647/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/10/exclusi... These are only two links but let me assure you if you're interested google is full of articles from the 2008 election talking about how vital the internet and data was to the Obama strategy. I very clearly remember these articles and many others at the time talking about the new "big data" strategies utilized in both 2008 and 2012. To me that is what makes this whole "we scraped data and stole the election for trump" narrative seem extremely suspicious.
  - vanderZwan 9y ago
    > To me that is what makes this whole "we scraped data and stole the election for trump" narrative seem extremely suspicious. Suspicious of what? Be more clear about what you're trying to say here please. Because I hope it's not that people didn't complain enough when Obama did it, and therefore now nobody can? (aside from the fact that I did complain, because I complain about all advertising, but that's not the point)
bmsleight_ 9y ago
> Where any laws broken here ? Yes. The article mentions "British data protection laws were probably broken". NB Facebook lawyers have been trying to push the Guardian around. - https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/974995682124804099 https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/974995682124804099 IMHO, but I am not a lawyer - clearly the law was broken, Data Protection Act.
raverbashing 9y ago
Every advertisement should be ostensive Using fb to advertise for Obama, Trump, etc, is ok However that's not what has been done, but the a) use of shills and fake personas to pump up opinion b) creation of fake "grassroots movements" and "news articles" with a divisive purpose https://thinkprogress.org/russia-facebook-pages-sophisticated-8079708cc868/ https://thinkprogress.org/russia-facebook-pages-sophisticate... https://www.reddit.com/r/RussiaLago/comments/7y6ola/there_have_been_241_posts_in_rthe_donald_linking/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RussiaLago/comments/7y6ola/there_ha...
- zombieprocesses 9y ago
  Did you really link to russianlago, an actual shill subreddit? Also thinkprogress is a shill advocacy organization. > However that's not what has been done, but the a) use of shills and fake personas to pump up opinion b) creation of fake "grassroots movements" and "news articles" with a divisive purpose This has been done since forever. People supporting Obama did in 2008. Those supporting Ron Paul did it. Bernie sanders supporters did it and so did hillary supporters.
  - raverbashing 9y ago
    Ad-Hominem and Whataboutism on the same comment, congrats
    - zombieprocesses 9y ago
      I was directly responding to your point. You said shilling is bad. I agree. But it doesn't do your argument any favor when you use two shill sites to defend your position. Russianlago is a shill subreddit. Everyone knows this. Thinkprogress is a shill advocacy group. It's in their mission statement. Also, "Ad-Hominem and Whataboutism" is the easiest way to spot shilling. The fact that it is capitalized makes me believe it was copied and pasted from a list of talking points. If you truly believed shilling was bad, you wouldn't support russianlago or thinkprogress. But the fact that you linked to those two makes me believe you actually support shilling. Just the shilling you agree with. Just an observation.
zombieprocesses 9y ago
> I remember when the Obama campaign hired data scientists and used targeted social networking tools to pursuade voters who were on the fence and it was heralded as brilliant and the future of politics. If you go back to 2008 election, the media was praising Obama as the first social media president. Remember how well obama used youtube, myspace, facebook, reddit and the burgeoning social space during his election? It's strange how the media is now attacking the social media space they loved so much because trump won the election. > Why is any of this news? I think it's because the media and the democrats and a large segment of the elites need something to blame for trump's win. They don't want to blame hillary or themselves for the loss, so they attack social media. During the 2016 election, Trump was complaining about foreign interference in the elections. And Obama stated there was no foreigner interference and that Trump was whining because he was losing in the polls. Back then, the traditional media was backing obama and mocking trump. Now that trump has won, the traditional media is the one pushing the foreign interference narrative. But I guess it is all conjecture. But ever since trump won the election, there has been a relentless propaganda campaign against social media by the establishment. You can't go a day without seeing a propaganda piece on traditional or social media about how bad social media is.
- noelwelsh 9y ago
  There are actual reasons to be worried about this kind of thing: - The advertisements were not overt ("fake news") - It raises the barrier of entry to the political process - Filter bubble effects Or you can believe a story about "elites" and "biased media".
  - zombieprocesses 9y ago
    > There are actual reasons to be worried about this kind of thing: I suppose. Why weren't people worried about this during obama's campaign? > - The advertisements were not overt ("fake news") - It raises the barrier of entry to the political process - Filter bubble effects If filter bubble effects are a problem, then we should be looking into traditional media, not social media. I'd say there is more of a filter bubble issues in CNN, NYTimes, WashingtonPost, Foxnews, etc than in social media. When nearly 100% of the largest media organizations are endorsing one candidate and/or espousing one type of ideology, maybe we should be looking at that. > Or you can believe a story about "elites" and "biased media". It's not a matter of believing. It's a matter of fact. Foxnews and the right wing were also whining about social media when obama won. Now it's the media and the left wing whining about social media because trump won. The only difference is that the leftwing has a much greater media presence. It's so funny how both sides are the same. When it looked like trump was losing, he was blaming foreign interference and biased media and fake news. And the media/leftwing was mocking him for being paranoid and a sore loser. Now that trump won, it's the media/leftwing whining about foreign interference and biased social media and fake news. The hypocrisy displayed by every side is rather disheartening.
thomzi12 9y ago
Did you not read the article? Millions of users took a personality test that had nothing to do with politics, and that data was sold to the Trump campaign for targeting. When did Obama’s campaign ever do that?
- willstrafach 9y ago
  I think a lot of commenters did not read the article at all and are misunderstanding the “issue” to be use of big data, versus the fact that this specific data was obtained on tens of millions of people in what appears to be a very unethical manner.
- hanspeter 9y ago
  270.000 users.
  - SolarUpNote 9y ago
    ... and all of their ‘friends’, totaling over 50 million
    - hanspeter 9y ago
      Nope. It was not technical possible to share your friends' data in 2014.
- muddi900 9y ago
  >Did you not read the article? No he didn't. On purpose
- dang 9y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
muddi900 9y ago
They harvested personal info of people. Something against FB policy and against the law. That is why it is news. I understand that Hacker News has been accused of turning into reddit since reddit became a thing, but when the top most comment is from a guy who didn't even bother to read the article linked, there is a very little in the way distinction between the two sites.
stefek99 9y ago
E X A C T L Y See my post: https://www.facebook.com/mstefanow/posts/10156280067194886 https://www.facebook.com/mstefanow/posts/10156280067194886 Since when NO NEWS is NEWS? "Why is any of this news? My understanding is that companies harvesting social networking data via viral apps and then reselling it to perform targeted voter advertising is literally a 10 year old concept." Other team didn't realize such thing as the internet exists? (I'm outraged that this thing hit the news, as if it wasn't something already known)

by gfodor 9y ago

clay_the_ripper 9y ago

Isn’t harvesting data prohibited by Facebook TOS? (Not to say that people don’t still do it). Also, could you elaborate on what kind of data you get access to by doing this data harvesting versus just using Facebook targeting data that Facebook explicitly gives advertisers access to? I’m curious because fb gives a lot of targeting criteria, so I’m wondering what kinds of things this harvesting unlocks. Sentiment analysis on post language or something?

cloakandswagger 9y ago
> Isn’t harvesting data prohibited by Facebook TOS? This should be the main takeaway from this article--that Facebook relies on the honor system for protecting user data. Breaking a company's TOS isn't a crime in and of itself, and social media data has been used for political targeting for years now. Insinuating that Trump won because of a nefarious brain control operation fueled by data from a "data breach" is irresponsible.
frankzinger 9y ago
> Isn’t harvesting data prohibited by Facebook TOS? Facebook gives companies access to the data (e.g., "for research") but they're not allowed to sell or provide that data to third parties (which is what these people did).

tanilama 9y ago

I am not shock by the facts that they are collecting data. The fact they are designing a psychological procedure to feed their narrative and agenda to you in an unconscious way, shaping and changing your world view, with that message only tailored to you, is very creepy to me. This doesn't sound like advertising to me, this is manipulation and brainwashing.

gfodor 9y ago
Explain the difference in semantics between the two because the mechanics sound the same, best I can tell this company was just running ads like everyone else. Creating psychological profiles of voters to craft messages to them to pursuade their vote I believe is the same thing as political advertising and is exactly what Obama's campaign were doing and had countless fawning articles written about them (just Google it.) Best I can tell the real facet here being used to paint this in a new light is the use of harvested data in a way that violated Facebook ToS but that is 100% nothing new and crawling FB via the API to do data science was a new idea like 10+ years ago (and it has since been locked down due to the prevalence of abuse I'd assume.)
- pm90 9y ago
  Why is this hard to understand? The same technology can be used for both good and bad. Obama used it to inform people about his polcies and get the out to vote. Trump used it to spread lies, falsehoods and half-truths. Essentially any media that was outlandish enough to become viral was promoted and promoted to hapless people who probably might have wondered why they were seeing so many distressing articles about America in "Carnage" (as Trump puts it).
  - jlborxes 9y ago
    https://pics.me.me/our-blessed-homeland-their-barbarous-wastes-our-glorious-leader-their-30162740.png https://pics.me.me/our-blessed-homeland-their-barbarous-wast...
    - 9y ago

banned1 9y ago

“Why is any of this news?” Primarily because Obama could do no wrong! wink And this time is Trump, who obviously did not win the election! double wink

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

tim333 9y ago

>Why is any of this news? I think the clue is in the article: > ... Russians ... had used the platform to perpetrate “information warfare” against the US

golemiprague 9y ago

From the same reason Obama got the Nobel prize.

SZJX 9y ago

And do you think the so-called "Russian influence" and the special counsel investigation have much substance to them anyways? Everybody can see from a mile how charged everything has become in American politics. They drum up the rhetoric on this one simply because they perceive Trump as their enemy and want him down no matter what, even though their "own" candidate might well have done the same thing or at least very similar things. If this incident helps protect user privacy further it would be great. However I doubt it would happen at all. Most likely they'd just take this opportunity to aim another round of barrage at Trump instead of talking any substance about the issue itself. The purpose of this reportage is political attack against Trump instead of any concern for privacy in the first place.

blablabla123 9y ago

I guess the other question is why this hasn't been any news yet. But the answer might be that 10 years ago Tech wasn't much in the news because it was just not interesting for most people. This has changed a lot in the last few years though, which might explain why the news agency now have to work through (at least!) 10 years of tech news backlog. I'd definitely like to see coverage of these topic from 'traditional journalists' who then bring this stuff into context and link it with politics for instance. It's a little sad that we needed the politic right and their friends to bring these things to public attention. > Were any laws broken here? In Germany they would have broken it by that. At least here every website needed already 10 years ago not only Terms of Services but also a data privacy section/page. Such a page would be of no use if you could collect data from people before they even visit your website.

verylittlemeat 9y ago
>I guess the other question is why this hasn't been any news yet. But the answer might be that 10 years ago Tech wasn't much in the news because it was just not interesting for most people. This 100% untrue: https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/how-obamas-internet-campaign-changed-politics/ https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/how-obamas-interne... https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/10/exclusive-how-democrats-won-the-data-war-in-2008/27647/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/10/exclusi... These are only two links but let me assure you if you're interested google is full of articles from the 2008 election talking about how vital the internet and data was to the Obama strategy. I very clearly remember these articles and many others at the time talking about the new "big data" strategies utilized in both 2008 and 2012. To me that is what makes this whole "we scraped data and stole the election for trump" narrative seem extremely suspicious.
- vanderZwan 9y ago
  > To me that is what makes this whole "we scraped data and stole the election for trump" narrative seem extremely suspicious. Suspicious of what? Be more clear about what you're trying to say here please. Because I hope it's not that people didn't complain enough when Obama did it, and therefore now nobody can? (aside from the fact that I did complain, because I complain about all advertising, but that's not the point)

bmsleight_ 9y ago

> Where any laws broken here ? Yes. The article mentions "British data protection laws were probably broken". NB Facebook lawyers have been trying to push the Guardian around. - https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/974995682124804099 https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/974995682124804099 IMHO, but I am not a lawyer - clearly the law was broken, Data Protection Act.

raverbashing 9y ago

Every advertisement should be ostensive Using fb to advertise for Obama, Trump, etc, is ok However that's not what has been done, but the a) use of shills and fake personas to pump up opinion b) creation of fake "grassroots movements" and "news articles" with a divisive purpose https://thinkprogress.org/russia-facebook-pages-sophisticated-8079708cc868/ https://thinkprogress.org/russia-facebook-pages-sophisticate... https://www.reddit.com/r/RussiaLago/comments/7y6ola/there_have_been_241_posts_in_rthe_donald_linking/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RussiaLago/comments/7y6ola/there_ha...

zombieprocesses 9y ago
Did you really link to russianlago, an actual shill subreddit? Also thinkprogress is a shill advocacy organization. > However that's not what has been done, but the a) use of shills and fake personas to pump up opinion b) creation of fake "grassroots movements" and "news articles" with a divisive purpose This has been done since forever. People supporting Obama did in 2008. Those supporting Ron Paul did it. Bernie sanders supporters did it and so did hillary supporters.
- raverbashing 9y ago
  Ad-Hominem and Whataboutism on the same comment, congrats
  - zombieprocesses 9y ago
    I was directly responding to your point. You said shilling is bad. I agree. But it doesn't do your argument any favor when you use two shill sites to defend your position. Russianlago is a shill subreddit. Everyone knows this. Thinkprogress is a shill advocacy group. It's in their mission statement. Also, "Ad-Hominem and Whataboutism" is the easiest way to spot shilling. The fact that it is capitalized makes me believe it was copied and pasted from a list of talking points. If you truly believed shilling was bad, you wouldn't support russianlago or thinkprogress. But the fact that you linked to those two makes me believe you actually support shilling. Just the shilling you agree with. Just an observation.

zombieprocesses 9y ago

> I remember when the Obama campaign hired data scientists and used targeted social networking tools to pursuade voters who were on the fence and it was heralded as brilliant and the future of politics. If you go back to 2008 election, the media was praising Obama as the first social media president. Remember how well obama used youtube, myspace, facebook, reddit and the burgeoning social space during his election? It's strange how the media is now attacking the social media space they loved so much because trump won the election. > Why is any of this news? I think it's because the media and the democrats and a large segment of the elites need something to blame for trump's win. They don't want to blame hillary or themselves for the loss, so they attack social media. During the 2016 election, Trump was complaining about foreign interference in the elections. And Obama stated there was no foreigner interference and that Trump was whining because he was losing in the polls. Back then, the traditional media was backing obama and mocking trump. Now that trump has won, the traditional media is the one pushing the foreign interference narrative. But I guess it is all conjecture. But ever since trump won the election, there has been a relentless propaganda campaign against social media by the establishment. You can't go a day without seeing a propaganda piece on traditional or social media about how bad social media is.

noelwelsh 9y ago
There are actual reasons to be worried about this kind of thing: - The advertisements were not overt ("fake news") - It raises the barrier of entry to the political process - Filter bubble effects Or you can believe a story about "elites" and "biased media".
- zombieprocesses 9y ago
  > There are actual reasons to be worried about this kind of thing: I suppose. Why weren't people worried about this during obama's campaign? > - The advertisements were not overt ("fake news") - It raises the barrier of entry to the political process - Filter bubble effects If filter bubble effects are a problem, then we should be looking into traditional media, not social media. I'd say there is more of a filter bubble issues in CNN, NYTimes, WashingtonPost, Foxnews, etc than in social media. When nearly 100% of the largest media organizations are endorsing one candidate and/or espousing one type of ideology, maybe we should be looking at that. > Or you can believe a story about "elites" and "biased media". It's not a matter of believing. It's a matter of fact. Foxnews and the right wing were also whining about social media when obama won. Now it's the media and the left wing whining about social media because trump won. The only difference is that the leftwing has a much greater media presence. It's so funny how both sides are the same. When it looked like trump was losing, he was blaming foreign interference and biased media and fake news. And the media/leftwing was mocking him for being paranoid and a sore loser. Now that trump won, it's the media/leftwing whining about foreign interference and biased social media and fake news. The hypocrisy displayed by every side is rather disheartening.

thomzi12 9y ago

Did you not read the article? Millions of users took a personality test that had nothing to do with politics, and that data was sold to the Trump campaign for targeting. When did Obama’s campaign ever do that?

willstrafach 9y ago
I think a lot of commenters did not read the article at all and are misunderstanding the “issue” to be use of big data, versus the fact that this specific data was obtained on tens of millions of people in what appears to be a very unethical manner.
hanspeter 9y ago
270.000 users.
- SolarUpNote 9y ago
  ... and all of their ‘friends’, totaling over 50 million
  - hanspeter 9y ago
    Nope. It was not technical possible to share your friends' data in 2014.
muddi900 9y ago
>Did you not read the article? No he didn't. On purpose
dang 9y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

muddi900 9y ago

They harvested personal info of people. Something against FB policy and against the law. That is why it is news. I understand that Hacker News has been accused of turning into reddit since reddit became a thing, but when the top most comment is from a guy who didn't even bother to read the article linked, there is a very little in the way distinction between the two sites.

stefek99 9y ago

E X A C T L Y See my post: https://www.facebook.com/mstefanow/posts/10156280067194886 https://www.facebook.com/mstefanow/posts/10156280067194886 Since when NO NEWS is NEWS? "Why is any of this news? My understanding is that companies harvesting social networking data via viral apps and then reselling it to perform targeted voter advertising is literally a 10 year old concept." Other team didn't realize such thing as the internet exists? (I'm outraged that this thing hit the news, as if it wasn't something already known)